A very important IF.

To the more experienced -

If I should decide for some reason to change my Internet Supplier,
what can I do, or must I do, or what should a new supplier do, to
ensure that my website will remain available to the many regular (200
world-wide visits per day) and other users?

Or will the website automatically remain available, uninterupted?

Or am I inevitably, perpetually tied to my present Internet supplier.

Should my website be lost, I am unable to reconstruct it.

Internet and Windows-wise I am a novice. So please reply in plain
English without abbreviations or technical jargon.

Thank you all very much.

For anyone sufficiently interested, my website address is -

http://www.btinternet.com/~g4fgq.regp
----
Old Reg, Working for Charity, Radio Amateur, call sign G4FGQ.

PS. There is a photograph available in my website. But the
importance of this message lies in the answers to my questions above.
==========================================

Reg Edwards <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> To the more experienced -
>
> If I should decide for some reason to change my Internet Supplier,
> what can I do, or must I do, or what should a new supplier do, to
> ensure that my website will remain available to the many regular (200
> world-wide visits per day) and other users?
>
> Or will the website automatically remain available, uninterupted?
>
> Or am I inevitably, perpetually tied to my present Internet supplier.
>
> Should my website be lost, I am unable to reconstruct it.

Read the contract with BT carefully.
You will find that they make no promises to keep it intact, and not
delete it because the admin needed more space for his wedding video.

> Internet and Windows-wise I am a novice. So please reply in plain
> English without abbreviations or technical jargon.
>
You need to learn how to back up and restore your websirte.
> Thank you all very much.
>
> For anyone sufficiently interested, my website address is -
>
> http://www.btinternet.com/~g4fgq.regp

The answer to the question is in that last line.

On 9-Jan-2006, Ian Stirling <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> > Internet and Windows-wise I am a novice. So please reply in plain
> > English without abbreviations or technical jargon.

If you have webspace, then you access it to upload
changes, to do this you obviously have an ftp program,
this works both ways, so you can also download the
whole site.
I can't understand why you would want to do this,
because you already have a local copy, otherwise
you wouldn't have been able to upload or mainhtain
the website in the first place.
You do have a username and password ?????
Websites/domains have a tag holder, which you
can with a bit of trouble locate, then you find
someone else to host it.
Then get the first tag holders permission for
the transfer out, and the new ISP to arrange
the transfer in, they agree the transfer
between them, and you upload the site
to the new ISP.
If you don't know how to upload and
download I don't see how you can contemplate
such a move.

In article <dpuhfe$1uh$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Reg Edwards <g4fgq,regp@ZZZbtinternet,com> wrote:
>
>To the more experienced -
>
>If I should decide for some reason to change my Internet Supplier,
>what can I do, or must I do, or what should a new supplier do, to
>ensure that my website will remain available to the many regular (200
>world-wide visits per day) and other users?
>
>Or will the website automatically remain available, uninterupted?
>
>Or am I inevitably, perpetually tied to my present Internet supplier.
>
>Should my website be lost, I am unable to reconstruct it.
>
>Internet and Windows-wise I am a novice. So please reply in plain
>English without abbreviations or technical jargon.

You need to make the effort to separate your personal internet
connectivity from your website and possibly even email. In this day and
age, there is no techical reason to put all your eggs in one basket.

Now, this will cost you some more money and you may well be paying
different people, but if the website is valuable to you, then what's
it worth to keep it going?

Start by buying your own domain (and even at this stage, you can
separate who you buy the domain from and who you host the web site with -
although some registrars are quite blinkererd and will insist on doing
the hosting - sometimes it can work out easier if you don't know much
about DNS though)

Then, when you have your own domain name and web-space for it, upload
your web-site to it, and when you are happy, you can change the front-page
of your existing site to one of those "We've moved, please wait a second
while we redirect you - update your bookmarks" type messages, and
then redirect them to the new site. In all email and correspondance,
put the URL of your web-site in your signature, so ensuring it gets a
wide coverage.

Now your web-site is free of your connectivity ISP, and when BT's servers
croak, your website will still be running.

You could leave it this way for a few months to be sure that most people
are going to the new site, then move from BT to another connectivity
ISP and your web-site will still be there.

>Thank you all very much.

If you want more help, more details and advice, and don't mind paying
a small amount for this, get in-touch by email, but there are 100's if
not 1000s of companies & people like myself who do independant hosting.

For am example of some other companies in the UK, look at

http://www.gradwell.net/
http://www.hostroute.com/

Gordon

Hi Reg

I have looked up your web site and checked www.g4fgq.com this address points
to the one that you gave at btinternet. As it appears that you own
www.g4fgq.com why not ask the chaps at Blue Sky Technologies Ltd to look
into this for you, with a view to have your own web space separate from that
provided by your Internet Supplier. It would be nicer to use the dot com
address as well.

If you get stuck and don't mind covering my costs, drop me an email from our
contact page at www.hydrogene.co.uk

John DH

> Should my website be lost, I am unable to reconstruct it.

There are programs available that will follow every link on a website
and download the contents to your HD - failing all else, that may be
an option.

All you need to do then is re-upload it to whatever new webspace you
get (as long as the links in the original html are not hard-coded to
the previous webspace) and they`re not reliant on any special config
at the host end (scripting / php etc)

--
Please add the word "newsgroup" in the subject line of personal emails
**** My email address includes "ngspamtrap" and "@btinternet.com" ****

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>
> On 9-Jan-2006, Ian Stirling <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> > > Internet and Windows-wise I am a novice. So please reply in plain
> > > English without abbreviations or technical jargon.
>
> If you have webspace, then you access it to upload
> changes, to do this you obviously have an ftp program,
> this works both ways, so you can also download the
> whole site.

This (ftp) isn't necessarily the case, there are two other quite likely
possibilities (and presumably others I haven't thought of):-

The OP may have a set up where he hosts his web site on his home
machine and uses web forwarding and/or a static IP address.

He may also have shell access to the hosting service and do all
his Web site building and design on the system where it is hosted.

--
Chris Green

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 01:09:20 -0000, in uk.telecom.broadband , Colin
Wilson <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>> Should my website be lost, I am unable to reconstruct it.
>
>There are programs available that will follow every link on a website
>and download the contents to your HD

wget. Freeware, excellent tool. Needs training to avoid following
links off site, and recursing.

Mark McIntyre
--

Reg Edwards wrote:

> If I should decide for some reason to change my Internet Supplier,
> what can I do, or must I do, or what should a new supplier do, to
> ensure that my website will remain available to the many regular
> (200 world-wide visits per day) and other users?

The link you gave suggests it is hosted with BT Internet, or another
part of BT (sorry, it's years since I used them for internet access)
but the way they (used to) work was that updates to the website were
only possible from a dial-up/ADSL connection with them, so changing,
you'll lose that account and webspace most likely (someone will come
in and explain about using a dial-up 0845 account to keep that space
active, but you might still do better to spend a period of time with
users switching to an alternative website - www.g4fgq.org (.org.uk),
or possibly something similar (I've registered .info as well for the
domains I am using, if possible). .com, .org, .net, .info are quite
cheap these days - for domain renewals it should cost less than 5 or
6 pounds a year (if you are willing to use an American/Canadian firm
to do this... $6.99, 7.99, 8.99 are not uncommon) and registrations
of unused domains can be had for as little as US$ 5.90 for 2 years.

Someone has mentioned oneandone.co.uk for .co.uk or .org.uk at ~1.99
a year (** PLUS VAT **) but generally the price you see is the price
you pay to North American firms (I did however see one which had the
low fee of $3.99 and then some additional $6.00, which I found quite
misleading - however such 'sting in the tail' firms are fairly rare,
in my experience).

> Or will the website automatically remain available, uninterupted?

There's a chance, if you switch to a PAYG dial-up account and use it
from time to time to keep the PAYG account running, but you would be
best checking with other users, within the BTinternet news groups.

> Or am I inevitably, perpetually tied to my present Internet supplier.

I should hope not! You see lots of others switching from ISP to ISP
and there's no straitjacket in view around here!

> Should my website be lost, I am unable to reconstruct it.

How so ? You uploaded web pages and images and files, and you could
surely download them again, and get some friends to do the same, for
you to have at least 2 backup copies of your current site.

> Internet and Windows-wise I am a novice. So please reply in plain
> English without abbreviations or technical jargon.

> http://www.btinternet.com/~g4fgq.regp

OK, so you have posted a web link which clearly shows the ISP and is
going to depend (as it stands) on a continued relationship with that
ISP, but that could easily be avoided if you wish, simply using your
own domain name, either using web redirection from your registration
firm, if they offer it, or using a free service at www.ZoneEdit.com,
which can also do forwarding of any e-mail sent to your domain.

If you switch to a PAYG account, and put a comment on these existing
pages that access should be made via www.yourdomain.org (there are a
few ways you could send viewers directly, but it is better if you do
put comments onto the website, and then Google could hold a copy, or
other search engines might follow the link), then later, you will be
able to stop dialling into BTinternet and allow the account to die.

ZoneEdit.com is free, and there are fairly cheap registration firms,
such as Hostway.com (NB don't visit their .co.uk site, as it is much
more costly). I consider UK firms charging more than about a tenner
a year (for registration only) of .com / .org / etc to be expensive.

I am sure you could find someone at your local radio/computer clubs,
who could assist with (a) copying your files/pages off your existing
website, (b) assist with switching ISP, and (c) help set up a domain
and redirection of web/mail to use your next ISP's service.


*** Later... I see you have a .com

I think if you have paid 29.xx +VAT but don't get webspace, then you
should seriously consider a change of registration firm. It is easy
enough to get independent hosting and register a domain for half the
cost, if you go to www.nameroute.com ($15 is under a tenner, whilst
the .co.uk site charges similar numbers of pounds, but part of their
charges will be the VAT, of course, include on fees they show.)

When you switch, please tell your current firm why you are moving as
it might get them to review their prices - I know VAT adds to costs,
but so many of these firms still charge high prices for handling any
..com style domains. There are some cheaper prices around but rather
than confuse matters, I've suggested only a few services which I can
happily recommend from having used them myself. Good luck... Peter.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> Then get the first tag holders permission for the transfer

Only Nominet has the IPSTAG setup. With some top level domains
(eg .info) you might need to get a code from your registrar and
when you transfer to another firm, that code is requested which
then confirms you are the legitimate registrant. The method is
used because in the past some fraudulent transfers on a massive
scale took place. With .com and some TLDs, you use your firm's
'lock' facility to cause a rejection of any attempt to transfer
the domain away. Also, whereas a transfer of a UK domain might
have a 'transfer out' fee, and a 'transfer in' fee, your expiry
date doesn't change. With most TLDs, a transfer has a fee, but
also adds an extra year to the expiry date, so you can switch a
domain to someone charging less, and get an extra year (there's
a transfer in fee of $8.95 at Dotster.com, but < $7 at Go Daddy
or RegisterFly [and RF often reduce transfers below $6, too]).