How I Transferred My Hosting Account from Web4Africa to Hostgator


This is a guest post by Adesoji Adegbulu, who teaches people how to make real money online legitmately on Make Money Online Nigeria.

Hostgator is no doubt the best hosting service anyone that use. Not only that their prices are considerate, they also have great support service. I have been getting so many complains from my blog visitors about how my blog takes time to load amongst other things. In addition to that, Google consider site speed very much in ranking blogs. In order to solve this two problems with one approach, I was advised by some of my friends who uses hostgator.



Before I go ahead with this, please note that Web4Africa has no problem whatsoever with my site speed and support services. They have a good support services amongst other things. The reason why my blog takes time to load was because I was using Web4Africa's bronze plan which affords me 5GB disk space, 50GB bandwidth, unlimited domain and so many other things. I moved because my blog's traffic is growing exponentially and because I want a single web hosting account for all my numerous domain names.

If you have been considering moving from one web host to hostgator, this tutorial will help you a great deal.

To start with, the first thing I did was to decide which of the hostgator plans I want. They have reseller hosting, VPS hosting and Dedicated hosting. However, I chose VPS baby plan which would give me access to unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domain names and so many unlimited features.

After deciding, the next thing was to go ahead and buy the VPS baby plan. This I bought with my Zenith Bank's Buxz Visa Card. I took $170 dollars out of my August 2011 AdSense Income and went to the Zenith Bank I use. I paid the $170 into the card and waited till the next day before I made payment for the VPS baby plan. The VPS baby plan cost me just $95.52 for the first year. This is because I got a 20% discount. The next payment should be something like $120.

After filling the registration form and making payment, my account was created almost immediately after which I had to go through some verification process. The verification process was just to make sure I am the one that registered for the hosting account. My account was put into pending until I finish up with the verification process.

The verification process....

I got a message from hostgator support that in order for them to continue with my account setup, I would need to send either a scanned copy of a Photo ID such as as a passport, or drivers license. In addition to a photo ID, I should include a scanned copy of the credit card that was used for my account purchase. For security purposes, I was told to mask off all the digits of the card number except for the last 4 digits. This I responded to.

I later got another support email. They said because the credit card used is for electronic use only, they would like to request a screen shot of the card's account management page showing the last four digits of the card number and my name. If the name is not available, that I should please make sure the card number and the transaction are visible.

They also said that if the online statement is not available, then they can accept any of the following:

-An ATM receipt showing my name and the last four digits of my card number

-A printed statement from the bank showing my name and the last four digits of my card number

-A receipt for the purchase of the card (If it's prepaid) showing the last four digits of the card number

-A receipt for adding funds to the card showing my name and the last four digits of my card number

I chose the option of showing a scanned copy of the receipt I used to pay the $170 into the VISA Buxz card. After some few hours, I got a mail from hostgator support team that my hosting account is now active.

The next thing I needed to do now was to ask hostgator to transfer my hosting account (all my cpanel) from Web4Africa to them. To do this, I was asked to fill the transfer form at - https://secure.hostgator.com/transfer.php. I was asked to fill some details about my web4africa hosting account and some details about my new hostgator hosting account. This i did.

This online form will create a ticket for the transfer with a unique ticket ID. Generally, hostgator transfers are completed in less than 24 hours but in some cases it can take up to 72 hours depending on the nature of the transfer. Mine took less than 24 hours.

After some hours, I got another mail from hostgator support that they are happy to inform me that the first step in my transfer process has been completed! The first step of this process incorporates moving my files and databases and updating them accordingly if necessary. Since that process has now been completed, it's time to test out my site on my Hostgator account.

I was given an access to their SWAMP (System for Website Assessment Managed by Proxy, technically a "caching DNS proxy server"), which will enable me to view my webpages before I update my DNS configurations. I was able to to review the basic functions of my blog on the hostgator server. Please, be aware that the SWAMP is just a temporary viewing solution, and some scripts/websites may not work perfectly at this time. More complex sites will require editing your hosts file.

I was asked to go to http://swamp.hostgator.com and input my access key provided. The key is only valid for 72 hours.

After I successfully reviewed my blog on hostgator SWAMP, I went ahead to my Web4Africa client account to change the nameserver from web4africa's nameserver to hostgator's name server. I was aksed by hostgator to use the nameservers below:

ns3467.hostgator.com 
ns3468.hostgator.com 

Please, note do NOT cancel your old hosting account until after your nameservers have been updated, and the websites have fully propagated to the new account. Hostgator may not be able to retrieve any data from your old hosting account once it has been cancelled.

In case you want to also transfer your domain name to hostgator, you will need to submit a request for that just by replying the support mails they've been sending to you. Please note that domain transfers take 3-5 days to complete. A confirmation email will be sent to you at the administrative email address provided in your domain's WHOIS information. You would need to follow the instructions in that email in order to confirm the domain transfer.

After all the transfer, I accessed my site with the usual details, everything still intact. The only difference is that I have been moved from web4africa to hostgator.


This is how I easily transferred my hosting account from Web4Africa to Hostgator. If you want to use hostgator, simply go to Hostgator, register and get a perfect web hosting account for yourself. You can pay using the VISA Card provided by Zenith bank. And if you have access to paypal, you can use that also.


One important thing you need to know is that I didnt move from Web4Africa to hostgator with any of my money. I simply used the funds generated from AdSense to position my blog for more income and more expansion. You too can do this. To learn more about making money with Adsense, please read through all the AdSense post listed on this URL -




I hope this helps.

Cheers!!!



Comments

  1. Nice one Adesoji Adegbulu! I think I will do this when next I want to pay for domain name.
    Jide keep the work going!

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the comment bro. God Bless You

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice post. Such a hassle to transer hosting account

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oluwajoba... It's not so much of an hassle with Hostgator

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous4/09/2014

    I beg to differ and say that web4africa has such poor service now! It's so sad that many Nigerian companies don't have maintaining standards as top priority.

    ReplyDelete

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