Hosting my first 2 websites next week, seeking your advice.

[gamrcobe]

I'm excited and anxious at the same time. I been doing tons of reading on bluehost and here to get ready for a smooth transition. One of the sites I created is to replace a customers old site. They already own their domain name, registered with Network Solutions. I have found that their hosting is thru Mpower. They have emails for their employees all setup.

Here is what I expect to do next week:

1) Open an account at bluehost, duh.
2) Upload my new site files (using Rapidweaver)
3) Create/setup all email accounts
4) Contact Network Solutions and change the name servers to bluehost's
5) Wait 24-48 hrs for changes to propagate.
6) Test site and emails to check that everything works good.
7) Contact Mpower and close hosting account with them.


Anything missing from this list?

Do I need to go into Mpower admin account and manually delete any old site files before I close the account?

Also I have only one Contact form page in the new site. Is there any major setup of php that needs to be done in cPanel?

I'm sure I'll have more Q's as I dig into the details of getting everything to work, just wanted to pick your brains on some of this, as I'm just learning this side of web development.

Thanks in advance,


Jacob.

[redsox9]

It looks as though you have the process in place to make your transition as smooth as possible.


Do I need to go into Mpower admin account and manually delete any old site files before I close the account?

You shouldn't need to do this. Since the site will now point to the BH servers rather than the Mpower servers, anything posted to the latter will not appear.


Also I have only one Contact form page in the new site. Is there any major setup of php that needs to be done in cPanel?

How is the contact form executed, that is, what script is used to process the form? Having multiple contact forms depends on the purpose of having them. For example, there might be one for general contact, another for service support, another for sales, etc. It all depends on what they require.

[gamrcobe]

How is the contact form executed, that is, what script is used to process the form? Having multiple contact forms depends on the purpose of having them. For example, there might be one for general contact, another for service support, another for sales, etc. It all depends on what they require.

It's a Rapidweaver Contact page using php. Simple contact us form, (Name, email, subject, etc.) with options for choosing some appointment times for service. My client wants to keep the info in a database in addition to receiving the emails so they can respond to there customer.

There's no code involved on the rapidweaver side, what I'm not sure of is which program to use in the cPanel to use for setting this up.

Any experience on the matter would be a great help. Thanks,

Jacob.

[redsox9]

It isn't a matter of using one program versus another. The question is whether Rapidweaver performs each of the following two functions: (a) create an email from the data entered into the form, and (b) saves this information into a database. (FYI, I am not familiar with Rapidweaver).

Through SimpleScripts, I found phpFormGenerator. That appears to accomplish both of those tasks.