Melbourne Content Management and Flash developers

1. Explain to the client that the their current website is hosted at another company. In order to make the new website we have built live we will need to know the login details for the domain management of

website.com
website.com.au
etc

Whichever domains they need hosted.

2. Next we need to determine whether its worth it for this client to recieve email from our server. This will not be possible if they have an in house or custom mail server. If they do not have a mail server in house we can host email. The advantage to hosting mail is cost. You should tell the client that hosting email on our server means:

• If we host email, any relationships to other persons/companies who have been hosting their email will be terminated. Sometimes clients dont want to change because email is very important and they have been happy with a previous provider.
• However hosting with us may be cheaper (2010, $555 per year for website and 4 email accounts)

3. If you are not going to use the Yart server for email hosting, you need to get the mail server's IP from http://www.mxtoolbox.com/

4. You need to cnfigure the Yart Server DNS for the client. This is covered in http://www.yart.com.au/Resources/General-Work-Instructions/Yart-Server.aspx - How To Make A Website Live. Read this carefully, if one tiny setting is incorrect here, things wont work.The settings are different for these two cases:

• We host website and email
• We host website but not email

5. If we are hosting email, you need to find out all email addresses in the company:

martin@
paula@

6. The website launch process will be:

• Get the existing domain hosting details and save them in case you have to revert.
  
• On an agreed day we will launch the new website at a certain time
• Prior to launch, send them details of how they should configure the email addresses they will need
• See sample email below
• Set up the pop accounts. Limit them to 400Mb each on the Yart d drive.
  
• Tell them that they should not apply these details until their email program informs them of an error.
  
• At the agreed time, take note of their current name servers and change them to ours
• Read How To Make A Website Live here
  
• Check the site is up, this should take 15 minutes to 1 hour max.
• Test a dummy email address at Yart can recieve emails.
• Call the client and inform them they can apply the new email details.

Sample Email For Changing Emails

Hi Rod,

My name is Hardi and I will be helping you with your email transfer today.

When I hear back from you we will make mail.adcore.com.au the new mail server. Within 15 minutes to 2 hours, you will find your current email program will say it can’t connect to the server. At that time, apply the changes to rod@adcore.com.au

Save your old details as well.

Check that rod@adcore.com.au can send and is receiving mail.

Don’t not apply the other email accounts until this has been confirmed. Save details for old accounts prior to making changes.

Make sure you also set your email to delete mail from the server after it has been downloaded.

Please call me if you have any questions.

Redirecting Email To An Existing Email Server

If the client has an email server that will be continue to be used, you need to redirect email to that server.

This can be done is two ways.

If the domain management utility has the ability to modify MX records, perhaps it can be done there (not sure how though!).

Otherwise, it can be done like this for domains managed at Blue Central. The Yart server is probably similar although at the time of writing, we hadn't done this yet.

To redirect email to an existing mail server once primary and secondary DNS records point to:

ns1.ozhosting.com and
ns2.ozhosting.com

Do something like this in the DNS setup

Add an A record, give it a capitalised name with no underscores and the IP of the mail server.
Modify the MX record with a MISC of 10. Change its value to the Name created.

Google Site Search

If the site has Google site search, change the configuration for Google search to use the new URL. Instead of Google searching the staging site:

http://cancertrialsaustraliacom.ozstaging.com

it should be searching:

http://cancertrialsaustralia.com

See this.