Anyone ever moved to a new domain?

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "colin" == csabine  <csabine at ocdgb.jnj.com> writes:

    colin> I am moving my whole domain from one domain name to
    colin> another. I have already set up a new server and configured
    colin> the various DNS files.  I've never done this before, so if
    colin> anyone has any useful tips? And know of any gotchas?

It's hard to give any more than general advice. It all depends on
local circumstances like how much disruption is acceptable, how much
backwards compatibility is needed, is there a on-for-one mapping
between names in the old and new domains, etc, etc.

When I've done this in the past, I've created the new domain and made
reverse lookups for these hosts return the new domain names. Before
that, you make sure that things like hosts.equiv which "authenticate"
on the domain name have entries for the old and new names. Then
almost all the names in the old domain become CNAMEs for their
equivalents in the new domain. The next stage is the hard part. You
have to catch unwanted references to old names - say in email or URLs.
This is so you have some idea when the old names are no longer being
used and can be dropped from the old domain. Eventually the old domain
becomes empty and can be removed from the DNS, but this can take a
long time. And if the old domain had a web server that's been indexed
by search engines, you might never be able to get the old domain
deleted. This may or may not matter to you.

Another piece of advice I recommend is set deadlines: "in N
days/months time www.olddomain gets deleted" (Or whatever.) Without
this, applications and users may cling on to the old names long after
you want things moved to the new names and to be rid of those old ones.
A memo from the IT director can help here, especially if they are
demanding the change of domain name.