I have a website hosted at Dream Host, and the domain is registered through Go Daddy. Both work fine, no major complaints. Later this year I'll need to renew both. Does it make sense to transfer the domain registration to Dream Host? And if so, what happens when visitors go to my site during the domain transfer process? Blank screen?
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use same company for hosting AND domain registration?
- Thread starter DaveTheRave
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It'll be down for probably about 24 hours if you were to transfer it, they'd most likely get either a generic GoDaddy or Dreamhost screen while it's in progress. Honestly there's not any real reason to do so though, you won't gain anything in particular from doing it that I can think of.
Nooo, don't do that! As fig mentioned you will be offline for a while, maybe more then 24 hours (usually for propagation it can take 3-4 days), and in that time you can lose a lot of traffic and maybe a search engine position if you reach a good ranking(s)..
Anyway, there's no reason to change anything if it is working fine, if it's otherwise then you should change something... So my suggestion will be: renew both!
Regards
There may be a financial incentive to do so, e.g. I believe Dreamhost offers free domain registration/renewal if the hosting is also with them.
One possible advantage of having separate companies is if your hosting company disappears overnight, or freezes your account, you could quickly get up and running again somewhere else just by repointing your domain name. That happened to me once, my site was inexpicably shut down and I never got a reason why (or a refund), so I ditched the web host and went elsewhere.
One possible advantage of having separate companies is if your hosting company disappears overnight, or freezes your account, you could quickly get up and running again somewhere else just by repointing your domain name. That happened to me once, my site was inexpicably shut down and I never got a reason why (or a refund), so I ditched the web host and went elsewhere.
You won't have any appreciable downtime if you do it right.
On your first host, do a backup of the database, restore the database on your new host, and then point your old host's web server at the new host's database. You'll likely need to apply incremental changes that occurred between the backup and the time you switched over.
From there, bring the new web host online and change the DNS. Your users will begin moving from the old host to the new one as DNS propagates, but it'll be transparent to them and they'll be using the same backing database. Once the old host no longer receives traffic, go ahead and shut it down.
Or, throw up a maintenance page on the old one for 15 minutes, migrate the data, change the DNS, bring the new host up, and then users will hit the new one when the DNS changes propagate to them. This is way easier if there's not money involved.
(Source: I work for a really big company that does a lot of internet stuff.)
On your first host, do a backup of the database, restore the database on your new host, and then point your old host's web server at the new host's database. You'll likely need to apply incremental changes that occurred between the backup and the time you switched over.
From there, bring the new web host online and change the DNS. Your users will begin moving from the old host to the new one as DNS propagates, but it'll be transparent to them and they'll be using the same backing database. Once the old host no longer receives traffic, go ahead and shut it down.
Or, throw up a maintenance page on the old one for 15 minutes, migrate the data, change the DNS, bring the new host up, and then users will hit the new one when the DNS changes propagate to them. This is way easier if there's not money involved.
(Source: I work for a really big company that does a lot of internet stuff.)
Uhm, no, it won't. If you transfer the domain registration to another registrar, the time for it to propagate might take 24-48 hours, but all the DNS servers will still have the old registrar's information cached. You won't lose traffic.
I've been transferring all of my domains from godaddy to namecheap this past year when the renewals are nearing. Absolutely no downtime.
Note that if you want to do a name transfer, you can do it long before it actually expires and the transfer will include whatever time you pay for added on to the expiration date.
So if you transfer a domain name with 6 months left, and the transfer is for 2 years, you'll have 2 years + the 6 months.
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Registering your domain name with the same company that you host with doesn't give you any better risk management. If anything, it's more risky. What happens if the company you're with has some catastrophic event (hack, bankruptcy, etc) that prevents you from getting to the account management interfaces such that you can't control your host or your DNS entries?
At least with separate registrar and hosting, you can just light up a new host somewhere else (whether it's a VPS, colo, or what not) and go to your registrar management (e.g. namecheap, godaddy), and then change your registrant information such that the authoritative DNS is with the new company you're hosting with.