Are you changing your hosting provider – or are you considering changing?
If you should choose to transfer your domain and webspace to Simply.com, read along, and we’ll guide you through the entire transfer-process.
We will cover the following:
When changing your hosting provider, you first of all need to be aware that, unfortunately, none of your content can be transferred along automatically.
It is thus only your domain name you will be transferring, and this will then point to the new webspace, which to begin with has no content.
We’ve already made a general guide which describes the whole process, and you can find it right here: https://www.simply.com/en/support/faq/general/287/
As an extra help for you, we also have some useful import-functions that can be used to transfer content from your previous host to Simply.com.
These tools are free to use and can in most cases get you through changing hosts more quickly.
Please note, that there may be some providers that block the connection, and in these cases it will require a more manual approach to transfer the data. Our support can always help with pointers and tips for this if the import-tools do not work in your particular case.
Importing E-mail
When you transfer your domain to a new webspace at Simply.com, there will not be any e-mail addresses set up.
There is no problem in keeping the same addresses as you had before, but you will have to set them up in our system again.
Under the menu “E-mail” in your Control Panel, you can begin by creating your e-mail accounts and choosing passwords for them.
When this is done, you can start importing your old e-mails to the new accounts. This can be done by clicking the little “i” to the left of the account.
Under “Import external mail”, specify the mail server, username and password that you wish to use for importing e-mails. This information can be obtained from your former provider or via their support.
Below you can see an example of how the correct settings for import might look.
Once the import is completed, you can log in at e.g. https://simply.com/webmail and confirm that your e-mails have all been transferred.
Alternatively, it will also synchronize the folders with all e-mails when you set your e-mail using IMAP in, for example, Outlook.
If you receive an error during import, try changing between the different SSL/TLS settings. We support both, but depending on how the other provider’s server is set up, there may be more than one possible way of setting this up.
Of course you will need to make sure you are using the proper username and password, and that the e-mail address is activated, so you can still log in at the other provider – it is possible that you can test this beforehand via a webmail or similar measure.
Importing a website
A website basically consists of some files with code in them, but if you have dynamic content such as in a CMS like WordPress, you will also need a database. This means that in order to import a website you will have to both transfer files and any database as well.
Importing files
To import the files that your website is made of, you can use the import-tool found under File Manager i our Control Panel.
Here you need the FTP login information from your previous hosting provider / the server you are importing from.
Here is an example of how a correct setup might look:
Content you want visible on your domain at Simply.com must be placed in the public_html folder, so make sure to open this folder before importing.
Once all settings have been entered, choose import and, depending on the amount of data, it will take some time for transfer to complete, as it copies all files from the old server to ours.
You will receive a notice onscreen when you import has finished and your files have been transferred to your webspace at Simply.com.
If you receive an error during import, try checking “Use Passive transfer” – depending on how the other provider’s server is set up, there may be different settings to use here. If it keeps failing, you are always welcome to contact our support.
If you use a database, you need to correct your settings so that the site will connect to the database at Simply.com – we will elaborate on this in our WordPress-example at the end of this article.
Now on to the database.
Importing a MySQL-database
To import your database, simply go to “MySQL” in you Control Panel and select “Import database”.
Here, like for FTP with the files, you will need the login for the database at your previous provider / the server you’re importing from. If you’ve exported your database as a .sql-file, login is not necessary, in that case, simply upload the file.
Now choose which database on your webspace you want to import to. You can use the already set up database or create a new one for it. To import directly from the other server, select “From external MySQL server”.
Here you can see an example of how the correct settings might look:
We recommend that you reset the database when importing, so you can start off fresh. If you already have content in the database that you wish to keep, you can leave this – but do make a backup before importing all the same.
When the import is done, you can log in via MySQL Web-administration to confirm that the database now has your content.
Updating the content to work on your new webspace
If you’ve imported content that uses a database, there will be a configuration file that needs to be updated in order for the site run at Simply.com.
The imported content will be configured to connect to the previous provider’s database-server, along with their login information, hostname, database name, username and password.
These are not the same as here, so you will need to update this information with the login information you received from us upon product creation. We will give a concrete example of this with WordPress later in the article.
Example import of a WordPress-website
Here you’ll get a specific example where we have a WordPress-site at a different provider which we import to Simply.com. We use the domain simply-example.com which we will picture as the domain we are transferring from a different provider to Simply.com on a new webspace.
The website in all its test-worthy emptiness looks like this at the third party provider:
Let’s get started with the transfer.
We begin by importing the files. Here, we go to “File Manager” in our Control Panel, click the “public_html”-folder and choose “Import from FTP”. This is where we enter the login information and then we run the import.
When the import is done, you’ll see that all files and folders from the WordPress-installation is transferred and are now placed in the “public_html”-folder.
Now we need to import the database.
Go to “MySQL” in the Control Panel and choose “Import database”. In the example here, we import from an external server by selecting “From external MySQL-server”, but if you have an .sql-file with the database, this is simply uploaded.
Enter the hostname of the database server, username and password used at the external provider, and choose the database you wish to import to at Simply.com.
When the database has been imported, click “Open MySQL web-administration” to see the imported tables.
Here you will see a range of default WordPress-tables named with the prefix used at the external provider.
We can now see that the import was a success and so move on to the final step: Correcting the file “wp-config.php” so that it will connect to the database here instead of the old one at the former provider.
For WordPress it is specifically the “wp-config.php”-file which contains the database configuration, which is in the root-folder of the WordPress-installation – in our case directly in the folder “public_html”.
For systems other than WordPress, the configuration may be placed somewhere entirely different. In such a case it would be a good idea to consult the official documentation for the system in question. But, typically, the file is called something containing config, settings, parameters or similar.
In “File Manager” you can edit the file directly, simply by clicking it, so let’s move to the “public_html”-folder, find the file and open it.
Here is the information WordPress uses to connect and get data from the MySQL database. When you import the file, these settings will still be those for the old provider’s servers.
Now you will need to correct the file so that the correct information, which you received in the e-mail from us upon product creation, is entered instead – remember to save the file afterwards.
With WordPress it is only the four lines above that need correction.
We’ve now gone through all the steps necessary to transfer an entire WordPress-website.
If everything has gone through as it should, and all login information has been entered correctly etc., you should now be able to go to your website’s address in a browser and see that the site is working just as before – but running from your webspace at Simply.com. You can also access your login on /wp-admin as before.
Importing a WordPress-site using a plugin
In many cases it may be easier to use a plugin to import a WordPress site specifically. There are many different plugins for the purpose, for example Duplicator we find to be very useful.
With a plugin such as Duplicator, you first install the plugin in your current WordPress-installation. Afterwards you use the plugin to make a complete copy of both files and database.
When transferring the site, you upload the copy through “File Manager” in our Control Panel or using an FTP application, and then you can install the entire website in a few clicks to make it work at Simply.com.
This was a “brief” tour about how our import-tools can help you transfer your website and e-mails to us.
