However your initial business website was first setup, eventually many online business owners are faced with the task of moving their website to another hosting provider. It can almost be a little like having your business finances audited. If you are prepared in advance, there is nothing to it. If not, it could be painful...

For those who have not been through a move before, what exactly is involved with the move?

1 ? Make sure you own or have rights to your domain name. You'll need to change this so that it points to a different hosting provider. If you do not have rights to this, you've hit a show-stopper in the move or at the very least a big bump in the road.

2 ? You will need a copy of all files in your website. Hopefully you have been making backup copies all along, so this is not an issue. If not, you'll need to download everything using Ftp.

3 ? Keep a record of all third-party or add-on software products you installed on your site. Especially important will be any licensing requirements and configuration instructions. As time goes by, we forget how this software was originally installed so having a record helps refresh your mind when the time comes to install it again.

Examples of additional software could include reciprocal link management, article management or link tracking. Simply copying the software will be sufficient in most cases, but there may be special configuration required that could keep it from working correctly if you can't remember what needs to be changed.

4 ? Along with your additional applications is the SQL database(s) you may have created. You will need to make copies of both the database definitions, including tables, and also the data itself. There are database management tools available, usually as part of the hosting package, which make this easy to do, but you'll need to understand how to use them or find someone who does.

5 ? Make sure your new provider has the same server operating system and programming languages you use. This probably seems very basic: Linux versus Windows or PHP versus ASP. Make sure the versions are the same also.

For example, I recently had to switch one of my sites and thought I had confirmed everything only to learn later that PHP is not necessarily the same PHP for all providers, even though the version was the same. I learned there is something called PHPSUEXEC which some providers are using instead. It basically works the same as regular PHP, but is more secure. The result however, is that installing your software may require different permissions or other adjustments to your files on the server. Fortunately I found this out during testing and was able to correct any issues.

6 ? When making changes to your site, try to keep from coding your domain name directly into your html pages or scripts as part of links to images or other pages in your site. This can usually be accommodated by using relative directory names in html or by using variables in your scripts.

One good reason for doing this is that after your new hosting provider sets up your new site, they will send you an email message with either an "IP address" or a combination of "IP address plus your username". This is what you will use to reach your new site during the transition time until you change your domain to point to the new service. While testing your new site during this time, links which have your domain name hard-coded will revert back to your old site making it more difficult to test the new.

7 ? Give yourself time for the transfer before changing your domain to point to the new service and turning off the old host. Get everything setup on the new host first and try to test as much as possible. This will keep you from seeing critical errors when the new site finally goes live. Your website is the lifeblood of your work at home business ? the last thing you need is extended down time.