Moving Server - Effect of Downtime on Rankings?

Hi. I'm moveing server soon. Just wondering if closing the forum using the standard close forum funtion is Google safe - i.e. tells robots to come back because we are down for a bit - and hopefully not have a negative effect on ranking.

Alternatively, is there a safe way to redirect to the new IP maybe using htaccess? (While the DNS records update).

Thanks.

Hello Mike ,

What you can do is to close your forums last minute. After you move your database and forums , you can edit your config.php and use your new servers database temporary. When the NS updates you can continue to use your new database without any loss and downtime will be minumum.

Hi Mert - Thanks for this information. Do you know of any tutorials on how to do this?

Aside from this, during the small downtime, what effect would this have with Google? (as per the first post).

I dont know about a tutorial link.
Short downtime link will not effect your rankings.

Is it possible to do a seamless move of servers?

You could as well make use of the mod_proxy apache module on the old server that would "proxify" all requests to the new server while the dns gets propagated worldwide. Works pretty well.