I’ve been busy this week moving my blog and website domains to HostGator. I used to spread the domains on multiple C-class IP address but I found this hosting plan gave no benefits to my blogs so far. After calculating all the expenses I decided to change hosting to HostGator and I already moved three of my blogs. In addition to the change hosting issue I also get rid of some crap domains that don’t make me any money. I actually should have changed the hosting plan months ago but was very reluctant to do it mainly because I’m not familiar with the process.

The reason I used multiple C-class IP address was because last year I bought a product called MSN loophole. MSN was said to be the easiest search engine to manipulate and we could target high paying keywords with this method to rank on the first page of MSN, something impossible to do with Google and Yahoo!.. I had to build some money sites supported with blogs powered by a script feeding contents to the blogs automatically. The blogs provided links to the money sites and the C-class network gave different IP address to each blog and the money sites, giving MSN impression that the links were coming from different places or servers. Some people hit the first pages of MSN but not me.

Back to the change hosting story, it was quite scary to do this actually but I sacrificed one blog that had less content to see how the process worked. After the first trial I could do the second and third ones confidently.

This is the documentation I made during the process. You may have simpler methods but at least this works for me:

- I FTP all the WP blog folders from the old server to my computer, including the WP plugins, themes and uploads. These files are to be uploaded to the new hosting once we set the new name server for the domain

- I import the WP database to my computer through the wp-admin –> Tools –> Export. This can also be done via my hosting’s cpanel actually but I decided to import the database from the WordPress admin. The database contains my posts, comments, links, categories and tags

- For pages with ads like ClickBank, Amazon or Google Adsense and Google Analytics tracking code I manually copy the codes to Notepad in case I can’t find them after re-installing on the new server. This is absolutely needed for ads placed on the sidebar. Most of the themes use widgets on the sidebar and the widgets carrying the ads codes were reset to blank after installation, at least this is my experience.

- I set new name server for the domain. My domains are registered with DomainRightNow so I have to change the name server from the DomainRightNow website and set the DNS to what HostGator gave me.

- After I confirm that my domain is hosted by HostGator I go to the cpanel and click on the Fantastico icon.
This is to install WordPress on the new hosting.

- After WordPress is installed I upload all the downloaded files (from the old hosting) on my computer to the server using the FTP software. This is including plugins, themes and uploads folders. Uploads folder contains images and other attached files to the blog posts.

- Once all files successfully uploaded to the new server I reapply the theme and reactivate the plugins. This is the best time to update the plugins as well. Then I check the permalinks and privacy settings. Other setting such as Google Analytics code should be checked too.

- My ads dissapeared. If no ads appear on the sidebar the best place to check is the sidebar widgets. On my three blogs I had to copy the links from my Notepad file to the widgets. Other than that everything was OK.

- I do final test by randomly opening some posts with images to see whether they have the picture installed properly. I also check some links including the ads links.

Hope I don’t miss something here. I need to change hosting for this blog soon and I don’t want to make any mistakes.

- Rudi

Related posts:

1. Spammers Beware: My Spam Blacklist Plugin is On!