How do you copy an ASP.NET website on one Hosting company to a site on another?

Sometimes you change your website hosting from one vendor to another. You want to transfer your site content from the old hosting provider to the new hosting provider. The general idea is the same but in this case we are considering moving from one ASP.NET hosting provider to another.

Domain Name:
First of all there is a consideration of domain name. You can buy a new domain name or you can use your existing domain name. In this case we are assuming that the existing domain name will be used and only the site content is moved.

Steps in moving to another:
1. Do not close the account with your old hosting provider as this may result in the loss of your content

2. Buy a new hosting account with the new hosting provider. If you are looking for a ASP.NET hosting you should choose one that hosts ASP.NET

http://www.findbestwebhosting.com/top10hostingcompanies.aspx/windows-web-hosting/1

Note: The above site was picked at random and the blogger has no interest in the above or any of the others that may get mentioned.

3. After you opened the account you will can get a temporary website (also an FTP site, email, etc. )Create your password for the various items (email, FTP, HTTP, etc.).

4. Download and install the free version of Visual Studio 2013 Express for Web (in this case Microsoft Visual Studio Express  2013 for Web). With this tool you can FTP your site content from the site on your old Hosting Provider to the temporary ftp site on the new hosting provider. The transfer itself may take considerble time depending on the amount of stored content.

• After launching VS 2013 Express, clicking on File | Open Web Site... opens the following display.

• Enter the ftp site of the previous hostings provider and enter your credentials.

The site contents will be displayed in the Solutions Explorer
Now the WEBSITE menu item gets displayed.

• Click on WEBSITE and click Copy Web Site... as shown.

The FTP screen opens as shown.

• In the above screen click on Connect, the connect to remote site is activated and the Open Web Site window is displayed again. Now enter the ftp site and credentials for the new hostings provider.

Both the source and target gets displayed as shown.

 

 

• All that remains is highlight the items from your old site on the left(Source) to the target site using the arrows (watch directions) in between source and target.

The time it takes to transfer will depend on many factors that includes the network connectivity and the amount of data.

You may be wondering whether the new site created from the previous hostings site will function as it did earlier. This will depend on a lot of factors as the technology might have progressed and the elements (databases,user accounts, transacted items etc) may not be compatible versions. However you may be able to recreate most if not all of the features. Patience.

Before you make the ftp transfer you should have username and password for the old hosting account and the new recently purchased hosting account.

Also make sure,

• You can ping both sites
• Run tracert from the command window for the new hosting provider to make sure their router can be reached.
• Make sure telnet is enabled in your computer.