Miscellany
Hosting a website and email seperately
*A while back I had a client who had their domain setup pointing to their own server and their email working on that exchange server sitting in their office. They got me to design their website but wanted me to host that seperately without messing up their setup and zero downtime. It’s simple. Here’s how.
‘Standalone’ hosting package
Two key things: firstly you need to setup a new hosting package but not transfer or purchase a domain name. I’ve often used Clara in the past, because it’s easy to set up a simple Html based website for £29.99 a year. But Clara couldn’t do this. They don’t setup hosting without a new domain name or without a domain name transfer.
Fasthosts could. They setup a raw hosting account and configure their shared server to accept requests for your domain and point to your server space. I specified this when phoning them up, and they could only do this over the phone, bypassing the online form which forces you to either choose to buy a new domain or transfer an existing.
Getting the old domain to point
Secondly you need to get the existing domain to point to the new hosting package. All you do on the existing domain is change the “A record”. This is an IP address. This is not the nameservers. They should stay the same as the old provider handles requests, then passes on the web bit (A record) to the new IP address. Your new host should provide you with the IP address.
Your new hosting provider should also set-up their server (the IP address) to handle any requests for the old domain to point to the server space.
I’m confused. How can I upload content to the new site before it goes live?
How do you view the hosting account and put a holding page there without knowing the address? While the A records are being updated across the internet there’s no way of accessing this or is there (either ftp or http)? Your new hosting provider should allow you to FTP using an IP address. And they should also be able to give you an absolute url to the server space to check your work.
After about 24 hours the internet should be updated allowing you to see your new website at the old domain.
Further information
http://www.zoneedit.com/doc/faq.html
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