Is it Easy to Transfer Website Hosting? Web Hosting Tips for Your Contractor Website
You’re thinking about buying a new website but already you’re being hit with technical questions and getting emails from people asking for logins and access and God knows what. It’s enough to make you think you’d be better off sticking with your old site.
Luckily, most requirements of a new website sound a lot more technical than they are. Switching host providers can make your site faster and safer, and keep money in your pocket if you find a better deal. With Tradie Digital it’s easy to switch hosts, and here’s how we do it.
As a contractor, there’s a good chance you’ve got a website already.
Maybe you made it yourself, maybe you paid a bloke from Nepal to make it on Fiverr, maybe your neighbour told you his son was a computer whiz and he built it for you.
Wherever your site came from, there’s an equally good chance it hasn’t been built with the SEO-friendly features it needs to rank on Google and generate leads for you.
But that’s not a problem. Because you can keep your URL – that’s the name of your website and the address people use to find you – and just switch out your current site for a custom SEO-friendly website.
The same way you can send your 1990 Holden Commodore to the scrapyard, but keep your license plates and put them on a new model so people still recognise you when you drive down the street.
If you want to get started with a custom, SEO-friendly website you might need to switch hosting providers, and there are two ways for you to do that.
Find out exactly how we build a website for SEO step-by-step.
In this article we’ll explain why you need a website host, go through the two methods of switching website hosts, and leave you with the simple steps to take if you’re ready to upgrade your website.
What is web hosting?
Most people don’t think about the back-end of a website.
They go to Google and punch in their search terms and a few seconds later they’re shopping online or checking out a local home improvement business.
But websites don’t just “exist”. They need to live on special computers called ‘servers’. The biggest servers in the world host millions of websites on thousands of individual servers, so there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.
To save you the hassle of organising your website and handling the complicated back-end tasks and technical set-up, web hosting companies – think GoDaddy and SiteGround – have bought the biggest and fastest servers going around. All you have to do is pay your chosen website hosting company and *boom* your website will be live and accessible by potential clients.
“Why would I waste time changing hosts if no one can even see them?”
Like any service you pay for, you might want to make a change if you’re getting a raw deal.
If your internet was slow every night while the kids were playing games online, you’d look at a faster telco. And if your website is so slow it pisses people off, you might look at a faster website host. Outside of speed, switching hosts is typically done to get more security (and avoid hackers), or to pay less money as different hosts offer deals and discounts.
Now that you understand what’s happening behind the scenes, here are two insanely simple ways for you to transfer website hosting if you invest in a custom Tradie Digital website.
Host Transfer Option #1 – Do it yourself
You’re curious about launching your own custom website, so you might be curious about transferring your website host too.
If you go with this option, it’s important to know the technical learning curve involved. Transferring your website to a new host can be a lot more technical than it may look (it’s not as easy as clicking a few buttons, unfortunately).
You’ll need to watch out for:
– Your website going down (and staying down)
– Your emails going down (and staying down)
– Your contact forms breaking (and staying broken)
If you want to go down the DIY path, you’ll need two crucial pieces of info from your current host:
– Your WordPress logins
– Cpanel access
Once you have this info, you’ll be able to move your website from your old host to your new host by following these steps:
– Find a new website host
– Locate and download your website
– Export your website database
– Upload your website and import your database
– Test your website
– Switch your DNS record
– Stay alert for different links or a changed site structures
– Don’t forget to switch your email
Once you’ve followed these steps, your images, URL, content, and pages will be available on your new tradesman website.
Speaking of pages, get the TRUTH on how many pages a tradie website needs in 2022
Switch Your Marketing Spend to Us, and We’ll Increase Your Return On Investment or We’ll Give You $300
Host Transfer Option #2 – We do it
Let’s be honest, time isn’t always your friend as a tradesperson.
Between sending out quotes, following up with leads, and actually getting on the tools, you might not want to get into a back-and-forth email correspondence with a website host support worker in Bangladesh.
At Tradie Digital we understand that your time could always be spent in more useful ways – whether that’s at work or at home. So if you don’t want to invest the time to reach out to your current website host we’ll do it on your behalf (this is the even easier option).
All we’ll need from you is:
– CPanel Logins
– WordPress website logins
Once we know who to contact we’ll reach out on your behalf and take the process off your hands. Instead of you having to chase up individual logins and passwords, we’ll handle the transition from your old host to your new host.
This option is quick, easy, and keeps you focused on your business.
Use a professional to make it easy to transfer web hosting
If switching from your current website to a new one feels overly complex, we hear you.
Like any building process, the planning stage is always more thorough and detailed than what comes next.
If you’re building a new house, the design stage is going to be intricate and complex, the build site will follow a more streamlined process, and once the house is built you can kick back on the couch and there’s next to no stress at all.
Building a website is the same.
The design stage is going to be intricate and complex, the build will follow a more streamlined process, and once the site is built you can kick back on the couch while the leads roll in and your inbox fills with quote requests and call-outs.
Switching your website host provider can help your site earn more customers and it’s super simple. We only need a couple of login details – so you can ask your current provider for those if you want to stay involved, or we can ask them on your behalf if you’re keen to save time.
It’s easy to transfer your host, but what about all the content you’ll need on your new site?
