I am not happy with my present web hosting. Can I change it?

Only the lucky few have had good experiences with their web hosts throughout. I've had my share of horror stories and that is why I wrote these articles so that you would not make the same mistakes.

Any way, if you want to change your web hosting company, you can do so without problems!

However, you need to ensure that the domain name belongs to you and not to the web hosting company. This is true only if you have bought the domain name and hosting together as a package from one company. There have been several cases of unscrupulous companies who lured customers with the promise of free domain name that never belonged to the them!

How do you check if the domain name belongs to you?

The unfailing method is to do a WHOIS for the domain name. This is a really a simple process. You enter your domain name and the WHOIS results will provide a lot of information pertaining to that domain name such as when it was booked, where it is hosted, who owns it etc. What you should be looking out for are the contacts for the domain name.

Each domain name is associated with three contacts that determine how the domain name is managed - Administrative contact, Billing contact and Technical contact. If you see your name in the administrative contact, you are safe. Most probably the billing contact for the domain name would also belong to you. However, the technical contact might be of the web hosting company or of the domain registrar. This is fine. As long as you have the administrative contact, you can change the others.

To quickly find the details of your domain use the WHOIS at Network Solutions. While you are at it, it is a good idea to also check if you are still using the email address displayed in the WHOIS information. If not, revive that email address. Else you would need to change it using your administrative right which brings us to the next point.

Make sure you have the username and password for your domain name account

When you bought the domain from a registrar, you would have created an account with the company and they would have sent you a username and password. This is very important information. Why? Because with it you can manage your domain name - change contact information, email and postal address, etc. This account might be the same as your web hosting account if you have purchase the domain name and web hosting from one company.

Shifting to a new web hosting server

When your website from one company's hosting server to another, you need to change certain parameters associated with your domain name so that it points to the new web server. These are the Domain Name Server (DNS) entries. For instance, your domain might be pointing to the web hosting servers of company X. When you want to change to company Y and purchase hosting from them, they would inform you of their name servers. You now have to login at your domain administrative account and change the DNS associated with your domain name to the new ones.

For step-by-step instructions on how to change your web hosting server, please refer How do I change my web hosting server.