Have you ever moved a website from one server to another? It sucks! Even if all you have to do is change a DNS record, you have to wait for propagation. If you don’t double and triple check DNS zone files and IP addresses, you could be waiting for hours only to find that the change you made was an incorrect one.
Here are 3 extremely simple things you can start doing TODAY to assist with site migration. They are all done from the command line, but boy are they easy!
Perform a WHOIS Lookup
Perhaps the most obvious: Open up a terminal and type in whois tribeswell.com. Press return. You will see President Colin Clark’s contact information, but more importantly, you should be able to tell from the information displayed that tribeswell.com is registered through GoDaddy and is also using GoDaddy’s nameservers. Boom! You know that you need GoDaddy login credentials to modify the correct DNS zone file, and you don’t have to worry about reassigning nameservers because the GoDaddy nameservers are already in use.
Use the Dig Command
Now try typing in dig tribeswell.com. If you look at the answer section, you’ll see tribeswell.com’s host record, or the IP address of the server where the website is hosted. You can cross-reference this information with the DNS zone file you have access to before site migration to ensure you are looking at the correct one. After site migration, you can use dig to keep checking on propagation. If the new and correct IP address turns up as the host record, but your browser is not displaying the right thing, then you know something else is wrong.
Modify Your Local Hosts File
If you’re on a Linux machine (this includes Mac), you can type in sudo nano /etc/hosts. This will bring up your local hosts file in the terminal for you to edit. If you add a new line at the bottom that looks something like 12.34.56.78 example.com www.example.com, and then follow the on-screen instructions to save and exit the file, something marvelous will happen. Now, when you navigate to example.com in your browser, it will route you to 12.34.56.78. This allows you to test DNS changes, in an environment that no one else can see, without actually making DNS changes! Pretty sweet, huh?
Conclusion
Hopefully these 3 tricks will help you feel more confident when you have to perform your next site migration. They simply give you knowledge, and knowing is half the battle! If you know of any other (very simple) tricks, feel free to email zack@tribeswell.com.
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