Free Web Hosting Migrations

Posted on October 23rd, 2015

InterServer Free Web Hosting Migrations

InterServer offers Free migrations for cPanel to cPanel servers.

Shared Hosting Migration

Please note
* Migrations may take 24 hours to begin. Migrations are done by a dedicated team that does not work 24/7. Rushed migrations are not possible.
* Please ensure that there is ample time for a migration. It is recommended that the previous / source hosting account have at least 7 days left once a migration begins.
* If the source server can not generate a backup, or download due to resource, space or slowness a backup may not be possible.
* Compromised sites are cleaned on a best effort basis.
* Sites coming from end of life MySQL/Mariadb may not be compatible with modern database systems and may fail migration.
* Sites that run an end of life PHP version ( please see https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php ) may fail migration.
* Sites encoded in ioncube or similar software may not be possible to debug for errors and should be planned for accordingly.

While InterServer makes a best effort to migrate systems will be running a modern and supported PHP version and MySQL databases. Sites that do not support these modern versions are more difficult to migrate and may suffer from code rot and security issues and be unsupported by the original author.

Basic info) For a standard shared hosting migration please have a full cPanel backup ready for download. You do not need to upload it to your new InterServer shared hosting account, however doing so will save some time. The current InterServer account should have no data in it, as the backup will overwrite any data. The username on the account may change during the restore, in order to match the username in the backup.

Your responsibilities) After a restore please log into the account to check the data, for example email accounts in cPanel and files in public_html. The MySQL database count and email accounts should match, and the space usage be very close between the two accounts. Before cancelling your old account, the dns should be changed and the account confirmed to be working.

Possible problems) Due to PHP differences you may need to change the PHP version in cPanel->select PHP version. Old php.ini / .htaccess files may need to be modified as well. If there is not sufficient disk space free, a backup in cPanel may not be possible.

Other) If a full cPanel backup is not possible, due to the previous host disabling the backup, or old server being too slow to make a backup, a normal migration is not possible. In these cases InterServer can copy the files via FTP from the old host to the new host. However this does not include MySQL and cPanel settings like sub-domains which must be manually restored. For MySQL your responsibilities would include taking a database dump and uploading the data to your InterServer account for a InterServer tech to restore.

Reseller Hosting Migration

Basic info) A reseller migration is done with out the root password. This means a standard copy using WHM is not possible for all accounts. Each account must be backed up to a full cpanel backup in a place for InterServer techs to download and restore on your new vps/reseller account or server.

Your responsibilities) After a restore is completed verify that the list account section has all accounts and that disk space is similar on both ends. You should also check some accounts for email and mysql to ensure they are fully copied.

Possible problems) Due to PHP differences you may need to change the PHP version in WHM->Apache builder/easy Apache. Old php.ini / .htaccess files may need to be modified as well. If there is not sufficient disk space free, a backup in cPanel may not be possible.

Other) If you are not able to get all accounts backed up for any issues, InterServer may be able to get the backups automatically if the following options are met:

– root/reseller override is available

– all accounts use x3 theme

InterServer however can not guarantee that this is possible, or not blocked by the previous host. In cases where backups are not possible to get, a transfer by InterServer can not be done. Any restore would be your responsibility.

Non cPanel systems
– For systems transferring from another control panel to cPanel, a free migration by cPanel is offered  at http://cpanel.net/cpanel-whm/migrate-cpanel/ with your cPanel license.

– For non cPanel systems with out a control panel, InterServer can copy the files in ftp over to a new account. Mail, MySQL and any other data not with in FTP is not included.

Will there be any down time during the migration?

There is absolutly no down time during the migration. Even after the DNS servers are switched. Website traffic will either reach your old hosting company or new hosting company during the first 24 hours. We recommend not doing any website updates or maintenance during the migration period to ensure that the data is in sync.

 

Steps involved in migration

Let’s see how the migration is taking place and what are the steps involved in the typical cPanel to cPanel migration process.

 

Taking full website backup

This is the first step we usually take. A full website backup is needed to migrate a cPanel website. In this case, migration just means moving a backup file to another server and restoring it on that server. Let’s see how to take a backup using cPanel.

1) Go to Files >> Backup in the cPanel

migration

 

2) Click on ‘Download a full website backup’ button  as shown in the figure.

Now you’ll be navigated to a new window.

3) Click on ‘Generate Backup’ as shown in figure.

migration

 

Now your backup will be generated. It will take some time to finish the backing up of your website. You can choose to send an email notification to an email address from this page, if you wish to do so.

When you get the email notification, you can verify the backup file from the cPanel interface also. Now we can proceed to the restore process.

4) Now set the permission of the backup file to ‘644’ from cPanel interface.

5) Now SSH to the server which you want your website to be transferred to.

6) Run the following command to download the backup file.

# wget old.ip.addres.s/~username/public_html/backup_file_name

This will download the backup file to the new server.

7) Now you can restore the account in the new server by running the following script.

# /script/restorepkg path_to_backup_file

8) The account is now transferred successfully. Now you need to update the DNS records with the IP address of the new server. You need to do this at registrar end and in the zone files also.

 

If you need any further assistance please contact our support department.

 

 

23 Responses to “Free Web Hosting Migrations”

  1. Ray Sabb says:

    I have Hostgator and am not happy with them.
    I host a bunch of small web sites mostly do nothing sites or domains I and my son own.
    The one big site is mainattraction.net. It forwards to cms.mainattraction.net/2009 .

    I want to migrate the whole server over to you folks. It is less than 15GB. Where do we go from here.
    They are CPANEL sites and WordPress is used on Mainattraction plus others.

    Ray

    • Ray,

      First order a web hosting package for that domain name. Then contact our support department with the login details to the old hosting company so we can start the migration.

  2. Artur Freitas says:

    Hi!
    I already have an Interserver VPS…. But we are planning to migrate for a dedicated server…. Is there a way to restore my full VPS backup in this new dedicated box? Re-install everything again isn´t in our plans….

  3. Jenrose Arellano says:

    I want to migrate my whole website to my new domain name which I bought from you.
    Please help. thank you.

  4. RoberT says:

    If I have say 3 hosting accounts are there a limit on website migrations, is only one or how many?

  5. hbnews24 says:

    thank you.

  6. Erwin says:

    I am well satisfied with interserver specially the tech support people – (guys you are absolutely superb!). They’re really fast and helpful in helping me and thats the reason why I am migrating all my websites to Interserver. I am all thumbs up!

  7. jack says:

    Hi, if I ask for a migration, do you keep the data in the original hosting, or you delete it?

  8. Juan says:

    Why do you want to charge me $ 30 each domain if the migration costs $ 6 for each domain according to what I have seen in this link? It doesn’t sound fair. https://www.interserver.net/free-website-migration.html

  9. Maryam Umar says:

    Hi, i recently bought a domain(icreatemagic.online) and a hosting account(icreatemagic.io) separately. How do i synchronize the domain to the hosting account?

    • NAGENDRA says:

      Hello,

      I apologize for the delay in responding to your query. I can see icreatemagic.online is linked to the hosting account.

      If you are experiencing any issue please feel free to contact us back.

      Regards,

  10. Edgar Armenta says:

    I trying to migrate from Bluehost, but they are making it hard.

    I am most interested in a seamless email transition, can we do it? they remove the cpanel full backup

  11. Miguel Mateos Romo says:

    in your free Migration, it says cPannel to cPannel only does that mean since I run my current server with DirectAdmin and would be ordering a server with DirectAdmin from you guys then you would not migrate my current server over to the new server hosted by you guys

  12. Zain says:

    So I have a website hosted on inter-server but my friend wants to host his domain on my hosting plan. He is also using inter-server hosting, Is it possible to migrate his 2 websites without losing any website data.
    Because in the above guide it’s mentioned that the data will be lost( of the server where we are migration.)

    • You can add friend’s domain as add on and migrate the files without any data loss (manual migration). cPanel to cPanel (full backup) restoration will overwrite existing data.

  13. Sarah says:

    I have 2 websites with email. How do I migrate all of these over?

Leave a Reply