Tips on Speedy Site Moving?

[sewmyheadon]

I still have some sites to move over to my VPS here and wanted to know if you have any recommendations for making the transfer as smooth as possible. As I've mentioned in other threads, I've used the WHM feature to copy CPanel accounts from my other hosting company using Username and Password and am very comfortable with that.

What I'm specifically interested in, is if I should change TTL values in the DNS on the old site to, say, 300 to speed up propagation once the site is moved and nameservers changed.

I transferred a batch of sites last weekend and ended up doing it really late at night and since most of the nameserver propagation happended within 6 hours, it was no problem. My goal is to minimize any possible downtime for business customers. I had no big problems last weekend - one customer mentioned having trouble with his email for a day, but I checked DNS through a few sites and all looked okay - when he tried again, it had cleared up.

Any tips would be appreciated.

[PvUtrix]

Change the TTL for sure... it helps...

[sewmyheadon]

Thanks pvUtrix - that's what I thought. Many of the domains are through my Enom reseller account and the DNS changes propagate very quickly, but changing this setting should speed it up even further, right?

[scott_see]

I'm in the middle of transfering sites to-from the same place. What's a TTL value? Is that an enom thing or a powervps thing?

[sewmyheadon]

When I moved from one server to the other at the old host, they advised me to drop the TTL to 300 from 14400, I think. It worked well.

This is a change you'd make in the DNS records at the old host, not at Enom. It tells the DNS servers the time-to-live of your DNS settings so they cache it for less time, if I understand correctly.

[scott_see]

I'll look for it.

Thanks,

[sewmyheadon]

Scott,

Last time I did this, I just entered a helpdesk ticket at the old host asking them to do it. One of their old support techs advised me to do this. I'm going to be doing the same thing for a few of my sites in the next few days so I can move more this weekend.

[PvUtrix]

sewmyheadon you are correct on everything...

I've posted somewhere on the forum that it's best to change the TTL about 24 hours before the actual move...

[sewmyheadon]

Thanks PvUtrix - I appreciate your confirmation.

I'm planning to do this tomorrow evening for moves this weekend.