Nowadays, quite a few ISPs block port# 25 which is the default SMTP port for relaying email for security purposes, so you need to configure an alternative port for SMTP connection.

Use instructions below to configure an additional alternate SMTP port in a Plesk Server running in Redhat Enterprise Linux Version 4/5 or CentOS version 5 in Qmail Server.

Choose any unused port and add it to the /etc/services file, for example:

smtp_alt        8425/tcp        mail            # Alternate SMTP Port
smtp_alt        8425/udp        mail            # Alternate SMTP Port (optional)

Make a copy of /etc/xinetd.d/smtp_psa to /etc/xinetd.d/smtp_psa_alt and correct service line within new file:

service smtp_alt

Below is a sample of smtp_psa_alt file.

service smtp_alt
{
socket_type     = stream
protocol        = tcp
wait            = no
disable         = no
user            = root
instances       = UNLIMITED
server          = /var/qmail/bin/tcp-env
server_args     = -Rt0 /var/qmail/bin/relaylock /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd /var/qmail/bin/smtp_auth /var/qmail/bin/true /var
/qmail/bin/cmd5checkpw /var/qmail/bin/true
}

Restart xinetd and Qmail

service xinetd restart
service qmail restart

SMTP connections will be accepted on the both standard and 8025 ports. You may also need to reconfigure Horde IMP (webmail) settings so it uses the alternative SMTP port too. This can be done editing the following file in Horde webmail:

/etc/psa-horde/imp/servers.php file under smtpport parameter for both IMAP and POP3 servers.

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Posted by ankur under Linux, Plesk Control Panel
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This post on SEO tips is meant for small business owners and individuals who have an online presence for their organisation but are unable to generate consistent and relevant traffic from the search engines (namely Google, Yahoo and Bing) to further their online presence and get a measurable return on their investment.

Without a doubt getting ranked on the leading search engines for keywords which are relevant to your products or services is the most effective way to boost your online revenues. However, it is surprising how little thought and effort is being spent by most web developers and website owners in improving their rankings on the search engines. The following SEO tips should improve your search engine rankings and help you generate relevant search engine traffic from Google and others on a consistent basis.

SEO Tip #1: Check if your relevant web pages are listed on Google

The first step would be to check if Google has already indexed the pages which you are hoping would be listed on its search database. To do this you should go to Google and type in the text info: followed by the url which you want to check on the Google’s index, e.g. info:www.diadem.co.in/web-hosting/web-hosting.html. If your webpage has been indexed by Google, it would show up on the search results, otherwise, you will get a ‘Sorry, no information is available for the URL:’, which means that the Googlebot and possibly the other search engine spiders has not yet been able to index your page on their search database.

SEO Tip #2: Check for relevant keywords using the Google Keyword Tool

The next step would be to check which are the relevant keywords which people are searching for on the search engines. There are many paid tools such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery but I would recommend using the Google Keyword Tool if you are starting off with keyword analysis. The Google Keyword tool allows you to enter your key phrases and come up with an estimate of the Global and Local search volume for that keyword alongwith the competition index if you wish to use Adwords to get listed on the sponsored listings section for that keyword.

SEO Tip #3: Create separate ‘landing pages’ for each keyword or a group of closely linked keywords

The next important step would be to create a landing page dedicated for that keyword or a cluster of closely grouped keywords which are related to each other. In SEO parlance, such pages are known as ‘landing pages’ as they bring users from the search engines to a URL within your website which has relevant content to the users search needs and not directly to the homepage.

SEO Tip #4: Your webpage URL should contain the relevant keyword which you wish to optimise

If you are optimising your landing page for ‘tour agents in india’, your webpage url should ideally have these keywords within its url, e.g. www.yourdomain.com/tour-agents-in-india.html. If your website is based on a CMS like Joomla, use .htaccess and mod_rewrite apache modules to create SEF (search engine friendly) URLs for your webpages.

SEO Tip #5: Update every page of your website with relevant and unique metatags

Though the importance of meta description and keyword tags don’t seem to play a big role in enhancing your search engine rankings, each page of your website should have a unique meta description and meta keyword tag to ensure that search engines identify each of your pages as unique use display the meta description text below the search engine listings text.

SEO Tip #6: Images used within your landing pages should have the same name as the keyword which you intend to optimise

As the search engines cannot decipher the visually stunning graphics on your website, you need to ensure the following:

  • The image name contains the keyword which you are optimising for your landing page, e.g. chennai-hotels.jpg.
  • The alt text tag for the image name should also contain the desired keyword, e.g. alt=”hotels in chennai”.

SEO Tip #7: Write original SEO content which is easy to read and relevant to your target audience

Search engines are looking for original, unique content which is well written and grammatically correct so you should avoid stuffing your landing pages with keywords or having text which is poorly written.

SEO Tip #8: Limit the number of times your keyword is repeated on the body content of your page

As a thumb rule, do not repeat the keywords more then 3-4 times on the body of your page as the search engines might penalise your webpage if they consider that your page is being stuffed with the same text beyond a reasonable no. of times.

SEO Tip #9: Generate a sitemap for your website to enable search engines to index your content

Creating a sitemap and submitting it to Google using the Webmaster Tools allows Google to index your site much faster (sometimes within a few days) in comparison with waiting and hoping for the Googlebot to come over and re-index the content of your website. You can create a Google compatible XML sitemap for your website at XML-sitemaps.com, which is free and efficient.

SEO Tip #10: Check if your landing pages are indexed on Google and listed for those keywords

Once you have submitted your site through the Webmaster Tools, check back every few days if Google has indexed your landing page (use the Tip #1, stated above). After your webpage has been indexed by Google, you can check the search rankings for your page using the Free Keyword Position Checker Tool by SEOCentro. This tools allows you to enter your desired keyword, your website URL and lists the ranking of your website on the Google, MSN and Yahoo.

So there you have it, the 10 tips on SEO which is a surefire way to get your site listed and ranked on the search engines. You can repeat this process all over again for the next set of keywords which you wish to optimise for your website. There are other advanced methods to improve your rankings on the search engines and hopefully we will touch upon them in our future posts. However, the above guidelines are proven to boost SEO rankings and are used by leading SEO consultants worlwide, so you should be in good company!

Happy Rankings and feel free to post your comments to this post.
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Posted by hriday under Marketing Tips & Advice, SEO
1 Comment

Your website is a key tool to enable your business to reach out to many thousands of potential prospects over the world wide web and it needs to be updated and improved upon on a continuous basis to ensure that you have your best foot forward and your prospects choose your services over the competition.

Here are my Top 11 reasons, which I feel should move you to rework your online presence, if one or more of these reasons apply to your website:

1. My website is outdated, looks unprofessional and doesn’t have the upmarket feel which I need to project of my company!

2. The products/services which we sell are not updated online and leads to confusion when we meet our clients.

3. My website is not built on W3C web standards.

4. My site is not search engine optimized and doesn’t rank well on the search engines.

5. I need to manage/update my website content on my own through a backend CMS platform.

6. My website is not built using open source tools and applications.

7. My website developer is unable to work on my website and I need to work with another developer.

8. My website is done using Flash and takes ages to load online.

9. My website doesn’t render properly across the current browsers due to issues with the JS/PHP code.

10. My website is not ready to handle online transactions

11. My website code is insecure and vulnerable to XSS issues and SQL injection vulnerabilities.

If you can come up with additional reasons to redo your web presence, please share them by posting your comment to this post! :)

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Posted by hriday under Marketing Tips & Advice
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We are delighted to announce the successful completion of the acquisition of Catchcal.net web hosting and domain registration services and bring all its existing clients and services within our fold. Catchcal is a 10 year old web hosting and domain services company operating out of Kolkata and I have known its owner, Mr. Amit Keshan since its inception and we have had very cordial relations till date. We have also been providing Catchcal with our hosting platform on Linux and Windows servers and he had successfully grown his web hosting services to nearly 150 hosted domains and over 100 clients during this period.

As Amit’s core focus had shifted in outsourced web development services, he wanted his clients to be taken care of by someone he could trust and depend on and that’s where we came into the picture. Our decade long expertise in managing managing servers, websites and underlying systems enables us to provide our clients with reliable and secure web hosting services. This capability will come in handy to ensure that all Catchcal clients continue to get the reliable hosting services and also get access to the latest web hosting tools and technologies which we have been providing to our clients.

This being our third webhost acquisition over a span of 5 years,  it would enable us to further consolidate our position as a leading webhost from this region and stay focused on providing enhanced levels of support on a personal basis at a significantly lower cost than other comparable web hosts in India.

To celebrate this event, we are offering a flat 20% discount on all our domain and hosting services which is purchased online through our website, www.diadem.co.in. Simply use the promocode 20OFF and get a 15% discount on your next website hosting or domain name purchase. Please note that this offer is only valid till the end of this month, i.e. 31 Aug 09, so make the most of it while this offer is available.

Stay tuned for more service offerings and promos from Diadem Technologies over the next few weeks!

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Posted by hriday under News & Updates
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To quickly determine whether your site is still in Google index, just perform a Google site search for its entire URL. e.g. a search for

[ site:www.diademblogs.com or site:diademblogs.com ], for instance, returns the following results:

Results 139 of 39 from www.diademblogs.com. (0.25 seconds)

If your site is displayed as a result when you perform a Google site search for your URL, then it’s included in google index, which is the first step in getting your site listed on Google search results.

If your site is not listed in the Google index or if you would like to enable Google to spider your site frequently for fresh content, signup for the google webmaster tools at http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

Posted by ankur under SEO, Web Hosting
0 Comments

A brief primer on domain registration services and tips to ensure that you have complete control of your online web assets.

Firstly, the techie stuff :) . The main purpose of a domain name is to provide symbolic representations, i.e., recognizable names, to mostly numerically addressed Internet resources. This  allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet, in effect changing the IP address. This translation from domain names to IP addresses (and vice versa) is accomplished with the global facilities of Domain Name System (DNS).

Top-level domains

Every domain name ends in a top-level domain (TLD) name, which is always either one of a small list of generic names (three or more characters), or a two-character territory code  Top-level domains are sometimes also called first-level domains.

Few Examples of TLDs : [ .com  .in  .net  .org  .net  .asia  .edu  .biz  .info  .edu ]

Domain Name Registry Services

A domain name registry, also called a Network Information Center (NIC), is part of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet which converts domain names to IP addresses. It is an organisation that manages the registration of Domain names within the top-level domains for which it is responsible, controls the policies of domain name allocation, and technically operates its top-level domain. It is potentially distinct from a domain name registrar.

A domain name registrar is a company, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or by a national ccTLD authority, to register Internet domain names. These “retail” companies are often distinct from the “wholesale” domain name registry operator.

ICANN has authority over generic top-level domains, or gTLDs. Examples of gTLDs include .com, .net, .org and .mobi. ICANN does not have authority over ccTLDs, or Country Code Top-Level Domains, although it is quite common for domain name registrars to offer ccTLD registration services as well. Most registrars provide DNS hosting service, but this is not required, and is often considered a separate service.

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, United States, ICANN is a non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority).

Now, for the interesting bit. Domain name registrations involves registering a domain name with an approved registrar. The process is broken down into the following steps:

  1. You have to chosse a unique domain name that is not presently owned by anyone else.
  2. Find a company that registers domain names from ICANN accredited registrars and do some market research before registering domains with them . Few examples few ICANN accredited registrars are:
    • eNom, Inc.
    • Network Solutions, LLC
    • Register.com, Inc.
    • Directi Internet Solutions Pvt. Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com
    • You can gather more information from http://icann.org/
  3. Verify the  information and control that you would get about your domain upon registration. Few details that you should obtain upon the domain registration are:
    • Domain management control panel login details from where you can set your nameservers or use other features like managed DNS service, etc.
    • You should get the Authorization Code for your domain which is a Secret code for your domain required if you wish to transfer your domain name from the current registrar to a new host.
  4. Always ensure that the Administrative as well as the technical contact information that you provide are valid and the e-mail ids are functional since all the correspondence related to your domain would be made to this e-mail id.
  5. You can register a domain name for maximum of 10 years at a stretch (this might vary for some extensions, like .in, .co.in where the maximum period of domain registration is 5 years).

Domain Name Transfer Procedure:

At times, domains are sold to another organization or sometimes the name of a company might change. Most registries require a letter of permission from the old owner to hand over control to the new owner. The procedures for Transfer of ownership will depend on the registry.

Domain Name Lock:

This facility helps to keep your domain secure from disgruntled ex-employees and hackers. Once you activate Domain Lock, no changes to your domain is permitted. Your domain has unlocked by you before the domain can change hosting, contacts, registrants or even transfer out to another registrar.

The Domain Lock section is password-protected, meaning only the authorized user can access this section. The username and password to the account is not enough. It asks the user additional queries like “what’s your mother’s maiden name?”; “your pet’s name is…” and so on. Facts that only you know.You should always ensure that your domain is locked until you specifically request for unlocking it to your registrar.

Domain Privacy

The last factor you need to consider is the possibility of somebody looking for you on the web.  Anyone can search for domain owners on the WHOIS website.  Depending on what you have going on, you may not want to make this information accessible.  In this case, you could opt for domain privacy which will keep your domain name private on the WHOIS database.  A registrar typically charges an additional fee for this service, but you might find it to be worth the extra costs.

Diadem Technologies Pvt. Ltd.(www.diadem.co.in) is a value added partner of multiple accredited ICANN registrars namely eNom, Inc. and ResellerClub and has over 5k+ domains under its management. You can send us your domain related queries at support@diadem.co.in and we can give you expert advice on how to effectively secure and retain control of your online web assets.

Posted by anirban under Marketing Tips & Advice, Web Hosting
0 Comments

Many websites today are reeling under persistent XSS (cross site scripting) attacks where vulnerable code is being attached to their webpages which block their sites on Google and other search engines and prevent users from browsing their websites. Users not using updated browsers download the malicious code on their PCs or are being redirected to the websites of the malicious code, where their sessions are being captured or sensitive data like usernames/passwords are being used by hackers to gain priveleged information which could cause damage to the users and the website owners alike.

Many website owners feel that this is a problem with the webhost or that their PCs are virus infected and the files which they are uploading on their webserver is virus infected and that is causing this problem. But this is simply not the case! XSS attacks are generated on a runtime basis due to insecure code on your website or web application which is being used by hackers to attach their own code into your website through insecure feedback forms, user registration/login forms and even search fields.

Here are some collection of links to online videos and resources which should enable you to gain a better understanding of XSS and how to block prevent XSS attacks on your website:

Video 1: A brief video primer on SQL Injection works.


Video 2: Persistent Cross Site Scripting


Video 3: Don Ankney of Microsoft talks about the continuing challenges around eradicating Cross Site Scripting from the Earth.



Foiling Cross-Site Attacks: An interesting read on XSS and cross-site request forgeries(CSRF).

XSS Tools:

Springenwerk Security Scanner: Springenwerk is an open source Cross Site Scripting (XSS) security scanner, written in Python.
HTML Purifier: HTML Purifier is a standards-compliant HTML filter library written in PHP. It has pulgins for popular CMS and PHP Frameworks like Drupal, Joomla and Codeigniter.
N-Stalker Free Edition: N-Stalker Web Application Security Scanner provides a restricted set of free Web Security Assessment checks to enhance the overall security of your web server infrastructure.
As XSS security is an evolving area and new products, techniques are being introduced to prevent its abuse, your comments and additional resources on this post are welcome to make this a valuable resource for other users.
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Posted by hriday under Web Application Security
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In this post we will discuss how to create view to display the listing  for the content types in drupal sites. In Drupal, you can create  dynamic pages from administrative menu > content management > content > Add Option. So, if you are creating some dynamic content E.g. pages where you should like to list the records for a particular set of data fields, then to fulfill this requirement you need to create a View which will display you the listing of the contents of any content types.

Here are some simple steps to create view for any content type. This example has been created using Drupal 5.10.

Step 1 :Basic View Setup

Download the view module (http://drupalmodules.com/module/views) and install the module. Once you enable the view module to can create view for all content types. From administrative menu/site building/views click on add option. Once, you click on the add option you will get a form as shown in figure below.

Basic information is the general information about the view which you will create.

viewinfo

Step 2 : Creating the View Display

You can display your created view in a page,block and both. Its up to to you how would you like to get the output.  For your help we are creating both the page and block. Please check the snapshots given below.

(a) Creating a page for the view.

Firstly, you have to check the provide page view option and give the URL of the view page. Use pager is the option for the pagination. If you don’t want pagination just unchecked the checkbox.

Page

b) Creating a Block for the view.

Check the provide block option to create a block for the view. Nodes per block indicated how many nodes you want to show in you block.

Block

Step 3 : Selecting the fields

Fields – Select the fields which you want to display for this content types. In our example, we are showing the node title and node body. You need to choose the field from the drop down and click on the add Field button. The selected field will display above as shown in figure.

Display Fields

Step 4 :View Arguments

Arguments – If you want to display a particular node then you need to configure this argument section otherwise leave it blank.  If you want to display a particular node then you select the argument from the drop down which you want to pass for the node and click add argument. The selected argument will show above as shown in figure.

Now, you need to set the wildcard value. Wildcard is the value which you pass from the URL. This will automatically fetch the value and show the corresponding node content.

For example, if you want to show node whose node ID is 11 then select node ID as the argument and set wildcard to %1.

%1 represent 11, the first argument you pass from the URL i.e., http://localhost/drupaldemo/?q=admin/build/views/page_entry/11

%2 represent 22, the second argument you pass from the URL i.e., http://localhost/drupaldemo/?q=admin/build/views/page_entry/11/22

Passing Argument

Step 5 :Creating Filters for the View

Filters – From this filter section you can filter the nodes which you want to show into your view page. In our example, we are filtering through node type and this is the simple and general way to filter. Select the Node: type from the dropdown and a click on the add filter button. Then select the page as the value of the node type.

Actually, in our example we are filtering the page type from all nodes through this filter option.

Filter

Step 6 : Set Your Sort Criteria

Sort Criteria – Select the field from the dropdown to sort. In our example, we are sorting as node ID i.e., latest node entry will show at the top of the listing. See the snapshot given below.

Sorting

Step 7 : Confirm the changes and preview the ‘View’

Finally, click on the save button to save all the provided information. Once, the view is save you can access the page by the URL you have provided. For our example, URL name is viewPage and to see the listing of the page nodes the url is http://sitename/?q=viewPage.

You will get the full url of your view page from  Administrative menu > site building > views > Listing page. You can also edit and delete this view from the section.

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Posted by mithun under CMS, Drupal CMS
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The task of adding Joomla users, login/logout, activating/deactivating of users and password reset tasks etc are handled by the component com_users. In this post I will show how to add a joomla user from an external page.

Adding users externally can be done in two ways:
1. Create an html form with correct fields and submit it the correct Joomla url so that Joomla handles the registration, or
2. If you want to do it in your custom method, you need to create both the html form and the and the script that will add the user to the Joomla.

First, the regular way:

We create an html form with the correct field names and place the form in the joomla root. The field names should match with that of the general joomla registration form.

If we view the source of a Joomla registration form then we can see that the form has text fields named name, username, Email, password, password2 and hidden fields task, id, gid. There is another hidden field whose name is generated by JUtility::getToken() and the value of the field is 1. This field value is checked at the time of submitting the registration information. More about this in a moment. On submitting the registration form the registration information is processed by the register_save method of the UserController in com_user, which has been specified by the hidden field named task in the registration form.

Now we come to the UserController in the com_user. In the register_save method there is a line which checks the token value from the submitted form. As we are using a static html form we either need to generate the token name on the html form or if we don’t want to include the token in the form then we need to bypass the line of code which checks for the token.

JRequest::checkToken() or jexit( 'Invalid Token' );

In the register_save method of the UserController in the com_user. Since we will be using a html form commonly so we go for the second option and comment the line for checking token

// JRequest::checkToken() or jexit( 'Invalid Token' );

The submitted registration information is then processed by the register_save method. The data is actually saved in the save method of the UserController.

Now, the Other way:

Here we use the previously created form and submit it to the custom script that we create. This approach is basically to copy the functionality of the register_save() method in the UserController in com_user to an external script and submit the html registration form to that script.

Now onto the script:
To access the joomla environment in an external script, the following snippet is added to the start of the script:

define( '_JEXEC', 1 );
define('JPATH_BASE', dirname(__FILE__) );//this is when we are in the root
define( 'DS', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR );
 
require_once ( JPATH_BASE .DS.'includes'.DS.'defines.php' );
require_once ( JPATH_BASE .DS.'includes'.DS.'framework.php' );
 
$mainframe =& JFactory::getApplication('site');
$mainframe->initialise();

This snippet basically makes available the joomla framework available in the script. The code snippet is found in the index.php of the joomla root.

Now we import the functionality of the register_save() method in the script.

#1. Check for request forgeries, we comment this out since tokens are not generated in the html page

//JRequest::checkToken() or jexit( 'Invalid Token' );

#2. Get required system objects

$user 	      = clone(JFactory::getUser());
$pathway 	      = & $mainframe->getPathway();
$config	      = & JFactory::getConfig();
$authorize	      = & JFactory::getACL();
$document       = & JFactory::getDocument();

#3. If user registration is not allowed, show 403 not authorized(Not needed)

$usersConfig = &JComponentHelper::getParams( 'com_users' );
if ($usersConfig->get('allowUserRegistration') == '0')
	{
		JError::raiseError( 403, JText::_( 'Access Forbidden' ));
		return;
	}

#4. Initialize new usertype setting

$newUsertype = $usersConfig->get( 'new_usertype' );
if (!$newUsertype)
	{
		$newUsertype = 'Registered';
	}

#5. Bind the post array to the user object

if (!$user->bind( JRequest::get('post'), 'usertype' ))
	{
		JError::raiseError( 500, $user->getError());
	}

#6. Set some initial user values

$user->set('id', 0);
$user->set('usertype', '');
$user->set('gid', $authorize->get_group_id( '', $newUsertype, 'ARO' ));
 
$date =& JFactory::getDate();
$user->set('registerDate', $date->toMySQL());

#7. If user activation is turned on, we need to set the activation information(Not needed)

$useractivation = $usersConfig->get( 'useractivation' );
if ($useractivation == '1')
	{
		jimport('joomla.user.helper');
		$user->set('activation', md5( JUserHelper::genRandomPassword()) );
		$user->set('block', '1');
	}

#8. Save the details of the user

$user->save();

After this we can use the php header function to redirect the user to the desired location.

That’s it! I hope Joomla developers find this helpful and please feel to post your views and comments to this post.

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Posted by amitabh under CMS, Joomla
5 Comments

It can be somewhat of a nightmare when you have to migrate from one web hosting provider to another if you are getting more features and services which are not available with your present web host. But before you take the leap of shifting your website, following is an important set of TODOs which can save you considerable heartburn and help ensure minimal downtime when you shift your webhost:

  1. Ensure that the new webhost meets all your needs, like storage space, bandwidth, down times, support for the operating system and applications that run on your web site, support for scripts and an adequate number of email accounts and auto responders.
  2. The next step would be to back up all your website content/DB on your current server to a secure location. Make sure you get all your email  downloaded to local machine as it may not be possible to restore mails from another server, databases and website files.
  3. Upload all your files and databases to the new server and make sure you retain all the file permissions as they were on your old siteso that you don’t end up with scripting errors. Arrange a test environment to test the scripts, contact pages, and databases connection and check for incompatibility issues between applications on your old server and your new one, before you make the necessary DNS change.
  4. You need to plan for the downtime that would result from this event. DNS updates take up to 48-72 to propagate globally across the Internet. Let your customers and website visitors know of this planned upgrade. Make the move when your traffic would be the least (ideally during weekends or holidays).
  5. Check if mail services for your domain is running on the new hosting provider so that you don’t lose any email messages, when you make the transition.
  6. If your domain name registration is a part of your old hosting plan, then you might want to move your domain to another third party provider since moving your site to a new web hosting provider means that your domain name company remains the same while your web hosting provider changes. If your domain name was registered using a third party domain name registration company, then this is not an issue.
  7. If your site is dynamic, DNS update delays can cause data lose if you are not careful. Some customers may see your old site while others have access to the new one. To minimize such occurrences, disable your site  on the earlier webhost with a message on a static page so that these users cannot update the old DB on the server.
  8. If you plan to migrate more than one domain, make sure you start the process with enough time to spare for the DNS update delays and take expert help on this issue.
  9. Make sure all the visitors to your old webhost are being redirected to your new site before canceling your current web hosting provider. It is best to keep both sites up and running in parallel for at least one weeks, it will help you to retrieve data if there are any issues. Take a final backup of all your site content and database before canceling your current web hosting provider.
  10. Check your site on Google to ensure that the links indexed by Google are still working well. Sometimes, the links spidered by Googlebots on your previous webhost (especially if you are on a dedicated IP), show a ‘404 nage not found’ error, which might cause all your organic SEO efforts get washed away in a single instance.

Hopefully, the above tips would help you understand the importance of planning in advance to the smallest detail, if you intend to shift webhosts anytime in the near future.

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Posted by ankur under Web Hosting
1 Comment