Category Archives: Hosting

My Process: Moving to a New Webhost – Part 1

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I am already getting ready to move all of my sites over to my new web host, WiredTree. I am still learning what it means to own and manage a virtual private server account, but I have already been able to install Subversion to manage my WordPress installs and upgrades, and so this will save me valuable time on upgrading as each new release of WordPress comes out.

WiredTree had Yum set up, so installing Subversion was very easy. While logged in via SSH, I entered yum install subversion and it did the rest. Afterwards, I was able to download the latest version of WordPress 2.5.1 though the now installed Subversion system by entering svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.1/ . with the final period at the end referencing the local folder being very important to the command.

Next time, when I update to the next stable release, I will use the svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.2/ command in my shell prompt rather than the svn up command that people using the trunk releases use. I won’t be using trunk as I need my blogs to work correctly at all times, despite most people not having issues with trunk, I don’t want to take any chances.

To learn more about installing and maintaining WordPress through Subversion, I suggest you check out the codex page entitled Installing/Updating WordPress with Subversion.

Next, I moved all of the files for this site over to the new hosting space, and checked to make sure everything looked correct.

My next steps are to get the database for this blog set up on the new site, export the content from this blog, and import it into the fresh, new blog on my WiredTree account. I will then move the DNS so that it points to my new hosting, and see if everything is working correctly with this blog.

I plan on moving the DNS during the weekend, when I have a lower amount of traffic than normal, so that if I do have problems, they won’t be as noticeable to most people compared to doing this whole thing during the week. If everything works as planned, all of the other sites I run will slowly be migrated over during the next two or so weeks.

Originally posted on May 15, 2008 @ 5:16 pm

Changing Web Hosts

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So after finally deciding that I am going to bring all my sites under one roof (see Hosting: Dragging Down Profits so Consolidating), I went on a hunt to find the best web hosting I could under the needs I had listed, and after asking a bunch of people, doing some research on a variety of sites, and searching on Google, I have found the web host I am going to go with at this time: WiredTree.

I will be using their $49 per month Managed VPS account, which will provide me with the following:

  • Intel Dual Xeon Clovertown (8 CPUS)
  • 256MB Guaranteed RAM
  • 1024MB Burstable RAM
  • 300GB Bandwidth
  • 30GB RAID-10 Disk Space
  • Fully Managed!
  • ServerShield Server Hardening
  • 24/7/365 Phone and Help Desk Support
  • Proactive Updates and Monitoring
  • 4 IPs
  • cPanel / WHM
  • Fantastico
  • Virtuozzo Power Panel
  • Nightly Backups

I am pretty impressed with it so far, but I haven’t done the hard part: moving the sites. I have played around with things on the server, and started uploading files. This blog will be the test site, and if moving this site goes smoothly, I will begin moving all of the rest of my sites over. This also means if you notice something weird over the next week, it is most likely from the server move, but please, let me know as I might have missed something or messed something up and not yet noticed it.

Originally posted on May 13, 2008 @ 10:36 pm

HostGator Live Support Review

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So, I have been using HostGator for this blog for a while now, and they are just one of a few different hosting accounts I own, and by far one of the better ones. I am lucky currently that all my hosts are amazing, from the small Vortexhost I use to display my personal blog DavidCubed, to HostGator for this and other blogs to a shared account I have with friends on Mosso.

Here and there, this site goes down due to too many connections. I am not exactly sure why yet, but I jumped on the live support, and within half a minute, my site was back up and running again. They even gave me some indications on what could be causing the problem.

I am very happy, and very impressed, and I think far too many people only write about their hosts when they are unhappy. HostGator, you are doing great for me, so please keep up the great work.

Originally posted on April 16, 2008 @ 5:36 pm

Hosting: Dragging Down Profits so Consolidating

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One of the most difficult things that bloggers have to deal with is hosting and for me, that issue is coming up more and more as I build up bigger sites, and I now want to bring everything under one hosting account with one hosting company.

Currently, over half of my projects are hosted on Host Gator, and while I have nothing but happy words for the service that they have provided me (see my recent post on Host Gator’s support), I am starting to hit a wall due to the popularity of this and other sites that I run on their hosting. Basically, I have had too many open connections more than once, and they haven’t been able to tell me the exact cause, thus leading me to think I need bigger, better hosting.

The rest of my projects are hosted on Mosso, except for my personal blog. Mosso is great, except I am not a fan of their control panel. I find it fairly limiting, and I hate learning curves when dealing with hosting. I try to stick to hosts that allow me either a cPanel control panel, or root-like access through SSH. Anything else, and I get frustrated. Who wants to spend a day learning how to manage hosting, especially when you have enough work in just needing to run a dozen sites?

My personal blog is being hosted on VortexHost. This is a smaller hosting company, but the service, and support has been bar-none the best I have ever had. Pricing might not be the most competitive, but it was one of the first web hosts I had ever used, and I have never been disappointed by the decision. Justin, the owner, has always been very helpful and adds his personal touch to making sure I am happy, whenever he can. Most other hosts I have used have been compared against my experiences at VortexHost.

I just feel like it is time to pick one company to manage all my hosting needs. This would hopefully help cut down costs, as I am paying what I consider a pretty penny for all my hosting.

On average, I would say that around $60 each and every month is spent to host my various blogs. This one has the highest traffic with nearly twenty-thousand page views a day.

I was thinking about looking at other “cloud space” hosts that work in a similar vein to Mosso, or maybe going with a company like Slice Host, as they keep coming up on my radar.

Some hosts I will not consider, due to personal experiences:

  • Dreamhost
  • A Small Orange
  • eMaxHosting

If you have any thoughts or recommendations for me, please let me know. Who should I be hosting with? I would like to keep it under $40 per month, and I would like to have cPanel and/or high level SSH privileges. I would like to have a high level of stability, and great support. I am fairly tech savvy, but I am not going to sit around messing with ipchains on the server.

Originally posted on April 20, 2008 @ 7:44 pm

Server Woes Stealing My Energy

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So, if you head on over to Blogging Pro, you might notice it is down. If it isn’t down, you are one of the lucky few that has actually been able to load the site over the last two or three days. At one point the site was down for upwards of eighteen hours. Talking to server guy and waiting for everything to get fixed made me bite my nails more than normal. This has also meant that I haven’t got much done lately.

I was able to install the great WP Super Cache on the site, but unfortunately, that didn’t seem to stop it from dying again.

Server issues are the most frustrating things, no matter where you are hosting your site and I hope you will all hold on as I continue to drive server guy nuts about getting everything running.

After we get this issue resolved, I am going to be redoubling my efforts to get Splashpress Media as optimized and as efficient as possible when it comes to our server and thus WordPress hosting environment.

Originally posted on February 17, 2008 @ 4:32 pm