Hi,

I've got a website and I'm looking at transferring hosts. My website is quite large and contains a LOT of files including some forums. Obviously, if I just download the site to my hard drive and then upload to my new host I'll lose all my file permissions. After doing a bit of digging on this problem, and an unsuccessful attempt at using CuteFTP to do a site-to-site transfer, I've found out that if I create a "tar.gz" file of my website, download this to my hard drive, upload to my new host and "untar" the file, then all the permissions should be preserved.

My questions are these...

Is this the correct way to tackle this problem?
I've been told that to create a "tar.gz" file I'll need SSH access, is this correct or is there an FTP client that allows you to drag and drop files into it and then creates the tar.gz file for you?
Assuming I do need to use SSH (and please forgive my ignorance on this) how do I do it.. by that I mean, is there a windows SSH client that allows you to talk direct to the server, what the best way of SSH'ing?
Another question (I know I know, I'm thick as an elephant sandwich).. what commands would I need to type into SSH in order to tar up all my cgi-bin and public_html folders? (I understand if this question is a bit like me saying "how do I fix my car"... again, apologies for my ignorance in these matters)

And last, but not least...
Once I've got the tar file, and uploaded to my new host, how do I 'untar" it in order to recreate my website on my new host?

I would really appreciate anyone giving me any info on one or all of these questions...

Thanks for your help

Cheers

JT ;)

hi Johnny.

About perrmission: yes you right, tar default save files permission.

About possibility remote command running through ftp i am not sure because ftp means file transfer protocol ;-)

In win, i prefer to use PuTTY as ssh client (another i know is SecureCRT) and for files transfering i use pscp (developed by putty team)

Finally about gzip/gunzip and tar command: i afrraid to produce offtopic, look in mans about this or write me.