Selling a website: what are the steps?

miked · Jan 22, 2009

Might seem strange that I've been around here for a while yet am posting in the newbie section, but it's something I've never done, and info on this would, I suspect, be useful for people new to domaining.

Simply, what is involved in selling a website as opposed to just a domain? How is the transfer of files effected? Is it difficult? Easy? What are the steps?

Cheers,
Mike.

Skinner · Jan 22, 2009

I always include a hosting account with it (paid for my be but includes in the sale price), and have my host clone the site out of my server/vps/reseller into its own right, and simply give them the new contract with the host directly.

As for PSD files and associated apps etc, I upload it into the webspace as well, so once they activate the new account the host does a final clone to get upto the minute copy and that goes live.

woopwoop · Jan 23, 2009

You could offer the buyer ftp details so they can copy the whole site into a directory on their computer and then upload the site to their new host)

You should probably make a back up of the site on your own website incase they mess it up and delete everything by accident - at least you'll have a contingency.

Once they have the files on their new server you can then change the DNS settings on your domain. So over the next day+ website visitors will start to land at the new server when they type in your websites name. However some users will still see your original hosting DNS until servers around the world reflect this change which can take a day or so.

So you should keep the website on your original server and the new server. If your site is a forum or somthing that users add to the content, you'll want to change the homepage on the original forum/website to say that "the website is closed temporarily for updates check back later" - this way over the next 24-ish hours, users will start to see the new server for the website as the dns propagate. And those landing at the old site wont be able to add content that wont be present on the new server.

If you have a static site without content added from users each day then you shouldn't put a notice saying that the site is temporarily down. You can just keep everything the same and even though some users will be accessing the original server and some accessing the new server (over the 24+ hours during propagation) this will mean that there's zero interruption in the site that users see.

After the DNS settings have changed you may be able to check your stats and see that you have no visitors on the old site which will mean that all visitors around the world are now going to the new server.

Note at this point the domain is still registered to you, but it is safe to now transfer the domain in the usual way depending on whether it is a .co.uk/.com

Usually when you transfer the domain the DNS settings will stay the same (although check this with your host and the destination host to make sure).

This is the way I've done it in the past and there probably are other ways to do this but I find this safer and there's less interruption for both site visitors and search engine spiders.

If your buyer is a first time buyer they might want the domain transfered first and quickly, but I think you can have more problems doing it that way, and more interruption to service.

Good luck - I hope I didn't miss anything !

miked · Jan 23, 2009

Thanks both of you for your answers, especially the very comprehensive latter. Good to see different approaches that can be used: allows any of us new to this to pick and choose.

Mike.

Skinner · Jan 23, 2009

There are more than one way to skin a cat, most the warnings in the above post are intrinsically solved with my method.

I'll give you an example on the backup point mentioned above an why Clone / Copy the site rather than give them the original. I once turned over control of a site along with the cpanel password and username, the buyer erased the whole site not sure of what they was doing. I believe they either FTP'd or went to the file manager and saw the folders like Public_html, etc, mail and didnt recognise them so proceeded to delete unneeded folders so they knew where they was upto.

Anyway one email (rather frantically) to me, and I was able to reclone the site from my backup, and as it was done server to server it took about 10 minutes to copy and be fixed.

So backups are always good in a sale