The guide explains the main steps for transferring a website to Hosting Solutions. As an example of a frequent case, the guide describes the transfer of a website to the best-selling Silver Linux hosting plan, but can be extended to any of the hosting plans in out list.

The procedure consists of 5 steps:

• Purchase of the Silver Linux plan and transfer of the domain.
• Transfer of the files to the Silver Linux plan.
• Export of the MySQL database.
• Creation of a MySQL database in Silver Linux and import of the old database.
• Test of the website and change of DNS.

Purchase the Silver Linux plan and transfer the domain

From the page dedicated to the Silver Linux service, enter the domain name of the website to be transferred (figure below). Do not forget the domain extension.

After selecting the Existing domain option, click on the Order button, which will take you to our Control Panel. Here enter the details of the domain holder ("Customer Details") and choose whether to start the domain transfer procedure immediately or not.
You can also choose whether to use our DNS servers or the old ones (‘Use my DNS’).

We recommend selecting Use my DNS (by entering the data provided by the old provider) so that users are directed to the old hosting plan until the transfer is completed and a test is carried out on the new plan.

Once the order for the new hosting plan has been completed and payment has been made, please wait for the activation confirmation email containing all the information necessary to proceed to the next step.

Transfer the files to Silver Linux plan

An activation confirmation email containing all the details of the new account and hosting plan will be sent to the email address entered during registration and order of the service (see image below).

For file transfer operations between the old and new hosting, it will be necessary to use a program with an FTP client such as, for example, the free FTP client FileZilla (here is the link to download the version suitable for your operating system).

Next, download the website files from the old hosting plan to your PC and, using the same FTP client, proceed to upload these files to the server of the new hosting plan, as shown in the next image using FileZilla.

Complete the empty boxes as follows, using the data indicated in the confirmation email under ‘FTP ACCESS’:

• Host: enter the data given in the email under "IP address"
• Username: enter the data given under "Username (login)"
• Password: enter the data given under "Password"
• Port: enter 21

Finally, click on Quickconnect and wait for a connection to the server to be established. You can now proceed to upload the files previously downloaded from the old hosting: browse your computer from the Local Site section and drag the files onto the Remote Site to start the procedure. It is important to note that the location of the files - and their folders - remains identical from the old to the new server.

MySQL database export

To transfer the MySQL database from the old hosting plan to our Silver Linux plan, you will first need to export it by creating a file with the extension .SQL ("Export" function of phpMyAdmin). To do this, go to the control panel of your old hosting plan, locate the section for managing/creating databases and click on phpMyAdmin. Once in phpMyAdmin (see image below), open the tab on the right "Export" and, without changing any settings, confirm the export by creating the .SQL file.

Create a MySQL database in Silver Linux and import the old database

Go to the Hosting Solutions customer area by connecting to the pdc.hostingsolutions.it/MasterCP/MasterLogin.pl and log in to the control panel by entering the credentials received with the service activation email (user and password) in the appropriate form (see figure below).

On the main screen, select the Hosting & Dedicated services tab and click on the Open button next to the Silver Linux service purchased. This will take you to the resource management tab:

In the second-to-last line of the section, click on the MySQL button. Now the only thing left to do is to start creating the new database in Silver Linux: select the MySQL database version, if necessary, and click on the Continue button.

On the next tab, enter the name of the database (it is recommended to use the same name as the old database), the database user and password and then click on Apply (see figure).

The database has now been created, so it is ready to import the data stored in the .SQL file. Click on the phpMyAdmin icon shown next to the new database and log in. On the main screen of phpMyAdmin, open the Import tab in the top right-hand corner and click on Choose File to provide the SQL file containing the database export. Finally, confirm the import operation by clicking on Go.

After importing the database, it is necessary to manually edit all the configuration files relating to the scripts or other applications that use the database (e.g. WordPress will require editing the wp-config.php file) by entering the data of the new database: name of the new database (which is probably the same as the old one), IP address of the new database, user name and password of the new database (these data are the same as those used in the previous steps of the guide).

Test the website and change the DNS

It is now recommended to do a thorough test of the website to ensure that everything is working properly, before making the relocation permanent and final.

The test procedure is very simple and involves modifying the hosts file found:

• in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc​ on Windows​ systems;
• in ​/etc/ ​on Unix/Linux​ systems;
• in ​private/etc/ ​on macOS​;

ATTENTION: the host file is a file without an extension, make a backup copy for safety before editing it and avoid adding extensions when saving changes.

Then open the hosts file with a text editor (e.g. "Notepad" on Windows systems, gedit on Linux systems). At the bottom of the file, insert a new line in which you enter the IP address of the new website (in the image XX.XX.XX.XXX) and the name of your domain (in the example www.newsite.it) separated by a space, as shown in the figure below.

Then save the file and access the website from a browser (of the PC on which the hosts file change was made) to start the test session. Once the test is successful and the website has been verified to be working properly, simply direct all visitors to the new hosting by replacing the old DNS with those of Hosting Solutions.

To change the DNS, you need to go to the Hosting Solutions customer area and log into the control panel. From the Hosting & Dedicated services section, click on the Open button next to the Silver Linux service you have purchased, select DNS Management and then the DNS Server tab, filling in the boxes (DNS1, DNS2, etc) as shown in the image below or click on the 'Reset DNS' button to set up our DNS automatically:

Lastly, click on the Apply button: the change made will have no immediate effects but will depend on the updating times of the DNS servers, generally a few hours.

Once the test is complete, restore the hosts file to its original condition by deleting the inserted line and saving this last change, or recovering the backup.