Hi,
Thanks for the answers to my ‘dreamhosters experience’ post.
This question is quite different, so I thought I’d start another post.
My question is: what is the order of operations to seamlessly move from one host to another vis-a-vis making sure there’s a site up at all times, email and search engine find-ability.
Note:
I’m going to be building a new site from scratch on dreamhost with joomla (our current plain ol’ html site on doteasy is beyond lame). I’ve been learning about joomla locally (with mamp) and can probably build the site in a day, as I’ve got all the content organized and ready to go.
So. My question(s):
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I understand that it takes time for the new dns to propogate through the intertubes. Will I be able to start building my new joomla site right away, or will I possibly be directed to the old dns during the 48 hour switching period?
(e.g. I ftp joomla_1 to my dreamhost server, and go to www.mydomain.com/install but I’m directed to my old site.
I guess if I get sent to the old domain, the answer is ‘wait for it to propogate’, and since joomla is webbased, this is a real possibility. -
what happens to email during a switch like this? I’d like to keep the same email addresses (there are 3 very active accounts), and the launch of the new site is going to correspond with a big publicity push, so I can’t afford to miss or lose any email. At somepoint I have to tell my mail program to get mail from the dreamhost servers instead of the doteasy servers, but when?
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what happens to my google ranking? currently we’re #1 when you search our band name, and it would be great to keep that going during the push
anyone have experience (I’m sure there are a few people who’ve gone through exactly this type of switch) and advice?
I can provide more info if needed.
thanks!
E
PS I guess one possible answer is ‘wait until a less critical time to switch’ but our hosting plan at doteasy is up for renewal right in the middle of all this…so it’s kind of a good time to make the move