Hi everyone,

 

I need some advice: I’m currently building a web site for a client.

They already have a website (just a holding page).

Their renewal is now up with their web hosting company.

The client now wants me to take over the hosting.

I have never done this before. (all my other sites I setup from scratch and have hosted with media temple)

 

I want to make sure I carry out the transfer properly.

Should I do the following?

 

Contact the current web hosting company and let them know that I'm taking over the hosting.

Transfer the domain name over to Media Temple (Can i do this if I don't have the domain registration?)

What happens to the email's that have been setup by the other company?

 

I hope someone can send me in the right direction?

 

Gar-e

Hey Gar-e,

 

Hopefully I can answer some of the questions you have.

 

1. Congrats on getting the new client. If the renewal is up on the current domain name, then it is unlikely you will be able to transfer the domain name from the old company to your preferred company. Domain name companies quickly became wise to the fact that once a domain is up for renewal, people will often look around for companies that do cheaper domains and then transfer them. So, to lock customers in, they won't let you transfer the domain name if there is less than 60 days to the expiration date. So it looks like you'll have to renew the domain name with the current company.

 

2. You have 2 choices with the hosting. You can either take over the current hosting (holding page), and develop the site on that server. Or, you can use your current hosting server (with media temple) and change what's known as the Nameservers for the domain name to point to your media temple hosting server. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, so apologies if I'm stating the obvious to you. What this means is that the domain name is now point across the internet to your media temple server. Nameservers usually look like ns.server.com and ns2.server.com (they usually come in pairs). The actual nameservers will depend on your hosting provider, those I gave are just examples. Ask media temple for the exact nameservers you'll need. To change the Nameservers for a domain, you'll need to log into the website of the company that manage the domain name, and edit the Nameserver fields in the DNS area. You may or may not be able to do this, some hosts don't want customers playing with DNS, so check with the company if in doubt.

 

3. If your client has already set up email accounts then this slightly complicates things. By changing the Nameservers to your hosting account, you will have to assume responsibility for hosting the emails too. This means you'll have to set up mail accounts on your server with (ideally) exactly the same usernames and passwords as the existing mail accounts. So when you change the Nameservers (which can take up to 24 hours to fully change, so make sure you change them at the end of a friday is ideal), then the emails should be set up and waiting to be used.

 

If you have any questions about this, or run into any difficulty, then reply here and we should be able to help.

 

You have a good portfolio of websites too, nice one.

 

Darren

Hi Darren,

 

 

Thanks for your detailed answer; you have cleared up a lot of my worries.

 

Pointing to nameservers and changing email accounts looks like the must complicated part.

I'll speak to the client & see what road they want to go down.

 

Thanks again, I'll post an update in the next few days.

 

Gar-e

not on topic but just had to say Gar-e, your urbanart.ie is possibly 1 of the most inpressive sites I've ever seen! Well effing done m8.

 

eD:

Sorry I couldn't help, no idea on php