Change is a big deal! Humans are creatures of comfort! Moving out of your comfort zone will always present challenges!

This quick example of presents a scenario that is becoming very common. Websites don’t think for themeselves, business owners do! And they are moving their websites to AWS and other fast hosting networks to stay ahead. A reminder of reasons for moving to AWS here.

Laravel is an awesome PHP framework to build a website that requires special features. But there are also frameworks available with ready made plugins, eg WordPress. The Laravel website we are migrating to WordPress is for 1 main reason. It is far easier to add ecommerce features to WordPress and migrate framework than build an ecommerce function into Laravel. Yes there are ecommerce libraries available for Laravel but it is quicker and cost effective to use WordPress + Woocommerce. There are other reasons but put simply this is a simple website with few functions to replicate.

Migrating hosting from a shared server to AWS was a no brainer! We are after all future proofing the website and the growth of the business. Which is primarily via the website so why would you intentionally hinder progress by hosting it on a shared virtual server.

The main challenge for any migration is avoiding any downtime. This challenge is overcome by ensuring DNS setting are preset before switching nameservers. This bit is slightly complicated if the nameservers stay the same! As the DNS will have to be changed at the time of switching from current server to new AWS server. Worse case scenario is the propogation (ISP’s refreshing DNS) takes 30 mins or so. Whilst ISP’s state 24-48 for full propogation, this claim is based on global DNS updates. Most UK websites and ISP’s refresh very DNS quickly.