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By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
[July 17th, 1999]
 
 

When it comes to traditional, brick and mortar retail space, we've all heard the adage that it's "location, location, location" that counts. However, this adage holds equally true for an e-commerce Web site where the choice of a Web hosting service is one of the most important decisions that a Web merchant will have to make.

 Now much has been written on how to go about choosing a good Web hosting service, and I don't intend to repeat that advice here. However, an area that has not been adequately covered is what to do if you need to change your Web hosting service. 

Why would you want to change? Reasons for changing usually fall into one of three broad categories: either your store outgrows the features and facilities your current Web host offers, or the performance of your Web host becomes unsatisfactory, or the worst possible scenario -- your Web host goes out of business.

 For a brick and mortar business, the biggest tragedy is probably a fire -- few people realise how large a proportion of businesses fail to re-open after a major fire. I would equate the failure of a Web host for an e-commerce site to that of a fire for a traditional store, and would expect that a similarly high proportion of Web stores would go out of business as a result.

 I guess that most Web merchants are complacent, either assuming that they will never have to change hosts or that if they do it will be a straightforward matter. However, the truth is that changing your Web hosting service can be very difficult, particularly for e-commerce sites because the software the store runs on – whether CGI scripts or a fully-fledged Web commerce server – needs to be moved as well.

 So how do you go about changing to a new Web hosting service? Whilst it's impossible to give site-specific advice, there are three key things you will need:
 
 

1. A new Web hosting provider to move your site to
2. Access to your existing data, scripts etc.
3. The ability to move your domain name

As I said at the top of this article I don't have the space here to get in to the detail of how to choose a Web hosting service, but here are two useful articles from Ralph Wilson and Greg Sherwin that will help you.

Although these articles give a good overview on how to select a Web host for general business purposes, e-commerce sites need also to take in to account the type of shopping cart or Web commerce software they are running.
 

• If your store runs on CGI scripts you will need a Web hosting service that will allow you to run these, as well as providing you access to a SSL-enabled server. However, in most cases your scripts will need to be amended to reflect the new server environment, so if you don't have the skills to edit the scripts yourself you need to make sure you have someone available who can. 
• If you are running your store on a popular e-commerce package such as Intershop or Mercantec Softcart then, unless you wish to change the package you are using, you need to track down another ISP who supports this package. The easiest way to do this is to visit the software manufacturer's Web site and get a list of ISP's who they have partnered with.

 

 
 

If your current store is running on a single-source solution (such as Yahoo! Store) then you face the biggest challenge of all – for in addition to choosing a new Web hosting service you will also need to select and configure a new e-commerce package.