Moving A Website to Big Head Web Hosting

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Welcome to Big Head. Here’s What to Expect.

Big Head Web Hosting was built and designed to be a solid hosting platform for websites that were built by our team. However, more and more we are finding people wanting to move their own current websites to our hosting platform. And we are excited to welcome you to the family!

Just like when you move into a new home, there are always bound to be some differences from one place to the next. With so many hosting options available, our Big Head platforms may be configured slightly differently than where your website is currently hosted. Sometimes that can lead to a few unexpected issues along the way. Most hosting companies just give you the keys to the new home and leave the rest to you to figure out. But here at Big Head, we believe that the functionality and security of the websites we host is very important. As a result, we’ve developed the following roadmap for your move.

Packing Up

First, go ahead and place your order to move. With that, make sure we have full access to your current hosting account so that we can gather all the needed files and databases to make your move successful. Please be sure to test any logins to ensure that we can access things as efficiently as possible to prevent any delays.

Staging and Review

Once we have gathered your website data, we will then launch a copy of the website in a staging development environment. The goal here is to perform any needed CMS updates and do a review of the website. If applicable, we will perform any needed CMS updates on the website (to help protect the platform itself) as well as provide any feedback on items we see that may need to be addressed. If there are licenses needed for any updates, we will request those licenses to install so we can make sure everything is up to date and working properly.

When the staged website is ready, we will provide you with a direct link and ask you to fully review the staged website. We want you to ensure that it is working and functioning just like the live website on your current host. If you notice any issues, immediately let us know so that we can determine the cause of the problem and if a change is needed to correct an incompatibility. Please understand that at this point, you will be the expert on what your website should do. We most likely did not build the website and may not be very familiar with all its inner workings, so your eyes will certainly pick up on any subtle issues we may not see.

Moving In

Upon your review and approval, we will then move the website to its new home, and work with you to get the DNS changes complete. Think of this as the “change of address” to get visitors to the new location. As this is done, we will keep a copy of the staged site up and running for a short time to have a reference point should anything present as an issue. (Remember, once you change the DNS information, the old hosting is no longer viable, so there’s nothing left there to compare to.)

Yes, this process may take a little more time than perhaps you are used to when moving to a new host. However, we aren’t like all the rest either! We want to make sure your website works as expected, and that the environment you are moving to remains secure for you and everyone else. And should there be an issue with the move, you aren’t faced with trying to figure out the problem on your own!

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