Hi Terry, > I now want to move my domain, website and email to another hosting > provider. Is this relatively easy, or relatively hard?
Relatively easy, depending. :-) Control of the domain-name is key. Specifying the DNS nameservers for it is the starting point of all other references; they're observable with whois(1). Being able to edit the DNS definitions for the domain at its nameservers lets you control where email is sent and what domain names exist, e.g. for when a web browser wants an IP address to contact for a URL. For email, it's nice if there are multiple servers willing to accept email for your domain. That might be done by multiple DNS MX records, seen with ‘dig -t mx example.com.’, or by having a load balancer at the single IP address that sits in front of multiple servers. Either way, if one server is down then your email gets delivered to another without the sender backing off for a while before retrying. The web hosting is potentially the most tricky part. Is your current site just ‘static’ files that can just be shipped by a web server to any browser that comes calling? Or do some of them contain code that the server must run to produce the content to deliver to the browser, e.g. PHP or Python. If the former, then hosting is simpler. I think you can even have GitHub serve the pages for free under your domain name. https://help.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/configuring-a-custom-domain-for-your-github-pages-site If the latter, the server runs code, then you need hosting that offers the same if you don't want to re-work your site to use one of the popular static-site generators, e.g. Hugo. https://gohugo.io Most will offer similar stuff, you may fall foul of lack of support for old versions of software if you haven't updated your site in a long time, e.g. major PHP versions. Andrews & Arnold are a well respected UK supplier of (pricey) broadband when you want quality. They also handle DNS, email, and web serving at good looking prices if you careful check whether you fit into their limits. https://www.aa.net.uk/etc/domains/ Another option is to rent a virtual machine where you are in total control its Linux installation. Then you can use Ubuntu, say, to install and configure a web server like Apache, nginx, or https://caddyserver.com. There are many suppliers; BitFolk are in the UK and start at £6.49/month, https://bitfolk.com/plans.html. Or Digital Ocean are popular USA suppliers starting at $5/month, though you may need a $10/month one, https://www.digitalocean.com. -- Cheers, Ralph. -- Next meeting: BEC, Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2020-02-04 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
