How to Test Your Website Post-Migration

You’ve made the decision to move to Kualo — and we’re thrilled to have you. 

Your site’s now hanging out on our supercharged servers, sipping clean, green energy, and stretching its legs in a spacious new home. It’s itching to show off how blazingly fast it can be — faster page loads, snappier interactions, fewer frustrated visitors. You’re probably tempted to flip the DNS switch right now and bask in the glory.

Hold that thought. 🛑

Before you go live, there’s one absolutely critical thing to do:

👉 Test. Everything.

Think of it like this: you’ve just moved into a new house. The boxes are in, the sofa’s in place, and the kettle’s boiling. But before you invite everyone over for the housewarming, you might want to check that the toilet flushes, the Wi-Fi works, and there’s not a family of squirrels living in the attic.

Same goes for your site. There’s a checklist of things you’ll want to poke, prod, and tick off before the world sees it. Especially if you sell things. Or rely on email. Or have any kind of form that does stuff.

This guide walks you through how to preview your site on our servers before you update DNS, what exactly to test (and why), and how to confidently make the switch once you’re sure everything’s humming.

🔍 Step 1: Access Your Website Without Changing DNS

To test your site before you “go live,” you’ll need a way to view it on the new server without updating your domain’s DNS yet. You have two options:

• Using your computer’s hosts file – ✅ Best for accuracy, but a little techy
  Read how to do this →
• Using SkipDNS – 👶 Easier, but a little slower as traffic has to pass through their servers first so you can see it
  Read how to do this →

✅ Your Post-Migration Testing Checklist

🧭 1. Access the Admin Area

Start by logging into your CMS or admin backend (e.g. WordPress, Magento, Joomla):

• Does the login work?
• Can you update content or settings?
• Do admin features behave as expected?

🔍 2. Browse Your Site Like a Visitor

Click around and make sure everything works:

• Menus, buttons, links
• Contact forms, search bars, widgets
• Page layouts and images

Tip: Open a few pages in incognito/private mode to spot caching issues.

🛒 3. If You’re Running an Online Store…

Walk through a full test purchase:

• Search for and add products to the cart
• Checkout and complete a test order
• Check emails are received (order confirmation, etc.)

Note: If your payment gateways or APIs require IP whitelisting, they may not work until you update those settings. We can provide your server IP if needed — just ask.

📧 4. Test That Your Website Can Send Email (e.g. from Forms or Orders)

During your pre-live testing, you need to make sure that your website can send emails correctly. This is important for things like:

• Contact forms
• Order confirmations
• New user registrations
• Password resets

But there’s a catch...

Because your domain isn’t yet pointed to us, email delivery might not behave the way you expect. Here’s what to look out for:

• If your site uses PHP mail (which many do by default), and your email is hosted externally (like Google or Microsoft 365), our server might still try to deliver messages locally — unless email routing is set to “Remote.” That means test emails may go to a mailbox on our server instead of your actual inbox. If you have mailboxes configured, you can check them by logging into them via cPanel.
• If your site is configured to use SMTP (e.g. via Gmail, SendGrid, etc.), then messages may send correctly — but only if outbound SMTP is enabled for your account. (It’s disabled by default for security — just ask if you need it.)

🔄 5. Check API Integrations & Gateways

If your website connects to other systems — like payment gateways, CRMs, ERPs, or marketing tools — now’s the time to make sure those connections will still work from your new server.

📤 Outbound API Calls

Many third-party services restrict access based on your server’s IP address. If they haven’t been updated to allow connections from your new server’s IP, requests may fail — and that could mean orders don’t get processed, customer data doesn’t sync, or emails don’t go out.

This is especially critical for ecommerce sites that rely on:

• Payment gateways (e.g. Stripe, SagePay, WorldPay)
• ERP/order management systems
• Shipping or fulfilment providers
• Fraud prevention tools
• SMS/email platforms

📥 Inbound Webhooks & Callbacks

If third-party services send data to your site (e.g. payment confirmations, shipping updates), those won’t work until your domain is pointing to the new server — since the service needs to reach your live domain.

You likely won’t be able to fully test these until after DNS is updated, but it’s worth reviewing the configuration in advance.

🔒 6. What About SSL?

When you test your site using the hosts file or SkipDNS, you’ll likely see an SSL warning — and that’s completely normal.

Why? Because these preview methods don’t match the domain name the SSL certificate was issued for. You’re effectively asking your browser to visit your site at its real server location, but under a different name — and browsers (rightly) don’t like that.

Once your domain is resolving to our servers, we’ll automatically issue a free SSL certificate via AutoSSL. This usually happens within a few hours of DNS propagation.

If you want to speed things up, you can run AutoSSL manually after pointing your domain:

👉 How to run AutoSSL manually →

Note: AutoSSL can only be run once the domain is resolving to our servers — trying to run it before then won’t work.

🚀 Going Live: How to Update Your DNS

✅ Using Kualo Nameservers (Shared Hosting)

Update your domain’s nameservers to:

ns1.kualo.net  
ns2.kualo.net  
ns3.kualo.net  
ns4.kualo.net

🧑‍💼 On a Reseller Plan or Server?

Your nameservers may be different. Please check your welcome email or contact us for confirmation.

🌐 Using 3rd Party DNS?

Get your server IP from cPanel (or ask us) and point your A records to that IP.

We generally recommend using our nameservers for simplicity, but we understand some customers may prefer using Cloudflare or other DNS providers.

Need a Hand?

If you hit a snag or something doesn’t seem right, our support team is here and happy to help — just reach out!