When moving your website between web servers / hosts, the major issue (at least for me) is waiting for the DNS propagation to get done.

Here's one fantastic way you can force your readers to read the webpages on your new webhost immediately:

Once you have moved you entire website to the new host (e.g. new website ip = 65.124.101.118), prepare a new .htaccess file and type in the following:


Upload this .htaccess file to your old web server. Now anyone reaching your old website will be silently re-directed to the new!

For this to work, you need to be hosted on the Apache web server and your old host needs to support Apache's mod rewrite module!

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Looks like the website has not lost Google Fresh bots like in my previous moves; so I just had to add this very important note to this tip!

I must say the transaction was very seamless. Has the DNS server changed over yet?

Yes, I am simply blown away by how simple it was! None of the usual worrying about DNS propagation and what-not. I've had the idea in my head for a LONG time and finally I got the chance to test it out - worked like a charm...

No idea if the DNS propagation is done yet but my ISP showed the new IP less than a day after the move.

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™