|
| Recent
Articles |
No More AOL Free Hours
Heh. When America Online made the strange move of renaming themselves to an ancronym that no longer stands for anything (AOL LLC) and made dial-up and broadband cost the same...
Google, EarthLink Win S.F. WiFi Deal
The City of San Francisco finished its review of
proposals to create a city-wide wireless broadband
network, and chose the EarthLink/Google submission...
FCC
Sucks, Says Google Lawyer
The war of words between major content providers
and the telecom companies escalated nicely during
the opening of the VON conference in San Jose...
Telco Money Grab Numbers Revealed
All those billions of dollars the telecom companies want to snatch from content providers gain a bit of context thanks to BellSouth chief architect Henry Kafka.
Net Neutrality Foes To Merge
Outspoken advocates of a two-tiered Internet will soon share a single corporate structure as AT&T will shell out $67 billion to acquire BellSouth.
Senator Proposes Net Neutrality Bill
Ron Wyden (D-Or) has introduced legislation to prevent
telecoms and cable companies from developing a two-tiered
network where fees would be charged...
Google, EarthLink Pair On Two-Tiered WiFi
The two companies submitted competing bids during
San Francisco's call for wireless broadband proposals,
but have now teamed on a single proposal...
|
|
|
|
|
04.25.06
Strategic Site Migration: Planning For Success
 By
Frederick Townes
An analytical approach to moving an existing business web site from one Internet Service Provider (ISP) to another will increase the likelihood of a seamless transition.
This is especially critical for retail sites and sites that contain large databases of products, customers and other business-related information.
A Common Mistake
Site owners rely on site administrators to ensure the smooth, continuous functioning of their on-line businesses. The importance of the role of a site administrator is often underestimated by site owners. Typically, owners select a hosting company based on a simple cost vs. features comparison. This may be fine for small sites marketing a single product, sites that don't require a secure checkout or sites that aren't required to maintain a great deal of data. However, retail site owners must prepare to move their sites with military precision. That preparation will lead to a successful move.
Moving the Domain: Four Critical Issues
As the number of hosting companies grows, site owners have available to them more standard features, more options and lower monthly hosting costs - all positive results of greater competition among Web hosting services. However, there is also a downside to site migration, even if cost savings are realized.
Site owners face several critical issues when planning to change from one ISP to another. These issues must be resolved before the actual move takes place to ensure site continuity and uninterrupted access to the site by visitors.
These concerns should be a part of the site owner's initial discussions with any potential administrator. Solutions must be developed by the new administrator to avoid any negative consequences created by the move. Thus, site owners will be well served to address the following issues during initial discussions with a new site administrator.
Down Time
During the move, a site may be unavailable to visitors. Of course, this presents serious problems for owners of retail sites. If customers do not have access to the site, they will likely go elsewhere rather than wait until the known site is once again operational.
A site may be down (and therefore inaccessible to visitors) for between 12 to 72 hours during the transition phase. If, during this down time, the site is spidered by a search engine, the site's previous SE history may be severely compromised. Many site owners are willing to accept some down time in order to lower the business's hosting expenses. However, few of these site owners recognize that the positive record they have established with search engines is in serious jeopardy if the move is not coordinated with precision.
Many ISPs maintain that down time is necessary during the migration of a complicated, intricate site. This is not the case. In fact, even the most complex site can be moved from one host to another seamlessly, i.e. without any down time. To accomplish this, the new site administrator most perform a detailed analysis of the site's underlying architecture, the structure and scope of the site's database, checkout operations and special features such as Flash animations, a blog/forum or email capabilities.
Site owners should not switch hosts without a careful analysis of the consequences, not only in lost sales, but in positioning on search engine results pages, or SERPs, caused by down time.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
|
