Our standard procedure for site migrations is:
- Email – First step is that you must be sure to create all email accounts you may need via your hosting Control Panel, so that they will be ready for when the domain name transfers. If you use Google Mail for your domain, then you don’t need to create any emails accounts, but if you plan to use our DNS then you should make your Google DNS records first on your account via the control panel.
- Maintenance Mode – If your site is subject to change, such as user comments, or donations, then we put your live site (on its current server) into maintenance mode, so that if anyone accesses it, they will see a message that site is temporarily under maintenance. We do this step so that no one (neither visitors nor your staff) will make changes to the site because those changes would not be transferred to the new server.
- Transfer – We transfer your files and databases to our servers and alert you so that you can review the site at its new home.
- Review – We provide you with an alternative URL (such as yoursite.dev.civihosting.com) so you can have access to the new site, and review it, before it’s public.
- DNS Change – When you are ready, you must update your DNS settings, as noted in the hosting Welcome Letter.
- DNS Propagation – For the next 2-24 hours, visitors to your site may still see the old site, but it will be in maintenance mode.
That’s it.