How To Sell Website

[TFD]

How do you go about selling an established website? I have a website that receives a significant amount of traffic, and has an interested buyer. Transferring the domain is no problem, but how do I move the website? Do they get a hosting account and then get a ZIP file of the old website? How would I do this with minimal downtime?

Note that the website is dynamic, and has MySQL databases.

 

[Alex P]

Keep the DNS pointed towards were its currently hosted, package everything into a rar file or zip including the mysql database, they then upload and set up the mysql and point towards new hosting (which is there hosting) what I do as much as possible anyway.

 

[nielsencl]

Good suggestions, but I have one more to add that may be what you need:

1) Download all the site files needed for the site.

2) Zip all the files and make sure you keep the same folder structure.

3) Use PHPAdmin and do a full SQL export of your database and download it as a zip file. (This assumes the only database and tables are for the site you are selling.)

4) In your hosting control panel under SQL databases, record the database name and user name(s). You can create new ones after the site is install, and should, but it may be quicker to just duplicate everything for the initial install.


The buyer then reverses the steps:

1) Unzip the files.
2) Upload to the host.
3) Create a database and user(s).
4) Use PHP admin to import the exported database.
5) Check database user passwords and config.php (if used).
6) Check for any needed file permissions like 666, 777, etc.
7) Test

I just wrote this down from memory, but I think it is correct.