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Topic Summary

Posted by: E-Collins
« on: April 19, 2017, 07:27:46 AM »

Quote from: prod9r
Do foreign web hosting companies accept our Nigerian Naira MasterCard or the visa card
Am sure they accept both Mastercard and Visa but i use Naira Mastercard which GTbank charged me 310 per dollar which is cheaper than 400 that Web4africa is charging per dollar.
Posted by: prod9r
« on: April 15, 2017, 05:11:40 AM »

Do foreign web hosting companies accept our Nigerian Naira mastercard or the visa card
Posted by: E-Collins
« on: March 20, 2017, 12:41:06 AM »

I have been using Web4africa since 2012 and I love them so much that I don't even want to leave them until my site started having a problem which I reported to them but they asked me to move to their virtual private server (VPS), then I was using their Gold shared hosting package which is about $150 yearly.

I knew that my site has grown a bit and needed more power but I decided to test something new by finding another web hosting provider that can give my site such power but after researching for a good Webhosting I decided to settle with Inmotion Webhosting VPS package.


I recently wrote about 2017 Nigerian Web-hosting guide Questions and Answers which might be of help to you but this article is all about how I successfully migrated Inmotion web hosting to Web4africa.

How I paid for Inmotion Webhosting

Inmotion is not an African based Webhosting and am sure you may be thinking how I managed to pay for their VPS hosting package and I agree with you that with Web4africa you can pay in Naira but Inmotion can only be paid in dollars.

Check out Inmotiohosting offers

The good news is that with your naira or dollar master card you can successfully pay for anything online from Nigeria, you don't necessarily need to pay in Naira because your bank can convert and charge the equivalent dollar amount in naira and that is how I used my Gtbank Master card to complete the transaction.

Activation and Migration process
After completing the payment process Inmotion web hosting sales representative called and asked some verification questions and after that, my account was created.

I thought that Inmotion will do all the work of moving from web4africa to my VPS hosting plan I bought with them but they charged me some $$ for them to do the migration though they can do it free of charge depending on the size of the site but I don't have time to drag whether it should be free or not instead I decided to move my site to my new virtual private server on my own not minding that I have never done such thing in the past.

What you need before Migration process
Before thinking of moving from one web hosting to another you must have reliable internet data plan and connection because you will need to download and uploads your website files and databases.

Considering the epileptic power supply in Nigeria you must have your generator set ready in a case when there is no light in your place.

The migration process (Web4africa to Inmotion)
First, I logged in to my web4africa Cpenal and compressed my website public_html as a zip file to reduce the size of the file I needed to download.

You must know that Public_html is the files that contain all your website files and when moving/migrating to another Webhosting you need those files.

After compressing my website public_html I started downloading it which took me some little time to complete but it depends on your website file size, after downloading I kept it safe on my computer.

Exporting Database process
Once I finished downloading my website public files I went to phpmyadmin to export my website database because I needed the two to make sure that I don't lose anything

I exported my two main databases and kept them safe on my desktop so that I can easily remember where I kept it when the time for importing comes.

Now I have two major files that I needed in order to move my site to another Webhosting provider which is my complete public_html file and my database.

Uploading files to my Inmotion VPS
Am almost done with my old hosting here since I have successfully downloaded all my files, it's time to move my files to my new virtual private server

Note:
If you are going for a VPS as I did make sure they offer Cpanel as their main offer or as an add-on which might add extra cost but you need it because it will be easier for you to manage with Cpanel.

To upload my files i logged in to my Inmotion AMP (Account Management Panel) then to Cpanel which is included on their VPS plans and to file manager, I saw that there is public_html already i decided to rename it and started uploading the public_html file that I downloaded from Web4africa which contains all my website files.

Once the upload is complete I extracted the public_html which was in zip format as a normal folder.

Creating database

I have completed one of the main steps which are downloading and uploading my public_html file to the new server but for it to work I have to create new database and users with all the recommended privileges and then keep the username and password safe because you will need to connect the database later.

Importing Database
After creating the database I went to PHPMyAdmin to import my website database which I have exported from web4africa and everything went successfully.

Connecting Public_html to database
Every website that uses database must have a file that connects it to the database, example if you are using Wordpress you can check out wp-config.php file to see the connection settings between database and public_html.

To connect my website to the newly imported database I need to adjust the database name, username and password to match the new database that I created accordingly because they are not the same.

After connecting my database I believe my site should be working now and it's time to test my work but remember my domain is not yet pointed to my new server.

Testing my website with Temp URL
Since you are moving to a new host they might provide a temporal web address to test your site before pointing your domain to the new server.

I was able to locate a Temp URL to test my site by going to Inmotion Account Management Panel then to account technical details to get the temp URL.

Surprisingly I tested it and it worked, I felt so happy that I could do it without asking for help.

Pointing my domain to the new server
Finally, the last work to do is to point my domain to my new Private server machine though I bought the domain from web4africa and I don't want to transfer it to another host and all I did was log in to web4africa to replace their nameservers with my new server nameservers which I saw in my new VPS technical details.

Domain propagation process
After pointing my domain to the new server it took between 24-48 hours to complete the propagation process and am happy with my website performance and still watching it

Conclusion
I wrote all this just to share my experience on how I successfully migrated from my old host to new host for you to learn from me if you are not familiar with site migration processes.

Don't hesitate to ask any question if you have any.