Needing to move your website from one web hosting provider to another can occur for several reasons. Maybe your current hosting provider isn't giving you the service you expect or maybe you've found a better price somewhere else for similar features and service. Maybe you are growing and your current hosting provider can't keep up with your traffic demands. For whatever reason, if you need to move your website, the following steps will give you a quick overview of the things to keep in mind.

Backup your website
If you created the website yourself or had a graphic designer or software engineer create it, make sure to get all of the website files from them. This includes images, video, CSS (short for cascading style sheets) and all HTML or other site files. If you cannot get the files from the original designer or have somehow misplaced them, then the next best thing is to connect to your current website using an FTP (short for File Transfer Protocol) client and download your entire site files. While you are at it, it is wise to keep a back up of these files just in case even after you re-deploy them to your new hosting account. Don't forget, if your site has data in a database, make sure to get a backup of your database as well.

Set up your new hosting provider account
Before taking down your old site and turning off your old hosting account, get your new hosting location configured and set up. Move all of your backed up files over there and test everything rigorously to make sure you have not missed any details. Most likely, you will need to have both hosting providers on for the same first month so that you can make sure the transfer went smoothly and also ensure that you don't have any downtime where your site is not available.

Move your domain name
Once you are sure your site is completely moved to the new location and working properly, it is time to point your domain name to your new hosting provider. Most web hosting companies will offer DNS (short for Domain Name Service) services which allow them to take your domain name and point it to the new web hosting site. If you are managing the DNS yourself with your domain registrar, you will need to make sure you change the name servers to your new hosting provider. Your hosting company will provide you with the name servers to use and instructions on how to perform this transfer.

Following up and troubleshooting
Once the transfer is complete, test everything once more to make sure the domain is pointed correctly and all of your links, images, and files are loading correctly. One thing to note, when moving between hosting providers, your old hosting provider may not be very helpful in this process (as they are the ones losing the business). That is why it is so important to get a good backup before attempting any kind of move. Your new hosting provider will most likely pick up the slack here and help you out because they want you as a long term customer.