Thread: Changing Hosting

How easy is it to change your hosting provider? If different versions of aspdotnetstorefront are required for different hosting is it easy to adjust to that? What, if anything, can be lost in the transfer?

If you are moving to a host that is running .NET 3.5 SP1, make sure you are using AspDotNetStorefront 7.0.2.5 SP1 or later. Aside from that, it is more or less a function of backing up the files and database at the old host and restoring them to the new host. You will also need to update your DNS pointers and move your SSL certificate (the host should be able to assist with that). It is a fairly straight forward process.

if we have aspdotnetstorefront through our hosting company, how do we go about updating the version ourselves? We want to be able to change hosting and one of the companies we are looking at requires 8.0. Do we have to buy the whole package or just update it. Is there a simple way to do this? Would a 3rd party website transfer company be able to do this for us? We are not expert web developers so we are trying to find the easiest way to make a change.

Also, is there anyone else who has gone through this process before and can recommend companies that made the transfer easy?

Thank you.

Whether you can update or have to purchase the whole package depends on how your hosting provider purchased the product. I would recommend speaking with them directly. Some providers are given special pricing, but the licenses are non-transferable. If that is the case, then you would need to purchase a new license. Otherwise, the host can transfer the license to you, and you can purchase an upgrade for it from our site.

Sure, give our sales/customer service team a call at 602-490-0243. I would recommend contacting your provider first though so you can find what their license transfer terms out. We can't "force" a license transfer for a license purchased by someone else for obvious reasons.

I tried to move my store to a different host recently, and found that not all hosts will accept/restore a backup of your DB. The host repeatedly insisted that restoring a .bak file from another site wasn't allowed by MS "Best Practices." No amount of pointing out the specific language that MS used (it was a caution not a prohibition, with ways to safely do it) would convince them to open our .bak on their system. They suggested "publishing" the DB, which was more trouble than it was worth.

Just a caution... check first; I'm sure that most hosts will restore.

Yes, most hosts we have run into will restore a .BAK file if they want your business (though some will charge a nominal fee). The only time we see this become an issue is if you are dealing with a giant hosting provider with very rigid "one size (ours) fits all" policies.

I can't find any overt information from Microsoft saying that this is a bad idea from a security standpoint, and based on our experience, it is a very very common practice. Why this particular provider would not allow it is beyond me.