Server Migration

Tired of your old web server? Ready for more room and more RAM? The only thing in your way is actually migrating over to the new server? Well don't fret, big daddy Dain is here to help. Out of all the 10 migrations I have done not one has been smooth . Know this is normal. Something will break, from the index page having a .htm extension instead of a .html extension, to misspellings of the name servers something will be wrong. Hopefully this guide is a good checklist for you to keep track of your migration.

1. LAY THE GROUND WORK: This step is probably the most crucial. The more you pay attention to prepping your new server the less headaches you will have. Depending on your control panel, create the new site on the new server. Don't worry its not going to mess up your current (old) site on your old server. The DNS is still pointing to the old server and it will not point to the new/not prepared server. Once you have added the domain, add all the emails, setup your FTP, and upload your site to the new server
2. CONFIGURE THE NAME SERVERS: Make sure your web hosting site has provided you a new IP address. Once the IP address is assigned login to your domain hosting site and configure your name servers with the new IP address. For example: your old name server is NS1.EXAMPLE.COM which is pointing to 50.53.162.115. Change that IP address to the new IP address which would be now NS1.EXAMPLE.COM now points to 72.165.25.112. Now if you are hosting multiple sites and bringing over a site one at a time the process is a little different. You are going to have to add a new name server such as NS2.EXAMPLE.COM pointing to 72.165.25.112 so that your other sites are still up and running.
3. ADD THE NAME SERVERS TO THE DNS RECORDS: OK you have done the mess of configuring your name servers. Now you have to add those name servers to your. You are going to want to add an NS record into your DNS with the name server web address (NS1.EXAMPLE.COM or NS2.EXAMPLE.COM if you have multiple sites). 
4. WAIT FOR THE ERRORS: One of my recent migrations was complete in about ten minutes but it was loading my control panels index page instead of mine. I saw that I had two index pages. Mine had the .htm extension and the control panel's had the .html extension. Little did I know that Plesk had a order of hierarchy and looks for indexes with .html extensions before looking for .htm extensions. Once I changed my index extension the site worked! If you are working with a Linux/Unix server you better make sure all the pages are in lower case. Linux/Unix is very picky when it comes to upper/lower case. If your site is still not loading, check to make sure you correctly spelled your name server and typed in the right IP address. 

Congrats! You have just made it through a server migration! If you have any questions, comments or would like to add to this, please do not hesitate! Happy Humpday!

-Dain