Changing to Another Partner

[c0re-wt5OEy]

Hi all,

We currently have our corporate website hosted with a Business Catalyst reseller. Unfortunately, we are in a position where there is now a conflict of interest with this reseller and thus would like to migrate onto BC hosted by Adobe directly and manage the site completely independently of this partner.

How is the best way to go about doing this migration? Is there any documentation on how to make this change? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Liam Dilley · Accepted solution]

You would need to register and become a partner or find a new partner.

Then you have to go through a transfer process with Business Catalyst - This is a requirement as they need to check you do not have any outstanding costs, invoices or legal disputes with the other partner. (This if for partner protection)

You need to follow this process:

Business Catalyst Help | Transferring Sites between Partners

[c0re-wt5OEy]

Hi Liam,

Thank you for your reply. I have read through the link you posted and created my own BC account. Within the "Fine print" section, I noticed the following:

Free Partner Portals

No live paying sites or trial sites can be moved into a Free Partner Portal. Once a Free Partner Portal is upgraded to a Standard or Premium status, a live or trial site move may then be requested at that time.

I assume this means that in order to initiate the transfer, we will need to upgrade the account I just created to some type of paid account. A few related questions:

1 - Does this mean that you need a minimum of 2 sites within the account? In other words, the reseller must have an account and the "client" being transferred must also have its own account?

2 - If so, is it sufficient to only purchase the cheapest "webHosting" package for the "reseller"? If not, should I purchase the package that I want our actual site to use?

3 - When the site does finally get transferred, I assume that it means that everything gets transferred including all the data, DNS records and package details? If not, is there anything that must be done manually? Will our nameservers change?

4 - During this process, is there any expected downtime, or is it seamless?

Thanks for your help!

[Lynda-S]

If I understand you correctly here are the answers you are looking for:

1) Until the most recent release (R202, released earlier today.) You had to be a paid partner to transfers sites to your portal. They automated the process and removed this restriction. Here is what BC said about the change:

For various reasons, partners and business owners are sometimes looking to transfer sites from a partners to another. So far, this request has been handled through our Accounts team, which had to communicate and get approvals from all the three parties involved: existing partner, new partner and business owner. With this release, we will be providing an admin user interface that will guide partners and site owners through the process without any interaction with the accounts team.

Please note that we haven't changed the conditions that need to be met when transferring a site. Also, the restrictions and limitations previously applicable to the manual move still apply to the automated process (site needs to have all invoices paid, existing payments and extra charges will not be transfered with the site).

Site transfer can be initiated from site's Admin > Site Settings > Site Management user interface, Site Transfer section. This section is only available to partners and to business owners that are directly paying the site to Adobe.

2) See point above. I believe you can transfer your site into your Partner Portal without any live sites.

3) It transfers everything over automatically. I forget off the top of my head if anything needs to be updated. The best thing to do is test your site once it is transfered. Your nameservers will not change.

4) Possibly. I transfered a site and I didn't see any downtime but you have to take a site live after you transfer it so there could be some downtime.

As a note your site must reside on the same Data Center. You cannot transfer your site to another DC. (Liam pointed that out in the blog post comments.)

[Liam Dilley]

Lynda - Please note that we haven't changed the conditions that need to be met when transferring a site. Also, the restrictions and limitations previously applicable to the manual move still apply to the automated process (site needs to have all invoices paid, existing payments and extra charges will not be transfered with the site).

[Lynda-S]

Hi Liam,

I asked in the comments about this and Carolyn (BC Employee) responded:

Hi Lynda, I believe the sites will be able to be transferred via this automation tool will allow the sites to be transferred to a Free Partner Portal now. Regards, Carolyn

[Liam Dilley]

Yep, but the same restrictions and process still applies. You have to validate the transfer between old and new partner, outstanding invoices, data centre restrictions and so on

[Lynda-S]

Yup. =>

[c0re-wt5OEy]

Okay, great. Thanks for the responses everyone. Guess we got lucky with R202 being released today

I was able to find the transfer page under Admin > Site Settings > Site Management. I will try the transfer tomorrow and post back the results.