How do you transfer a domain name?

Are you hosting the domains and the web sites on aplus? If so you will need to download and store your site and re-upload to your new hosting.

First step is to choose new hosting. Most hosting companies will walk you through the transfer process. When I did this they were on phone support with me the whole time and it was easy. As I recall I had to unlock the domain names at my old hosting so they could be removed from there.

Keep in mind that the transfer means your site will be off line for up to 48 hours after the switch is made.

@Dog: Well worth it, considering how aplus went down the tubes.

Do I have to cancel anything with aplus? Tell them I’m pulling my site? I can barely navigate it to edit my pages now; I wouldn’t know the first thing about unlocking anything.

The 48 hours… is this the amount of work I have ahead of me? lol

I waited till my hosting was up (I pay annually) and transferred out the week before. I did not inform them of anything- just moved out and did not pay to continue.

No- the 48 hours is how long the internet takes to realize the new location of your domains. You can party and do absolutely nothing during this time because it is all the internet not you.

I can PM you the site I use that helped walk me through everything in the event you do not know who to go to yet. It was not that hard.

Just download your entire sites before you do anything.

Yes, to begin your domain transfer you will need to “unlock” your domain if it is locked (usually it is by default). Login into your registrar’s site and there should be an option to lock/unlock somewhere. This will allow the transfer to initiate.

From here, depending on your TLD you will need either a Transfer code/key or to verify via email. For dot com/net domain names, you will need to obtain a transfer code from your current registrar as well. This is fairly new but it should be an option inside your registrar’s page as well. For dot ca/us and most other domain names you will need to make sure you have access to the email address that appears as the administrative contact in the whois information of that domain. This is to approve the transfer when it is put through.

Once this is out of the way, you are ready to order a domain transfer from another registrar / hosting company.

The 48 hour time period that @Dog mentioned is often referred to as the DNS propagation time and is merely a heads up about the length of time it could take for name servers to update their information (if they have it already cached). From experience (I own a web hosting and registration company) you’ll be rocking out within a few hours tops and isn’t something you should be too worried about.

In order to avoid any “downtime” make sure you copy your existing site over to a new hosting provider before you transfer away. This includes all your html/php/asp files, your databases and your email. Your current host should be willing to help, or at least point you in the right direction so that your new host will be able to do this all for you (find one that will). Do try to wait a couple days before telling your old host that you will not be renewing, to avoid them shutting things off before hand (they shouldn’t since you likely paid until the end of the month/year though)

This way when you transfer the domain and the name servers are updating, the files will be accessible on both servers and no downtime will occur.

Let me know if you need any more information on registration or hosting, I’d be happy to help.

What if you were working on a website and had nothing of importance on it, but now wanted to commission, say, GoDaddy to use the same domain name to build the website for you. Can you delete the old website and make the domain name available for GoDaddy to use?