Analysis of the modern sales market clearly indicates the trend of transition of companies' activities to the online environment. For example, according to some studies, in the post-Soviet space today, more than half of purchases are made via the Internet, in the Western world this figure is even higher and amounts to 80% -90% of the entire market. Taking into account the current trends, a large number of companies already have their own online store, while others are seriously thinking about creating such a platform and are choosing an engine for an online store .

Of course, the beginning of a successful project lies in a good idea - an offer that will find its consumer and will be interesting for the target audience. In addition, for the site of the online store, it is necessary to use a high-quality platform that will allow the full potential of the project to be realized - in this matter, Okay-CSM has recommended itself to be viewed from the best side and makes it possible to use a free script . At the same time, business owners sometimes face situations when it is necessary to transfer an online store to a new hosting - this is what we will focus on in this article. We'll consider:

1. Why it may be necessary to transfer a site from one hosting to another .
2. Instructions for transferring a site to a new hosting.
3. The peculiarity of working with the Okay-CSM system.
4. Why it may be necessary and how to transfer a site to another domain.

Instructions for transferring an online store site to a new hosting

It is worth recognizing that quite often at the stage of creating a new online store, it can be difficult for a site owner to decide which hosting will fully satisfy his needs. This fact is due to two fundamental criteria:

• It is not always possible to accurately determine the reliability of a hosting provider. In addition, a once responsible company may "deteriorate" and the quality of its services will sharply decline.
• At the stage of creating an online store, it can be difficult to objectively assess customer traffic to a future site, which will lead to an increase in the load.

The owner of an Internet resource may notice that the speed of the site has noticeably decreased, he cannot cope with the flow of active users, the indexing of individual new pages has worsened, etc. These and other signals may indicate that the hosting provider is no longer coping with its purpose and needs to be changed.

Sometimes there are situations in which site owners understand that it is time to change hosting to a better one, but they are clearly delaying it. The reasons for such indecision may be uncertainty that it will be possible to find a worthy alternative to the provider with which a person or company is working at a given time, as well as uncertainty in their knowledge and strengths that they will be enough to complete the procedure for transferring a site to a new hosting ...

Of course, it is worth noting that the procedure for moving to another hosting is not the easiest one, it requires systematic efforts and a careful approach. But, at the same time, the site owner does not need to come up with something new, but systematically follow certain sequential actions, and then moving the site to a new hosting will go as smoothly and quickly as possible. The main stages of changing hosting for a site include the following:

• Database transfer.
• Transferring site files.
• Domain transfer.

What you need to consider for the correct transfer of the database to the new hosting

To transfer a site to another hosting, you need to follow a series of sequential steps. At first it may seem that certain actions are somewhat complicated and confusing, but this is only at first glance. If you follow the step-by-step instructions, you will be able to transfer the database to the new hosting without any difficulties.

1. At the very beginning, you need to go to phpMyAdmin on the old hosting and from there copy the database to your computer. In this case, you need to pay attention to the encoding - on the screen it is UTF 8_general_ci.

   

2. At the next stage, you need to go to the export tab, in which the features and rules for database transfer are configured. Since in the given example we are transferring the MySql database, it is necessary to tick the SQL item. Next, you need to select the item "select all", in the SQL compatibility mode from the proposed options, select ANSi, then check the boxes "Save as file" and pack in "gzip".

   

3. After the database is saved on the computer, it must be inserted into the new hosting. To do this, first go to the new hosting in phpMyAdmin and go to the structure section. In some cases, this section may already contain certain tables - if so, they must be deleted. If you do not delete all tables existing in the section before loading the database, they may conflict with the loaded database, which will affect the correct display of the site. Next, go to the import tab, paste the previously copied database. In this case, you need to make sure that the selected encoding value matches the one that was specified when copying the database. Do not forget to check the "Allow the script to split the import process ..." option, select the format of the imported SQL file and the ANSI compatibility mode.

If in the process of performing any of the listed steps any difficulties arise, this is not a problem, since the action can be repeated. The number of attempts when working with loading databases is not limited, the main thing is that when deleting empty tables, do not delete your database.

Rules for transferring files to a new hosting

If you have successfully transferred the database, the first stage of transferring the site to the new hosting has already been completed. Next, you can proceed to the file transfer process. The easiest way to complete this procedure is to use Total Commander and create a new connection to the hosting. To make such a connection, go to the "Connect to FTP server" menu and select "Add new" - as a result, the following window will appear.

You can choose an arbitrary "Connection name", "Server (port)", you must specify the one that you received when registering on the hosting. In the fields "Account" and "Password" you must specify your registration data when entering the hosting. Then click Ok.

The next step is to connect to your server. To do this, select the name of your connection specified in the previous step and click "Connect". If everything is configured correctly, Total Commander will display something like the following:

Go to the domains folder and find the folder with your domain name. Next, go to the root folder of the site - public html, into which you copy all the files from the same folder saved from the old hosting. In this case, do not forget in the config.php file to register the "Username" and "Password" that you generated when creating a new database.

Domain transfer to new hosting

As a rule, there are no difficulties with transferring a domain to hosting. In this matter, you must follow a few simple rules:

1. Don't do work on Friday. Since the hosting support service does not work on the weekend, it will be difficult to solve the difficulties that have arisen.
2. During the transfer process, do not perform any actions on the site.
3. Change the DNS server, which is responsible for ensuring that the ip of your site is displayed correctly and users can go to it. To change the DNS server, you need to log in to your server panel, go to the "Domains" - "Management" - "My Domains" tab, find and click on the domain you need. Further, in the drop-down menu, select the "Manage DNS servers / Delegation" item and the required DNS servers - it is important that the "Use registrar's DNS servers" checkbox is unchecked. At the end, be sure to save your changes by clicking on the "Change" button. It is worth remembering that changes to DNS servers can take effect within a few hours and up to 72 hours.
4. Go to your hosting account in the "Control Panel" and find the menu "Add Domain" or "Add Site" there. After registering your data in it, the domain will be transferred to the new hosting.
5. Test the site for performance.

Transferring an online store to Okay-CMS to a new hosting

While developing Okay-CMS, we tried to make working with it as convenient and comfortable as possible for users. This was reflected in the process of transferring the site to a new hosting. To transfer the site as correctly as possible, we recommend that you consider the following:

• Create a NEW folder on the hosting one level above the root of the existing site and download and unpack the archive of the new site into it.

Transfer the database as described above.

Enter the correct path to the database in the config / config.php file

• Rename the www folder to old to the new folder to www - immediately after that the site will be displayed.
• Clean up the / compiled and backend / compiled folders.
• Enter the correct path of the cml / .htaccess / file for the integration with 1C to work correctly
• Correctly write links to Sitemap in the robots.txt file.
• Check the functionality of all the functions of your online store.

Moving a site to a new domain

There are situations in which the resource owner decides to move the site to a new domain. To avoid any difficulties with such a “move”, it is necessary to follow the correct work algorithm. Basically, the whole process consists of two main stages:

1. Transfer of files and databases.
2. Correct setting of 301 redirects.>

Next, we'll take a closer look at each of these processes. Now let's focus on the question: why might it be advisable to move the site to another domain ? The reasons that prompt us to address the issue of transferring a resource to another domain can be different, the most common of them are the following:

• The domain falls under the AGS filter.
• The indexing of the resource has significantly decreased and some important pages are not indexed for a long time.
• There is a commercial need to change the name of the site and its domain name.

If you are faced with one of the listed or other significant factors, you should start moving your site to a new domain. As mentioned above, there are two important steps in this matter: transferring files and databases, and setting up a 301 redirect.

How to transfer files and databases to a new domain

For the site to work on a new domain, you must first copy all existing files and databases. When performing this process, it is necessary to take into account whether the hosting provider will change or the site will remain on the same hosting on which it is located now.

In the case when the site remains inside the same hosting, the process of moving is greatly simplified. Hosting settings, as a rule, are made in such a way that the files and the database do not need to be transferred at all. This is because the files and the database are not linked to a specific site, but they are linked to an account. This means that the database will not have to be overwritten and will work fine with the new domain.

If you change the hosting provider, the files and the database must first be downloaded and then written to the new resource. This task is facilitated by the phpMyAdmin utility specially designed for this, which is available in every hosting.

Going to the above utility, you need to find the "Export" function, thanks to which the files and database will be downloaded to your computer. Having the files and the site database on your own computer, you can upload them to the new hosting through the appropriate menu. After moving all the files, register and wait for the DNS update - after that the site will work.

Set up a 301 redirect

Naturally, it will take time for all your potential visitors to know that the online store site is located at a new address. For a while, people will search for the old site domain. So that in spite of this, they go to the right address, and the 301st redirect is configured.

The 301st redirect is written in the htaccess file, which is loaded into the directory of the previous version of your site. In this file, you need to write the following code:

The option with a 301 redirect is considered optimal for both users and search engines. Thanks to its use, none of the potential visitors to your online store will be lost due to domain changes. In addition, numerous experiments confirm that thanks to such a solution, when changing the domain, it is possible to maintain the site's position in the search results, which is also extremely important.