First off, I wanna say I think it's great this host provides a forum. Something my current host dose not.

Heres my situation.

I run the site www.out-lawz.com. This site provides me( when its up ) with a clan site(for many online games), and a trade site for one of the games I'm more interested in. Both www.out-lawz.com and lld.out-lawz.com run forums, and the lld site has a store installed but this store isnt for items bought with real money( it's based on forum "coins"). I use IPB forums and didn't like the mods that offered a store type setting so I installed the angora cart that was available on the cpanel of my hosted site.

Even though I'm about fed up with my host after 2 years I'm reluctant to switch host in the fear I may loose all my forums data for 2 sites( basicly...one has nothing to do with the other). Finding a tutorial for doing this on google is proving useless, perhaps because I'm using the wrong keywords in my search. I'd looked at the tutorials for this site and seen nothing that would apply to me about switching host. I've also tried a forum search but have come up with nothing.

Can my MySql data be switched to this site?

Would I have to reinstall everything as far as the structure of my forums or can I just upload all the files and direct it to a data base I created on this site and uploaded my back up to?

Dose this site support any Cart app you install as I'd hate to have to completely redo my store.

Do peoples book marked urls for say a particular thread stay the same(say something like http://forum.hostony.com/index.php?showtopic=4757.. if you transferred that to a different host)?

What would be the correct word string for looking up tutorials for my situation?

I'm certainly not a pro webmaster but I seen a need for the sites I provide so I did. I'd like any transfer that goes on as seamless as possible for the members of both sites. I'm not even sure of the difference between Linix and windows hosting. Id like to say my current host uses unix servers but not only is my site down but the hosts as well.

I've got like 2 months left on my current contract with this host but it's time to shop around. I'd appreciate any help on some of my questions.

Thx in advance

switching won't help if no downtime is what ur after.

You will not lose anything if you backup your files, backup your mysql databases, and then upload your files to new host, recreate the database and importe all the exported data from your old mysql to the new one.

Just be sure the new host have the same services as your old host.

If you basicly look for php and mysql, all hosts will provide this.

If you have some very special needs so ask first, but basicly all hosts offer the same features, you just can found some differences on versions.

If you want be sure, buy the new host service, upload all your files, databases, etc, test it well before changing dns records for your domain, and when you are sure about all working ok on the new host, just change the dns of your domain. (and update again the databases from the current working server, so you not lose the last updates.)

The best, when you are ready to change from one server to another with all working on both, put your database driven scripts like forums "on hold" (a we are moving message, back in 24hs) if you can do that, and synchronize the databases, when all working from the new server, enable all again and continue with your flow. In this way you will be assured not new posts are donde on your old server on the 24/48hs of dns propagation.

Oh, I forget something. Is your old/current host a cPanel powered server ? If so, the transfer of the data can be very easy, ask both support teams

Hahaha. I have to feed my family too, but I do hard, honest work!

HA!

I agree, Mark.
Such messages as you saw above can cause us problems, as these are ads. I hope noone suffered as I removed them. I also have to feed my family .

Stepan:)


Mikola

Locrian, in case your site is hosted on a Cpanel-based server and it doesn't contradict to our AUP/TOS agreement (hostony.com/terms.html) it can be easily transferred to our company. Just let us know about your decision and we'll act accordingly.


Lehrer