Saving website info in preparation for moving website over to a new web hosting service

[zetter]

Will be moving my website over to another web hosting service soon. My new web host company told me to make sure I've made a copy of my site so that when I make the move over to a new company/new server, etc. all my Dreamweaver files and web pages will migrate smoothly and completely. I just want to double-check on how to do this. Any directions on how to do this? A video to recommend that watch? And once I've done this, what is a way to make sure I've done the process correctly? Would hate to inadvertantly sabotage the process of migrating from one company/server to another. 

[Ben M]

Dreamweaver works with local files that are then uploaded to your web server. If you are working like this today, then the files are already on your local computer and you can push them to your new host immediately as they are.

If your site uses a CMS or database, you may need to take a backup differently as there are HTML/CSS/etc files as well as database files that need to be moved from one server to the other. If this is the case, you need to investigate taking that backup now (whether manually, through the cms, etc.) and then I would recommend to start moving that to the new host so that you can test with a testing URL before pointing the actual domain to the new server.

[zetter]

Many thanks for this response, Ben. I do believe I fall into the first category. I have a folder on my desktop with all my dreamweaver pages. I think this should to the trick when navigating over to another web service. 

[Nancy OShea]

You should always maintain reliable backups of important computer files to guard against possible data loss. 

I use a dedicated backup/recovery service called Backblaze. But there are many others. Each night my computer files are automatically backed up to the cloud for safe keeping.