1. Find a new host and don’t rush into anything.
    Assuming you haven’t committed to a long-term hosting contract you can start looking for a new host at any time. When you are ready to move, don’t rush to give your money away only because the host’s website looks trendy or they are having a promotional offer. Instead, be sure to do research at places like FindMyHost.com and internet forums. Another good indicator of a host’s credibility is to check out the type of clients they are hosting. Be sure to check that the host’s IP addresses are not listed on Spamhaus, SBL, and other blacklists to avoid dealing with a company that hosts spammers. DNSStuff.com has great tools for verifying that a company’s IP addresses are clean. To get the company’s IP address, you can usually just ping their website and use that IP address in your research. If the host’s IP’s are blacklisted, chances are your outbound e-mails from your e-commerce store won’t ever get to your customer. Your e-mails to your customer will probably never make it either.

  2. Make a full backup of your existing system.
    You should be doing this at least a few times a week already, but if you haven’t now is the time to make a backup. This means that you should segment your backup checklist into the following categories:

    • Downloading all your source code from your web directory to your local computer.
    • Making a MySQL dump from your current host, using the command line or the backup tool in phpMyAdmin.
    • Don’t forget to export or save your SSL certificate if you have one. You should backup all associated SSL files, particularly the “csr” and “key” files, otherwise you may have to pay for a certificate all over again.
  3. Take inventory of installed modules, plugins, and extensions.
    Having the right plugins is just as important as having your data and there is a possibility that your application may not work if modules like curl, gd, imagemagick, and other popular PHP extensions aren’t installed. Read the rest of this entry »
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