Your website’s hosting will be migrated to Pantheon.

 

Will there be any site downtime?

Sites will be in read-only mode for 15-60 minutes while they are actively being migrated.

• Your site will be available to the public, except that webforms will be temporarily unavailable. 
• No edits will be possible during the upgrade. 
• A message will display on webforms and edit pages advising that they will be available again once the upgrade is complete.

 

What action is required?

Pre-migration:

• No action is required now.
• If you are not sure who your domain provider is (ex: Network Solutions, GoDaddy, etc.), or what your username/password are for your account, now’s a good time to start tracking that down.
  • Note: DD hosts your website, but your domain (ex: sitename.com) is hosted by your domain provider/registrar (the company where you purchased/renew your domain).
  • No idea who your domain provider is? See who is listed as the Registrar when you enter your domain in this search.

Post-migration:

• A week or two after your site is migrated, you’ll receive a support ticket email—or see a popup notification on your site—with details about the new DNS records. 
• You/your IT team will need to update the DNS records on file with your domain provider (or we’re happy to help with this process if you don’t have an IT team). 
• Want to learn more? See the DNS Change FAQs.

 

How will we know when our upgrade will take place?

Due to the variable nature of how long each upgrade takes, we do not have specific upgrade dates/times for each site.

Your editors/admins will see a series of popup notifications with details about the upgrade timing:

• 30 minutes prior to the migration (for migrations between 8:00am-6:00pm Pacific)
• 5 minutes prior to the migration (for all migrations)
• When the migration begins
• When the migration is complete

Some upgrades will take place overnight, in which case you’ll probably just see the popup advising that the migration is complete!

Site visitors will not be aware that a migration is in process, unless they need to submit a webform. If there is a specific day that would be particularly bad for your webforms to be unavailable for 15-60 minutes, please submit a support ticket to let us know.

If you need to be able to edit your site immediately during the upgrade due to an (unrelated!) emergency in your organization, we can halt the migration-in-progress.

• Option 1: Submit an Urgent support ticket so we can advise how much time is remaining in the migration and/or halt the process.
  • Important: Emails to support@digitaldeployment.com default to Low priority and we do not see them immediately.
  • Please submit any Urgent tickets via the support system or the Support tab on the left-side of your site so that we see the notification right away and can help you quickly! 
• Option 2: While the migration is in progress, we will provide a popup with instructions on how a site/system admin will have the ability to immediately stop the migration and allow edits on your site.

 

How can we test the upgraded site before it goes live?

Our developers will go through a quality assurance checklist on your site before finalizing the migration. If your site has special functionality however, such as a single sign-on or third-party integration, it would be great to have you test it as well.  

If you would like to test your site in its new hosting environment, please submit a support ticket with a request for a test link and we’ll get one sent your way!

 

How can we learn more?

For details on the strategy and reasoning behind the upgrade to Pantheon, please read this press release or watch this webinar.