Follow these easy steps to transfer your site to Just In Time Design, and you should experience basically no downtime whatsoever. Your visitors won't even know anything has changed!
The first thing you need to do is register for your new account! Once you've completed your order, it can take anywhere between 5 minutes to 12 hours for your account to be set up; it depends on the load of orders we're receiving when you place your order. Once it's ready, you will receive a welcome email telling you most of what you need to know, including your log-in information and the nameservers to use for your domain.
Ensure that you have a full, up-to-date working copy of your website files, databases and scripts stored on your computer. Download or record any email address settings, passwords, log file/statistic reports, and anything else you might need from your current host.
If you're using scripts on your site, update any server-specific settings they contain, such as the path to Perl or sendmail, the server path to your files, etc. You can find this information by selecting your server type from your new website accounts Cpanel.
Upload your website files to your new account. This can be done by using the server IP as the FTP host address, rather than the domain name. You will find the server IP in your welcome email. You will not yet be able to use ftp.yourdomain.com, as the domain will still be pointing to your old host.
Log into your website control panel using the server IP as follows: http://www.justintimedesign.com/cpanel. Use your FTP username and password. From there you can set up your email addresses, MySQL databases, subdomains and any site settings.
You can pre-view your website prior to updating your domain name by using an add-on domain, so that you can ensure it is fully functional before it goes live. If you do not want to purchase a temporary domain name, open a support ticket, and Just In Time Design will send you a temporary domain name that you can use to test your account. This temporary domain name will be added as an "add-on" domain to your account, if it is removed, it will stop working.
Once your website data, settings and email accounts have been transferred to Just In Time Design AND you have tested your website, you can safely update your domain to point to it. Log in to your domain registrar and look for a section called "Update DNS info" or "Nameservers," or something similar. This is where you need to enter the new nameservers (NS1.JUSTINTIMEDESIGN.COM, NS2.JUSTINTIMEDESIGN.COM). Make sure you write down(in case you have to roll back the change) and then delete the old nameservers as well, or your domain won't know where to point! If you are not going to use the Just In Time Design name servers, you will need to update yoru "A" record to point to your new accounts IP address.
After you've put in the new nameservers and saved the information, you'll have to wait for the changes to take effect. It will take somewhere between 30 minutes-72 hours for the new DNS info to be updated all over the world. This is called propagation. Once your domain has propagated, your website and email at Just In Time Design will be accessible via the domain name.
Things to keep in mind:
As propagation doesn't happen all at once, but rather at some ISPs sooner than others, while a domain is propagating to a new host some visitors and email will be sent to the new server while some will still be sent to the old server. Before closing your old hosting account, you will want to collect any data that has ended up on that server during propagation instead of the new server, such as email and database entries, if your site is dynamic (i.e. if it has a forum or guestbook), you should shut down user access during this time.
After you're sure propagation is complete, and you have collected any email and data from the old server, you can safely activate any user-access services and close your old hosting account.
If you have any problems or questions, open a support ticket. As always, if you are not sure what you are doing, contact technical support. If you would like Just In Time Design to transfer the site for you, please submit an order for "Website Transfer" and a representative will contact you. Most sites can be fully transferred for $50.
