Website migration

alba37

Can anyone help me with some advice. I'm struggling moving a joomla site over to a new host and my mac is not populating the new site either, making it a bigger challenge. I understand I can check it by editing my hosts file. (I know how to do that) But do I need to change the name servers first for that to show the site (if I have the files moved correctly too of course)

thanks for any thoughts...

AndyPix

Im confused ..

To move your site, you move the files to the new host
Then , in your control panel for your domain name, you point the name at the new files.

Im not sure what you mean when you refer to your mac not populating the site, or your reference to the hosts file (unless you are hosting the site locally on your machine - which I doubt)

alba37

Hi Andy

Thanks for trying to help. Yes, this is about moving to a new host and what you said is what would normally what I would do. But I have had problems with my mac not showing the site on the new host and there doesn't seem to be anyway to get it to work faster so I am doing it by changing my hosts file, so that way I can see instantly what is showing on the new site.

The problem with this site is it isn't moving well, the new hosting company was doing the migration for me, telling me it was done, I would change the DNS but the migration hasn't been successful. This has been going on a month.

So I am now trying to move it myself, what is the best way to get a instant view of what is showing on the new host? If I change DSN and I haven't got the files all correct, the site goes down, I would like the site to be working before changing over.

This led to my question about changing the hosts file. I have used that up till now for other sites, but they are ones I have moved successfully and changed DNS, but don't show on my Mac for whatever reason (I thought cache, but clearing and flushing hasn't helped) I wanted to know if I should be able to see the site I add to my host file, even without changing DNS.

I am not sure any of that will make sense, if not my question is how do you I a site is ok when moving it, before changing DSN.

Thanks again

AndyPix

Ok that's a bit clearer I guess..
Couldn't you just upload your site to the new host manually ?

And, if you have the ip address - which u must do if your editing host file, then why not just browse to the new ip address directly from the address bar ?

Also, does the code of your site reference the old domain name in any way ? its pretty shoddy coding if it does but its not unheard of..

I cant for the life of me guess why it would take a week to "migrate" a site, it simply a case of copying files !!

bingo_bango

This sounds like a caching error at your end. Can you clear your local browser cache and then review the site? (I had issues with Firefox last week when moving a wordpress site. Kept showing the cached version no mater what I tried).

If the files are uploaded then they should be live. That of course assumes that the DNS settings have been populated correctly. I have had some slow DNS movement in the past, but never longer than 12 hours. If it's taking longer then that then something else is wrong.

It sounds like you are trying to 'test' the installation before going live. Are you installing Joomla in a subfolder of the main domain? If so, make sure that is where you are visiting in the browser. Once happy, you should be able to copy the index.php file to the root public folder, and edit it to point at the joomla subfolder (might need you to edit the .htaccess file as well).

Is the 'mac' your computer?

Xsdna

There is no need to edit your hosts file manually to skip waiting for the dns propagation, as already mentioned, just enter the ip into the address bar instead of whatever.url

With regards to the migration, assuming the joomla at each end is up to date, log into your old sever, select all files in the web space folder, zip / rar it up, send that file to your new sever using whatever method your happy with doing, and uncompress it in the http folder there

Make sure things like ssl is supported (it's usually off by default, just turn it on)

Once this is done, hit up the ip and you *should* have your copy of website in the new provider beaming down to you. I by chance migrated a site just couple days back, no trouble.

Obviously once this is good, you're clear to update the dns, not before if you don't want down time.

Let us know how you get on. I'm happy to help gratis if you get more bother