Domain transfer downtime?

Guest

Hi,

I'm looking to set up a NetHosted account and transfer in an existing .co.uk domain.

From previous posts it seems I'll need to set up the NetHosted account first, then have the IPStag changed by my current host, and wait 3-5 days for confirmation of the change.

I'm concerned as to what happens between the IPStag change request and the confirmation - presumably my site will still be available from the old host until the transfer is confirmed, but when it is confirmed will my domain point to a holding page until I FTP up the contents to the new NetHosted account?

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but the site is a commercial one and downtime would not be good....

Thanks!

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5625

Hi,

Glad to hear you'll be signing up soon!

Actually IPStag changes only take 6-12 hours typically. Your domain's nameservers will stay the same (your old hosts) during this time. If you specify on the order form (in the comments section) that you'd like them not to be changed after the IPStag has updated that will be the case. You can then send in a ticket when you have uploaded your site to our servers and we can update the nameservers at that time for you.

Thanks,

Andrew

Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 8:37 am Post subject:

Once you have paid your money to Andrew, he will give you a temporary link to your website which will allow you to upload all of your files before the site goes live. This way there will be a seamless change over from the old host to nethosted. (of course this will only work if your site is static and doesn't have a web forum or similar)

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5625

I see no reason why only static pages would work via the temporary domain? Forums can be configured to work if desired (by changing the config files to reflect the temporary URL instead of the domain name). It's probably not a good idea to run the forum this way but it will allow the person to see that it is indeed working on our service.

Thanks,

Andrew

Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:13 am Post subject:

Sure you could get a forum to work on the temporary URL but you couldn't do a seamless transfer from the old site to the new site easily as you would potentially lose some posts. You could take the forum down, copy the data to new site, point old site to use data at temporary address on new site, restart forum, transfer domain, update new website forum to use correct url but that is getting complicated...

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5625

Oh I'm on the same page as you now! Yes it's advisable to close the forum once the nameserver changes have taken place. Make a database backup, upload the backup to our servers then re-open the forum on our servers only. That way it'll be clear people will only be able to post to the forum on our servers not on the old servers.

Andrew

Guest

Great information - thanks very much to both.

I'll be in touch to set up the transfer.