It took me a month, but I think I’ve gotten everything working again here. This is a test, of sorts.

It was a slow process. I’m going to write it all out in case I ever have to do it again, or if anyone else is trying to decipher this process without having any idea of what they are doing, like me.

How to transfer your domain, change webhosts, and add Cloudflare.

First I had to transfer my domain. I had to unlock it and get a code emailed to me, request it to be transferred on the new registrar, wait several days for a confirmation email, and then confirm the transfer.

Then I transferred my webhosting. I paid for my new cheaper hosting, requested a full cpanel backup from my old host (they charged $5 US for this), then requested the new host to upload it and set everything back up. Once everything was uploaded I changed the nameservers on my new webhost to the new nameservers, which also took a few days to update. I just kept pinging my website to see if the IP address had changed or not yet.

Everything was working fine at this point, and looked exactly the same as before, but I wanted to add SSL. I didn’t want to pay for it though, so I signed up for Cloudflare which offers free very basic SSL for personal sites. I just had to sign up and then change my nameservers again to the Cloudflare ones and turn on https.

Then my website briefly stopped working. But with help from Scott and an internet friend I figured out it was because Cloudflare was using the IP address from my old webhost. Once I updated that everything works again!

I hope I don’t have to do this again for a long time.