Moving domain and e-mail to Knownhost CPanel VPS

C

Crunchy

Member
OK, I have a client hosting his website and e-mail at GoDaddy under the same domain. I have a CPanel VPS here at Knownhost. I am going to create an entirely new WordPress website for them using their old domain on a new account in my VPS here.

The one issue I have, since I have previously only created new websites and never had to move anything from a different host, is moving the e-mail. They want to keep the same e-mail addresses. They use Outlook to view e-mail, so they are downloading messages to their local machines as they check the server.

To accomplish this I propose the following:

1 - On Thursday, create new account using their domain in my VPS and create e-mail accounts in CPanel using their current e-mail addresses and passwords.

2 - On Friday evening after the business closes, go to GoDaddy registrar and point their domain to my nameservers here at KnownHost to begin DNS propagation.

Am I correct in assuming:

A - With an established nameserver in my VPS (I have several websites already using it), the DNS propagation should be finished by Monday morning. I am aware of the typical 24-72 hour period.

B - If I use the same e-mail addresses with the same passwords in the new e-mail accounts in my VPS, the clients shouldn't even have to reconfigure their Outlook e-mail accounts once DNS propagation is finished (the POP3 and SMTP server names should be exactly the same as they were at GoDaddy).

C - This should be somewhat seamless to the clients, except for any e-mail messages that are sent to them over the weekend (hopefully none). I guess I could have them check their e-mail on a regular basis throughout the weekend to minimize this risk.

D - Since they use Outlook to download the messages, their really would be no reason to forward any old messages forward to the new accounts.


Also, regarding the new website, once it is complete would I need to do any 301 redirects to the new site or would Google and the other search engines eventually remove any vestiges of the old site from their results?


Thank you.
 
Hello Crunchy,

A) There is no telling how long the DNS will take to propagate. In my experience a brand new domain with do so very quickly but changing one will take longer. Unfortunately there is absolutely nothing you can do about this as it is up to the user's ISP and how often they update their DNS. I would say that yes the majority should be updated in a weekend's time.

B) If, as you say, the client settings are same as they will be for on your VPS then yes it should be a seamless switchover.

C) There should either be a web interface that can be checked or they should be able to access their emails on the old server using an IP address to determine whether or not there is any email there.

D) This would be true if they were connecting relatively frequently to download mail. Seeing as how it will be the weekend though that may not be the case. See C.

Google does recommend using 301 redirects but if it's going to be a brand new site with pages that aren't easily redirected to a similar page on the new site that could be a lot of fun for you. I haven't much experience with this so perhaps someone else will step in with more information for you.
 
I found this at Google Webmaster tools, and it appears to answer my question on 301 redirects.

Now, instead of updating my nameserver as in number 2 below, I am assuming that I can go to their registrar and point the domain to the nameservers in my VPS here and have the same effect.


Thanks Dan.

Switching hosting companies or changing IP address




As long as your URL stays the same, your site's listing in Google shouldn't be affected if you switch hosting companies or change your IP address. We recommend migrating a site to a new IP address with the following steps:
  1. Bring a copy of your site up at the new IP address.
  2. Update your nameserver to point to the new IP address.
  3. Once you see search engine spiders fetch pages from the new IP address (typically within 24-48 hours), it's safe to take down the copy of your site at the old IP address.
Click to expand...
 
Dan said:
Hello Crunchy,

A) There is no telling how long the DNS will take to propagate. In my experience a brand new domain with do so very quickly but changing one will take longer. Unfortunately there is absolutely nothing you can do about this as it is up to the user's ISP and how often they update their DNS. I would say that yes the majority should be updated in a weekend's time.
Click to expand...

But there is. One just has to be prepared :)

In theory a nameserver checks its own cache first. If there is a record, it checks for a) when it was created and b) the record's TTL. If (creation_time + TTL) is less than now(), then the nameserver discards a record and does a real resolve. Otherwise it returns whatever is in the cache.

So if the move to a new IP is planned, just change zone's TTL to a real small value a week before you move. For example set it to 600 seconds. This effectively forces all
nameservers _after their cache has expired_ to keep the information about your zone for 10 minutes max, after that they are going to have to contact authoritative nameservers for your domain and fetch current data.

This is how it should work in a perfect world. And it does work in real world as well
result(s) about your zone in cache, such a result should expire. After that changes should not take more than 10 minutes to propagate.
 
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