transferring websites & domain names

gtothec

The organisation I work for has a website that we paid a lot for a while back but aren't really happy with as time has gone on. We can't update it for a start, and have to email the designer anything we want changed. We have a good domain name or web address (whatever its called) and don't want to change that.

Recently my partner and I designed a website for his business on wordpress.org. It was straightforward and I think something like this would be better for the organisation I work for. I'm sitting at the computer all day anyway, so it makes sense that I can update the site with new information every day rather than wait until the designer has time to do it. Work have given me the green light to proceed if I think its a good idea.

I plan to spend the next few months tinkering on the wordpress.org site and when I am happy with it, I would like it to replace the existing website.

Am I correct in thinking that I should follow these steps:
1. Purchase a random domain name & hosting package cheaply in order to tinker with the new site.
2. When the new site is ready I can transfer it into our organisations current domain name. The current, unsatisfactory site will vanish.

Sorry if I am not using the correct terms. Hopefully someone will understand and be able to advise if my understanding is correct.

Many thanks!
G>C

andrewjf

You don't need to buy a new domain name. Just find a web host which suits your needs and transfer the existing domain name to them.

gtothec

andrewjf wrote: »

You don't need to buy a new domain name. Just find a web host which suits your needs and transfer the existing domain name to them.

Thanks Andrew, but won't that mean that the current site is down. It will be months before I have finished the new site. I want to keep the current site until the new site I'll be working on is ready. Am I missing something? I am untrained in these things!:o

G>C

andrewjf

gtothec wrote: »

Thanks Andrew, but won't that mean that the current site is down. It will be months before I have finished the new site. I want to keep the current site until the new site I'll be working on is ready. Am I missing something? I am untrained in these things!:o

G>C

Yes, if you transfer the domain immediately.
Spend time developing your new website, then when it's ready, transfer over the domain to your new host.

fenlander_uk

My suggestion:
1) Download XAMPP and install on your Windows PC. It includes an Apache web server + PHP, MySQL and all their assorted admin requirements. Seriously, this is really easy.
2) Find a Wordpress template that suits your requirements and install Wordpress + template on your local machine. Then do all your development work locally. No development domain or hosting required.
3) At some point, install the Duplicator add-on in your local Wordpress installation. Use this to make a full copy of your local website. Again, this is really painless.
4) Get full admin access to your online website. When ready, clear down your old content, copy the Duplicator files to it and hit the installer. You don't even need to install Wordpress on the remote site. It should take no more than a few minutes to have your website - content, add-ons, database, everything up and running.

I recently took over a local community website. Although I had a lot of experience with HTML, ASP and SQL Server, I hadn't touched a website in 5 years and had never seen Wordpress, PHP or MySQL. From scratch, I had a site - quite a complex one with a lot of content and add-ons - up and running in a week. Unless your intended site requires bespoke PHP scripting, you'll be surprised at just how quickly it can be done. I haven't needed to do any scripting - there is a fantastic range of free add-ons available that do all the hard work for you - but some knowledge of css helps a lot with tweaking the appearance of your pages.

Once your site is online, you can do most editing live. However, you can also use Duplicator to back up the site and transfer working copies to your local system. If you need to do major upgrades to Wordpress or your template you can then do them locally first to see whether there are any problems. If all goes well, you can then proceed with upgrades to the live system.

andrewjf

Good advice from fenlander_uk. The key thing is that you don't need a domain name to do development of your new website. It can all be done and tested locally if you have the required tools. XAMPP is very useful as it contains everything you need to get a fully functional website working.

Ant555

One of the first things I would do here is check who 'owns' the domain name.

Things can get fairly sticky if the designer registered it in his own name.

There are lots of places you can check this information but here is one of them.
http://www.who.is/

Type in the domain of your business - the site will return the name of the registered owner along with an address and some other information relating to servers.
If you can see your information here then relax as everything will be a-ok, if its not your details and is showing the name of the designer or his company then post back and we can advise on what you should do next.

jrrowleyws

Some web hosts let you have hosting without a domain name. You access your site via IP address. Then when ready you can update the name servers to point the domain name to the hosting account and hence make the site public. The host I use used to offer this and I used it in the past, not sure if they still do but it was easy to use.

gtothec

Thanks for the advice guys!

We do own the domain name, so that is one part sorted already. I will follow your advice re not buying a new domain and downloading the program you spoke of.

For my husband's site we purchased Headway themes which is a drag and drop thing. I love it, and it gets round my issue of not understanding CSS etc.

(I know I will have 50 more questions when I get started, but thats all for now!)

G>C

forgotmyname

Plenty of free hosting packages also. Ideal for creating a site before buying a domain or whilst waiting for the domain to become active in my case.

Some are a PITA though. I used one and to prevent misuse they had to verify all my changes. Not ideal when your creating a site and making lots of changes.
Within 2 hours they said. 2 days later i contacted them and asked why my site had not updated.

I gave up and chose another. I have my own package now, Costs me about £40 a year. I can host 10 websites and plenty of bandwidth.

andrewjf

forgotmyname wrote: »

Plenty of free hosting packages also. Ideal for creating a site before buying a domain or whilst waiting for the domain to become active in my case.

Some are a PITA though. I used one and to prevent misuse they had to verify all my changes. Not ideal when your creating a site and making lots of changes.
Within 2 hours they said. 2 days later i contacted them and asked why my site had not updated.

I gave up and chose another. I have my own package now, Costs me about £40 a year. I can host 10 websites and plenty of bandwidth.

That's a ridiculous way to operate. Why does the web host care if your site works or not? Any I've used before allow free access to upload pages whenever you want.
No wonder you switched.