domain propagation - helpful hints?

I'm likely going to transfer my hosting service in the near future. I've never done this before, and I'm looking to minimize heartache and downtime.

Any suggestions? Any useful resources?

Thanks, Subbu.

I usually find it not to bad, but a few pointers I have picked up are:-

1. If you have mail boxes for your domain during the propagation time have them forwarded to a mailbox that is not part of your domain, like a Yahoo email account. This way you won't loose emails.
2. If you have any forums etc. that take and display user submission, turn the forum etc. off on the old server during the propagation time, so you don't loose posts.

this is a temp address used on the providers DSN records

ussually/ as im my server .. i have username.temp.emagineservers.co.uk

its something on those lines. not all hosts provide them but must do i belive

Hi!
I changed my forum host provider 2 or 3 times on the last 6 months. What I did was:

1) Prepared the data transfer from the old to the new host (I'm using MS-SQL db)

2) Once the DTS package was ok, I closed the forum.

3) I transfered all the data

4) Using the instant access address, I tested the forum

5) Once everything was ok, I changed the DNS records and set the  default page (default.asp in my case) in the old address to redirect to the new "instant access address".

Update: Actually I edited the "forum_closed.asp" to redirect the traffic to the new forum and kept the old forum closed. ;-)

This way, every time someone hit the old server, they got redirected to the new provisory address. Once the DNS records propagated, they went straight forward to the new server. ;-)

The downtime was about 2 hours just while I transfered the data and tested the site. And I did everything very slowly. :-)


Edited by Emiliano - 14 February 2005 at 7:37pm