Migrate a cPanel site to a linode

Here's roughly what I did when I migrated my sites

A week or prior to actual move

1. copy all website files to linode (php/html/css/etc)

2. take a backup of database and restore to linode

3. setup DNS in linode DNS manager with all names pointing back to cPanel site, create new.yourdomain.com pointing to your linode.

4. change your registrar to point to linode DNS

5. test, test, test. using the new.yourdomain.com address, you test out the entire site, make sure everything works.

A couple days prior to actual move

1. Set DNS TTL's down to 5 minutes

2. when done testing, clear the database out in preparation for the production move.

Day of move

1. Shut site down on cPanel (if you're using an app like wordpress or a board, they usually have a maintenance mode). If not, break the database connection and put up a page saying that the site is migrating.

2. backup database on cPanel and restore to linode

3. change DNS to point to linode

Doing it this way, you can get the migration done pretty comfortably in 15-30 minutes.

What if you donot have cPanel running on your linode?\\;)

What glg said applies if you don't have cpanel installed on linode.

My next issue is I setup vhosts via webmin and set their paths to individual web folders in each users directory under home……. and when I go to the individual vhost it just points me to the default main vhost on the server and serves up that vhosts content versus the one it is set to……

Yes I reloaded apache after making the changes….