Please Help! Trying to switch hosting plans!

First congratulations on your decision to move on from Godaddy hosting. Godaddy is good for name registrations. Not for hosting.

1. Zip the website folder. Download it to your computer.
2. Backup the databases. Download it to your computer.
3. Restore them on new host.

Simple to say, but hard to do it on Godaddy. If you have telnet access on Godaddy, you can do it fast.

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Hi "T".

It can be frustrating - that's for sure. For a wordpress site to work in a new location you will need two things.

1) The physical website (files, folders...etc)
2) The MySQL database.

The website is pretty stratight forward and it looks like you've done that part. Here's a video that might help you with adjusting the database to suit it's new location and surroundings.

Search and Replace in WordPress MySQL Database « Lorelle on WordPress

It was given to me when I bought a Wordpress site off Flippa and it saved me a lot of frustration.

If your sites are WordPress, you could use any one of the number of WordPress cloning scripts on the market (WPTwin, FlipMeClone, BackupBuddy, etc.) and back up the sites.

Then TEST the backup on a throwaway domain on the new host to make sure it deploys correctly...

Then point your nameserver to the new hosting, and deploy your backup.

HTML sites are a little easier. Download files. Upload to new host. Re-point nameservers.

I hope that helps shed some light! Let me know if I need to go into more detail.

wow this all seems so confusing and so easy to mess up... So far what I am understanding is that I need to zip my files and MYSQL and then download to my computer, then download them to bluehost. After this I need to transfer the domain correct?

I've been looking everywhere and there is really no info on how to do this, just bits and pieces everywhere.

We just gave you the big picture above so even though it seems confusing it's not really. Some of the details need careful execution and yes there are ways to stuff it up. Don't confuse simple with easy. Easy would be if there was a one click solution. Simple means it's very possible if you follow the steps.

You need to physically move your files onto your new server then you need to move your database to your new server (via import) and do some tweaks to it so it can "hook" up with the new location of your website.

True, it's not an entry level exercise but if you take it step by step and always use copies (always have one original copy of everything stashed away in case you stuff it up and have to start again) you'll be able to work it out. If not, just ask in this thread and we'll sort you out.

Again...

1) Copy the website across
2) Import your databse
3) Modify the database to connect to your websites new location (step by step instructions are in the video I just pasted for you above).

Godday is very slow in some cases if you host large sites. We need dedicated server but i agree with radhika about godaddy is best for domains because they have easy domain control panel with more features. Lunar pages, Blue host and host gator are right choice to move but careful while moving files to exact location. i like the method above that radhika told you.

Use the Duplicator plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/duplicator/

I suggest if your not technically up for the challenge you outsource the job. This is what I like about Hostgator though is their support on site transfers etc are very good

Good luck!

I believe that if you open a site at Hostgator they will do the transfer of domains for you (up to a certain number of sites. Not sure how many it is but I seem to remember it being something like 15 or 20. I could be wrong but worth contacting them about).

If you don't want to go that route then you can do the transfers thru FTP. Kind of time consuming but that is just the way it is. You can outsource it if you find someone you trust.

If you're sites are WordPress then I'd use a cloning script. Jason Fladlien has a good one I hear. I haven't used that one but I have used another one which has worked well for me many times called BlogZapper from Carl Ringwall.

Good luck.