how to swap domain names but keep website set up the same?

[billthecat]

Hello!

The title says it all: I went through a fair bit of work to set up a domain name on my account with a website, blog with database etc.

Now, I want to swap the domain name for a new one I just bought. I don't want to just alias it, as I want to use the original domain name for a different site.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance!

[Ray]

If you are using a shared hosting account, it really wouldn't be too difficult to do what you ask. It wouldn't on a VPS or dedicated server either, though I'm not going to say that the process would be universally similar.

Web content is really pretty easy. With shell access, you can copy or move data from one location to another. Simply setup the new domain, and then move the content to the new domain. Any paths referring to the locations of scripts would need to be updated.

Database content would not require any changes, as databases are not linked to a domain.

Email content would be the trickiest. If you have a lot of email accounts, all of the accounts would need to be recreated. Additionally, if you store email via IMAP or utilize primarily webmail, any settings or emails would need to be transferred, which you wouldn't have access for doing. You would need to contact support regarding this issue.

Unfortunately, there's not a tool in Hsphere which can automatically move domain names like this. It would need to be done manually, though it's not a complicated or difficult process.

[Karl]

You could also just symlink the data to the new directory without issue, I believe. Then you wouldn't need to move anything or change any absolute paths in scripts, etc.

[NickCatal]

Although you would still have the email problem

[Ray]

You could just symlink the directories, but the user suggested that they would want to use the old domain for something else. With that being the case, the symlinking could result in some issues at some point.

It's quite easy enough to move the data and change the paths in the scripts, so that would still be my suggestion.

[Mike Bailey]

If it's a feature in your control panel, you could just create a parked domain over the existing domain. That way, both would be accessible, and then you could just go into the settings for whatever scripts you're running, because they most likely have a domain name setting being used for cookies, and just change over the necessary settings. However, I'm not so sure how it would work out if you were to remove the original domain in your control panel, logic makes me think it should work out, however i'm not 100% on that.