Server move confusion!

Hello Fellow VB.orgers!

Im very confused at the moment in trying to work out the best way to move my forums from one hosting company to our new hosts.

We have been with Hosting Unlimited for some time now, but over the past year the performance of their servers has decreased to the point where we are getting downtime for several hours on random occasions, various weird errors, etc... customer support does respond, but they never seem to be willing to tell us just what the problem was, or indeed whether they can guard against it in the future. Recently they moved us to a new server, but messed up and after a few weeks our forums seemed to roll back in time and loose a mass of that weeks posts and thread and modifications... they didnt seem interested in this even though they achnowleged it was their mistake - they said we should have had a backup. end of story! ... hmm..

So ... we mave just got hosting with asmallorange...

what I need to know is :

Obviously we need as much site up-time as possible, so are trying to organise it so the site is not down for too long.

From what I understand we have the domain name to transfer, the forum databse, and the actual site file content.

when should I transfer the domain name? before the move? during? after?

There seems a lot of info on backing up the database ... but just backing up and restoring the database isnt going to restore the entire site to the new location right ?

do I backup the database with HU (who dont offer telnet apparently), restore the database to the new hosting ?, or can I only restore the database after Ive transfered all the file content from HU to ASO ?

which brings me to a new point...

It might be nice to have a fresh start with this move, instead of just transfering all the crud from HU and dumping it back to ASO, might be nice to setup VB as new on ASO, restoring the original DB to that (before or after I dont know?) Do I restore the db to ASO, then install VB fresh pointing it to that restored DB in the config.php I assume?

then that brings me to licensing of vb... i know I cant run 2 copies of vb at the same time for licensing reasons... I would like to compare the old site to the new site as Im setting the new one up, to copy mods and settings,etc.. but how do I do that ? am I allowed to run the 2 but not at the same time - so turn off one while I work on the other and visa-versa?

sorry but the woffle - I wanna get this done clean and correct and quick the first time.

thanks in advance.

[Ntfu2]

You have many questions Let me try to shed some light.

First does HU offer SSH access? If so backing up and moving will be a simple task. If not it can still be simple, but a little more complicated time consuming.

First get your database backup performed. You can do a full export if its small enough from PhpMyAdmin, download it to your computer.

Next access your ASO account via the IP address, create your database, and restore that database you just exported.

Next move download all your files from your old account. And simply reupload to the new account.

Then change your nameserver information to point to the ASO set.

Its pretty simple, it just sounds complicated.

And if you put password protection on one copy of the vBulletin so its not accessible to the public, then you can run the two at the same time.

[SCRIPT3R]

if HU has CPanel, ASO will do the transfer for you.

[majorj0nny]

Originally Posted by GearTripper

if HU has CPanel, ASO will do the transfer for you.

cool! ... in what way ?

[SCRIPT3R]

just open a support ticket letting them know you want to transfer your vB forum and they'll ask you for your access information to take care of the necessary transfer. there's also some topics in the ASO forums about such things.

[molieman]

I'm doing the same as above, and have everything moved including the database's. I'm still running vBulletin at the original site, and testing at the second site (different domain for now).

I'm also integrating with PhotoPost Gallery and Classifieds.

I can see all posts without signing in. I try to sign in, the welcome screen identifies me. After the welcome screen, I'm not signed in.

All paths are the same as the original site.

Are there settings in the config file I may of missed or is it something else?

Matt Olieman
www.ifsbi.org/forums original site
www.mycockpit.org/forums new site