There are number of reasons why an online business owner decides to change web hosting providers. Maybe your old web hosting provider has a very poor technical support, or excessive web server down time, or may be not even meeting your basic hosting requirements or otherwise you discover a cheaper web hosting service etc. Many a time people do tolerate less than great service from their hosting provider merely because it can be really painful to move your site, considering your domain name and your email accounts with minimum downtime for you and your site visitors.

There are number of reasons why an online business owner decides to change web hosting providers. Maybe your old web hosting provider has a very poor technical support, or excessive web server down time, or may be not even meeting your basic hosting requirements or otherwise you discover a cheaper web hosting service etc. Many a time people do tolerate less than great service from their hosting provider merely because it can be really painful to move your site, considering your domain name and your email accounts with minimum downtime for you and your site visitors.

Host changing is not an easy job, so do give it some serious thought, that it is really what you want to do. You can run into all kinds of issues. The following are some steps that you can take to help your transition go smoothly. Do not terminate your current plan until each of these steps has been fully carried out.

Step One: Firstly, you need to download all current files used in your web site including graphics, html files etc that may be used in your site. Also make sure when you are transferring your files you may want to keep the directory structure exactly as it is on your web server. Ideally, it is better to plan the transfer process at least one month before you terminate your old web hosting plan, this will give you sufficient time to perform a smooth transfer. If you try to transfer in less than one month time frame, may probably put your website in risk of inaccessible.

Step Two: What type of site do you have, basic html or with lots of specific features? You need to consider your site needs, before selecting a host that can provide what you need. These days many hosts do allow you to either handle the domain name change yourself or otherwise. Your domain name should not get switched faster than you can get your new files transferred, so you may as well want to handle the domain name change yourself. Your new web hosting account usually will be set up within 24 hours.

Step Three: Everyone pretty well knows that backup of everything is necessary on the computer. The same applies for your web files. It is a good idea to make two copies of them. One you can use as your working copy. If something goes wrong then you always have another copy to work with. Your backup should be consistent with the files from the old web server as well as that directory structure.

Step Four: The Upload: Your new hosting company most likely gave you a temporary location where you can up load and work on your website. This is really good because you can get all the prepatory work done, although you won't be able to publish as yet. This must all be done before you change your domain name. While you are doing this open up a "catchall" email. This way you don't lose your email contacts.

Step Five: Name Change: You really aren't changing the name of your website; you are only updating the information connected with it. You are changing the company who held its registration which is your old hosting server. It will be replaced with this new one that you have chosen.

Step Six: Confirmation You must receive at least one confirmation email for you name change. You will note the change somewhere between 24-48 after the change. It will take the same time for all DNS servers to note your new domain location. This is called a propagation period. Once this is all in place you can cancel the services of the prior host.