We like to set up the new account and transfer the old site into the new account before we change the DNS settings. Unfortunately, Hostgator does not allow Akeeba's Site Trasnfer Wizard to funstion without an actual domain name on the new account.
Akeebabackup.com creates the "must have" components for Joomla websites. We always install Akeeba Backup and Admin Tools on ALL joomla sites.
Modernmagic hosts all their own accounts on Hostgator.com
We like to set up the new account and transfer the old site into the new account before we change the DNS settings. Unfortunately, Hostgator does not allow Akeeba's Site Transfer Wizard to function without an actual domain name on the new account. We tried ip/~username but it will not work. With the advise of Nicolas at akeebabackup.com we were successful with the following method.
- Use or purchase a domain name that you can use for this method. Heretofore called "unuseddomain.com"
- Change unuseddomain.com DNS settings to your reseller account. Usually this is ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com
- login to your reseller account and create a new account with unuseddomain.com as it's primary domain.
- open the Cpanel for the new account and create a database and user. Make sure to add the user to the database and give all privileges to the DB.
- login to your joomla backend and start the components/akeeba backup/Site Transfer Wizard
- In Step 2 set the Host Name and URL of site to unuseddomain.com (assuming your new account's name in the reseller account does not have www.) username and password.
- Click Next
- Click "Begin the site transfer"
- If all goes well a new window will open with the Akeeba Backup Installer
- When it gets to the database screen, type in the new information from step 3 above.
- On the "site info" screen, you can type in the actual domain for the site instead of the unuseddomain.com
- On the next screen click the "remove the installation directory"
- enjoy your newly transferred site!
You can always use a regular archiver engine (e.g. JPA) and the "Upload to Remote FTP" data processing engine. This uploads a full archive to the remote site. You just upload Kickstart to it and you can perform the restoration normally. It's more robust and incredibly faster than STW/DirectFTP as we have to transfer a handful of large archive files instead of several thousand small files. The only drawback is that you need twice the disk space on the remote site to restore your site.
Once again I highly recommend all joomla site use Akeeba Backup and Admin Tools from akeebabackup.com