Can I move my site from webhostingforstudents once I move on from treehouse?

Kate, your question is a valid one I encountered when I first started out building websites. Web Hosting for Students is a great first option when you are starting out, and one that I'd recommend because it'll only cost you about $22/year with the Treehouse discount. By comparison, other decent hosting providers will cost anywhere from $5-$30/month depending on your needs.

To address your fear with changing hosting companies, know that it's fairly easy to move your domains from provider to provider. To make it even easier I'd say to purchase your domain names through a separate provider, like Namecheap.com and then sign up for hosting through Web Hosting For Students. You can easily redirect the domain to Web Hosting for Students and then if your needs change down the road, you can simply reroute your domain to different hosting service.

You won't lose any of your work when moving to a new hosting provider as you'll be able to download your site completely from WHFS and upload it to the new host. Easy as pie! Good luck and let me know if you need additional info!

Hi Kate,

at the risk of elevating your fears or being on the negative, there are pitfalls to watch out for. It's not always fluffy in the cloud, so to speak.

Too often people use a company that says "Host your site with us, we offer a free domain" only to find out after registering your favorite domain name, you are now stuck with their hosting unless you pay the equivalent of a years hosting fees to have them release the domain, which is not to say that all free deals are trickery but rather, it's easy to find a cheap deal and get coerced by thinking you found a bargain, then finding out about the fine print when it's too late. The above mentioned hosting companies are well known and have respectful changes for most, if not all their services however, I have had issues with a highly respected domain registrar not allowing a friend to transfer his domain ownership to me with the excuse "we can not transfer the domain to Australia" which was ridiculous as we were requesting a transfer to Namecheap, which is a US co. Some domain hosts will charge upwards of $70 to transfer a domain once registered with them so it's always worth checking what the cost and terms of transferring a domain are before registering them, with any host.

For me, usability and speed are the most important attributes to consider when selecting a host, some web hosts can be convoluted and just plain unintuitive, that being said, most good companies have trial periods to give you a chance to evaluate them and I suggest you take advantage of this. ; )

- JH

How can I transfer my domain from 'Web Hosting for Students' to Route 53 for Amazon? I am running a larger application. Amazon is saying i need to unlock my domain, how do I do that?

'Reason: Your current registrar is preventing the domain from being transferred. Confirm that the domain is unlocked. If so, contact your registrar for more information.

To transfer the domain to Route 53 please ensure the following: Unlock the domain so it can be transferred. Disable domain privacy for the domain so we can get your contact information. Ensure the registrant contact for the domain has a valid email address. Get an authorization code for the domain (Not required for certain TLDs). If you have done the above already, please note that it may take some time for the changes to propagate.'

Hi Mitchel,

you might need to email Web Hosting for Students to ask them what is the process to unlock your domain, I'm sure they will help you.