I've been moving hosts a lot over the past two months and here are my tips on moving hosts quickly and easily.

If the server you're moving to has cPanel, simply log into WHM -> in the main menu, click on Transfers -> select the option you want -> fill in the info (usually just IP, username, and password) -> hit Setup and within a matter of minutes, your site from the old host should be transferred over to the new one.

If you don't have the Transfers option in your WHM, open a support ticket and your host will do it for you.

Now, another thing, perhaps you have two accounts on the same server and you wanna move a folder from Account A over to Account B, you can either use an SFTP program or log into SSH and run this command:

cp -R ~username/public_html/folder ~username/public_html/folder

First one is the location of the folder and the second one is the destination where you want to move that folder. Of course, you can change the destination to your choice.

Feel free to share tips and tricks on moving hosts

Sometimes it is just best to transfer the files manually through shell using wget. I had to do it once or twice because the host which my client was transfering from was giving some problem. So I made a tar.gz of all their files and made dumps for all their databases and transloaded everything to their new account on my server.

I didn't know you could do this... I thought I'd have to move each folder/group of folders manually through an FTP client... hmm... this could potentially be useful if I never change hosting.

I just got to use the transfer tool on the dedicated server when I moved to my new one. I must say, best tool ever! Saved me hours of my time. Love it!

Originally Posted by Lpspider

I didn't know you could do this... I thought I'd have to move each folder/group of folders manually through an FTP client... hmm... this could potentially be useful if I never change hosting.

Nope, I always did that before and it took forever on my DSL connection. What I like about the first thing is that it moves databases over too so I don't have to recreate them :thumbup:

Originally Posted by Thien

Nope, I always did that before and it took forever on my DSL connection. What I like about the first thing is that it moves databases over too so I don't have to recreate them :thumbup:

Really? Wow. That's pretty nice.

I'll have to remember that next time I move servers or sell/buy a site.

Cheers!

Yup, it's really helpful and saves a lot of headaches. Anyone else got tips they'd like to share?

Another tip... There are a couple of different ways to create full backups in the cpanel/whm system. Another whm server can recreate an account from these backups, using the restore feature, but with one caveat: different backup methods output tarballs with different filename formats (e.g. <username>.tar.gz, backup-<date>_<time>_<username>.tar.gz). The restore feature will expect certain things of these tarballs depending on the type of filename it sees. So don't rename the files a backup puts out!
Bagel.

Thanks for that tip, it will probably help me if I have to move all the files on my websites to another host.

Nice tips .. thanks for sharing ...
It will help me alot ..

Remember to adjust your dns refresh times a few days before you do this to avoid dns delays.

Hmm, there is an easier way to transfer your site if you have root on both servers that you're moving from.. NCFTP

SCP is nice sometimes for moving files between servers.
scp -rp user@host:/path .
To copy files from a remote location. SSH needs to be enabled on the accounts.

Its like wget - but can be used for directory trees - and it keeps permissions.

Avoid using the WHM to WHM account transfers, if the server you are on has a small tmp drive the remote system could lockup and then you need to wait for the machine to be rebooted or for the process to be killed and tmp and swap to be cleared.

I like either transferring from the old server using WHM or doing a Cpanel backup and restoring the site on the new server.

For content sites or sites with a database that changes constantly (like a forum or blog) you can setup the database on the new server and point the old site to the new db (change would take just a minute to copy the db and upload the new config file) that way you have both sites accessing the same DB while the DNS transfers.

Also set a new MX record in WHM for the new server's IP so your mail gets automatically forwarded during the transfer as well.

Then you just run a backup/restore (without restoring databases) which will copy the mail, home directory and html files, etc.

All youd have to do then is just switch DNS and you'd be set.