Website Moves

I recently made the decision to move my websites (four in production with fifth in planning) to a new host and new server. This decision didnt come easily.

I wasnt really all that happy with the current host. They (hostingplex.com) had gone through many rough areas. I had been with them for about 15 months. There was server outages and the most annoying mysql diskspace issues. Their tech support was often slow to respond. In addition, I the amount of email being returned to me as rejected by blacklists was growing. That means that IP addresses near mine (via my host) were near IP addresses of spammer addresses, so my email was blocked. What it really means is that some spammers were using hostingplex.com for their nefarious and crappy spam mail. The host would eventually clean them out and the blacklists would be removed, but they were slow and the issues were growing. There was also some bandwidth slowdown issues when trying to use my sites.

The previous host was pretty cheap. I guess you get what you pay for. I was finally fed up and decided to move. The biggest issue with moving is that you have to copy all of your information to the new server and take the time to get it working. Plus, browsers use domain name suffixes (DNS) to get to sites. You type in www.klasen.us to get here, but the browser/computer translate that to an IP address. The relationship of the name to the IP address is stored in a DNS Server. When you move your site, you have to get all of these DNS servers to point to the new location. It takes time for the changes to propagate through the net. During this propagation time, you may get to the old site or you may get to the new site. To let folks know when they had reached the new site, I essentially disabled the old site and made a “success” post on the new site. It can take up to 72 hours for the DNS to propagate.

This is where there is good news / bad news. Two of my sites (www.klasen.us and www.cruisetalk.org) moved and propagated really quickly. A third site (www.sonoitsasinger.com) moved quickly for everyone but me. I still cannot see the site at home. I can see it everywhere but on my computers in the house. This essentially means I cannot use/modify/update the site. I have had dozens of folks check and they can all see it. Something is screwed up on my end. The fourth site (www.158th.com) is my busiest site and it still has not moved. That one has been frustrating.

The database and code moves have not been without issue either. Another reason for leaving the previous host was I had been recently hacked. Now, I dont know if I left a hole open or my host did, but after working with my new host, I am confident the security is much much better.

Speaking of new host, I am currently running my server/websites with www.clan-solutions.com. I am extremely happy with them thus far. I have spent a fair amount of time talking/working with Tommy there. He has greatly helped me with the transition to my new server and helped me learn a bunch already. I ended up there because of some other sites I frequent (not clan related) that he hosts. They are much larger than me, quite stable and lightning fast. So, I made the leap. I also bought a more broad hosting package too. In fact, I now have a reseller account. That means I can actually sell bandwidth to other folks. I dont really have any intention of doing that right now, but it could become an add on to the fifth website in development.

So, hopefully, I can fix the Sonoita Singer issue on my end and the 158th site will propagate soon. I think you will all notice the increased stability and speed of my new host on Mr Papa’s World.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.