Changing Hosts Too Close to the Holiday Rush

Moving before the rush

An online shop's owner has had enough of the host. Pages crawled through last December's busiest evenings, and a support ticket about it took two days to answer.

A new host is chosen, and the plan is to move in mid-November, so everything is settled before the holiday orders arrive.

The instinct is sound, but the timing is not. A move is several changes at once, and each needs time to test and time to settle that the next six weeks cannot spare.

What a move actually changes

Copying the files and the database is the easy part. The shop then has to be found at its new address, by every visitor's browser and by every mail server.

That happens through the domain's records, which are cached around the internet for hours or longer after a change. For a while, some visitors reach the old server and some the new one.

Orders placed on the old server during that window have to be caught and carried across. So do emails that arrive at the old mailboxes.

Where moves go wrong

Trouble after a move tends to come from things that were set up once, years ago, and then forgotten:

• Email, which can bounce or land in the old mailboxes for a day or two.
• The security certificate for checkout, which has to be installed again.
• The payment connection, which may check the server's address or call back to it.
• Order emails and scheduled tasks that only ran on the old server.
• Software versions that differ between servers and break older code.
• Speed under load, unknown until real customers arrive together.

Each is manageable with time and a checklist. In December, time is the one thing the shop lacks.

Testing before, settling after

A careful move starts with the shop running on the new server at a temporary address. Test orders go through with real cards and are refunded, and every email the shop sends is checked.

Only then does the domain switch. The old server keeps running for a week or more, so late visitors and stray emails are not lost, and anything missed can be compared.

Some problems appear only with real traffic: a slow page with twenty shoppers at once, or a confirmation email that one mail provider rejects. A quiet period gives them room to surface.

Email needs its own plan

Email is where a rushed move hurts most quietly. Order confirmations, customer questions and supplier invoices all depend on mail reaching the right server.

Decide early whether the mailboxes move with the site or stay where they are, and copy existing mail across before the switch, so nobody loses a year of messages.

Then check that the shop's own messages, from order confirmations to password resets, still reach customers' inboxes rather than their junk folders.

Why the slow months suit a move

For a shop with a holiday peak, January and February are the quiet stretch. A problem then affects a handful of orders, and there is time to fix it properly.

The same problem in the second week of December lands on the busiest days of the year, while the owner is packing orders and has no time to investigate.

The principle holds for any business: plan hosting changes for the months after your peak, never the weeks before it.

What can safely improve before December

Much of last December's slowness may be fixable where the shop is. Oversized product photographs, unused add-ons and pages loading scripts nobody needs slow a site on any host.

Ask the current host what the account's limits are and whether the shop has been hitting them. A larger plan with the same host, made early in November, changes far less than a move.

Test the checkout from start to finish, including the confirmation email. Check the certificate's expiry date and the domain's renewal date, so neither lapses in the middle of the season.

A worked example

A cake decorating school in Courtenay teaches evening and weekend classes, and sells tools, fondant, cutters and class gift certificates through an online shop. Its online orders peak in December.

Last year the shop slowed on December evenings, and the owner planned to move hosts in mid-November.

Listing what the move would touch changed the plan. The school's email, the class booking calendar, the checkout certificate and the payment settings all lived on the same account.

The move is now booked for the second week of January. Before December, the product photographs were resized, two unused add-ons removed, and the gift certificate checkout tested end to end.

The owner also keeps a log of slow evenings and support replies this season. In January, that log will show prospective hosts exactly what the shop needs.

The email, calendar and checkout will each change in a quiet week with time to test them, while December's orders run on a setup already known to work.

Planning the January move now

The quiet weeks are for moving; the planning can start today. List everything the hosting account does: mailboxes, forwarding addresses, domain records, scheduled tasks and certificates.

Note who holds each login, from the registrar to the payment company. A move stalls quickly when a password belongs to someone who left two years ago.

Choose the new host on what the season's log shows the shop needs, such as support that answers in the evening and room for the December peak.

The counter-case

Sometimes waiting is the greater risk. A host that keeps going down, an account that has been compromised, or a host closing its doors leaves no choice about the timing.

A shop whose peak falls in spring, such as a garden supplier, may find November a quiet month and a sensible time to move.

Either way, the move needs the full routine: testing at a temporary address, a planned switch, the old server kept running, and someone experienced watching it through.

Between now and January

1. Write down what went wrong last December.
2. Ask the current host about the account's limits.
3. Fix what is slow on the site itself.
4. Test the checkout and its emails from start to finish.
5. Check the renewal dates for the domain and certificate.
6. List everything the hosting account does.
7. Book the move for the weeks after the season.

Step six makes the January move possible. A move planned from a full list is a series of checked steps; one planned from memory finds the forgotten mailbox on the first morning.

Making sure someone other than the owner can deal with the host, before a busy week goes wrong, is the aim of the host will only talk to the account holder.

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West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.