Move your website to Sheernox

There are two ways to bring a website from another host: let the Sheernox team move it for you, or move it yourself. Either way, your site keeps running at the old host until you point the domain to Sheernox, so visitors see no gap.

Ask us to move it for you

Migration is free. Open a ticket and tell us:

which websites, email accounts and databases you want moved
where they are hosted now

The team replies with what they need from you and lets you know when everything is ready to check. Do not change your domain’s nameservers until the team tells you to. You can preview the site in the meantime.

Move it yourself

Add the website in the control panel with Start from scratch, using the same domain.
Files: download your site’s files from the old host, usually as a .zip. Upload the .zip to public_html with File Manager and select Uncompress, or upload the files with SFTP.
Databases: export each database from the old host as a .sql file. Create a database and user here, then use Import SQL file on the database’s Manage page.
Settings: update your site’s configuration file with the new database name, username and password. For WordPress, that is wp-config.php; the database host is localhost.
Email: create the same email addresses. To bring old messages across, add both the old and the new mailbox to a mail app such as Thunderbird and drag the folders from one to the other.
Preview the site, then point your domain to Sheernox.

From another host that uses Enhance

If your old host also uses the Enhance control panel, download a full backup of the website there. In the Sheernox control panel, open the new website and select Upload backup in Quick links to import its files, databases and email in one go.

The Upload backup dialog. It asks for an Enhance backup in tar.gz format, says all files, databases and emails will be imported and will overwrite existing data, and warns that the upload starts as soon as a file is selected.

Preview the site before you switch

You can see the site on Sheernox before your domain points here, by telling your own computer to look for the domain at the Sheernox server. Nobody else is affected.

The At a glance panel on a website's overview, listing the web server, home folder, PHP version, the website's IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, the database and mail IP addresses and the date the site was created. The addresses are hidden in this example.

On the website’s overview, find At a glance and copy the website’s IPV4 ADDRESS.
Open your computer’s hosts file as an administrator:
- Windows: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, in Notepad opened with Run as administrator.
- macOS and Linux: /etc/hosts, for example with sudo nano /etc/hosts in a terminal.
Add a line with the address, then your domain with and without www, and save:
```
203.0.113.10  example.com www.example.com
```
Use your own address and domain instead of the example values.
Restart your browser and visit your domain. Click through the important pages, forms and logins.
Remove the line again when you are done, or your computer keeps showing the Sheernox copy after the switch, even if something changes.

The browser may warn that the connection is not secure while you preview. That is expected: the free SSL certificate can only be issued once the domain points to Sheernox.

Checks after the move

After you change the nameservers and the change has spread:

SSL: the site loads over https:// with a padlock. If not, see Secure a website with SSL and HTTPS.
Pages and forms: important pages load, contact forms send, and you can sign in to the admin area.
Email: send a message to and from each mailbox, and update your mail apps and phones with the new settings.
DNS records: any records from the old host that other services need, such as verification TXT records, exist in DNS records.
Scheduled tasks: recreate any cron jobs the site relied on.

Keep the old hosting for a few days until you are sure everything works, then cancel it.