Blog Loom

If you are one of those quietly saying this, don’t worry as you’re not alone meaning you shouldn’t give up as yet.

However just having the awareness is not enough as you could waste a lot more time and your goal of earning money may never become reality and you eventually will throw the towel anyway.

What’s important is that you must take corrective actions to steer yourself closer to your goal. One of the most possible sins that you could be guilty of is the lack of focus.

You may be running in circle working on several projects at once as everyone of them looks so promising. If you could reverse this handicap, your success may come a lot easier and sooner.

Gyutae Park talks about this problem in his article “Don’t Put Your Eggs In One Basket“. Go read and may success become your friend, soon.

The Big Download

Going by the words of most people when I did searches, it’s good to backup the old site using cPanel>Backup>Download a home directory Backup.

I actually attempted many times without real success. That was done using ADSL line and wireless broadband but to no avail. Every download file ended up broken when unzipped. Imagine spending 4-5 hrs or more each time and be disappointed at the end.

I abandoned that method and fell back to plain old method using FTP. Picked a group of folders and files at a time and downloading it. It worked better this way albeit a little slower and messy.

New Pretty Face

First thing very noticeable was the cPanel interface. It is Version 11 against 10 in the old hosting. Every option is grouped under its own category so it saves you from hunting around to find the right icon as in the past. The layout is more logically organized and it takes very little time to get familiar.

One of the first thing I did was to create an add-on domain for the first site to be transferred and here for the first time I see explanation about add-on and parked domains. I’ve been guessing the true meaning of these two animals for a good two years, silly me.

The only thing missing is the auto creation of FTP account and password. In cPanel 10, that is done automatically when add-on domain is created while Version 11 lets you create a FTP user and password in a separate process. Now I see that you may not need an FTP account for each and every domain you have. You could just use the primary FTP access for every add-on domain there is.

Wait, Don’t Move Your Primary Domain Yet

You may have more than one domain on a hosting server and one of those is the primary one. Your account is actually linked to this domain and many things depend on it such as sub-domains, FTP accounts, emails etc.

I made a mistake of trying to move the primary domain first to the new server. I went and changed the DNS of my primary domain and suddenly all my access to cPanel, FTP and Emails were down. It took me a while plus a few contacts back and forth to the hosting provider to get the problem spotted.

It also took a few hours for the DNS to revert back to the original so I ended up using IP address to access cPanel and the website. Fortunately the domain was not used for my other more important sites.

So never forget to remember - keep the primary domain at the old server until last.

WordPress Workout

Make sure you change the DNS setting at the domain registrar to point to the new server for the domain you intend to work on. Do this early as it will take up to 24 hrs or more to complete the propagation. In the meantime, you may get intermittent results.

Now armed with FTP access, a set of WordPress codes from a chosen domain was uploaded to the new server. I had to remove some huge auto-backup files that was residing on the old server to reduce upload time. They got downloaded to my PC as I chose the whole folder during downloading time.

Then using cPanel>mySQL a new database was created.

Next is to Import old database into the new one using cPanel>phpMyAdmin>Databases>”select database”>Import.

Don’t forget to check wp-config.php as parameters might have changed. If necessary upload a new one or edit the one on the server.

Time for a little prayer now. Launch the browser and enter the URL and…

The site should launch! That’s if you’re very lucky. Most of the times there’s something to tweak such as .htaccess file or something.

Well, my WordPress site is again up and running, on a new server. So there will be many more waiting to be transferred but things started to get much easier now that the first test has passed. Just rinse and repeat.

What a relief!

See my next post for how I moved Drupal-based sites to the new server too.

All my web sites reside on a shared server hosting which is a big player in the industry. It’s probably one of the most promoted hosting service too. Almost every top marketer mentioned their name at one time or another.

I signed up a long while ago for HG’s “unlimited package” which let me have domains, sub-domains, parked domains, email accounts, storage space, bandwidth and scores of others as “unlimited”. It was an irresistibly good offer as the price was below $10 per month. Perhaps this is just another case of “too good to be true”.

I was having this “unlimited” thinking all the time and become a little lavish knowing I will never hit the limits
Along the way, I read in some forums that this hosting doesn’t actually allow heavy video hosting among other things. By now, my “unlimited” belief has eroded a little but still not really convinced as I had yet to encounter any problem with my hosting account.

Then the reality struck when I received an email from the hosting that said:

Hello,

To maintain the highest level of performance on our shared servers we have a maximum inode (file) limit of 50,000 inodes (files) per account. The size of the file does not matter, only the number of files. For example, a DVD image (say, 4.5gb) only counts as one inode, or file. Our limit, as outlined in our terms of service, is 50,000 files per account.

I was reminded that this was stated in the TOS when I signed up. Forgive me for not reading those cryptic document then. I wonder if you read those yourself. Whatever, I am the guilty party and I won’t make it through the court.

A 7-day period was given for me to correct the situation i.e. to reduce the number of files I had on the server and go below 50,000. There was also a risk of not having auto backup by the hosting for files beyond 50,000 count. They did not forget to offer me a dedicated server (where inodes are no longer checked) with price starting from $219. I didn’t find this amusing even for a second
I beheaded a few domains which have not gone operational but the total file count is dangerously close to 50,000 still. I also deleted a few unimportant email accounts to stay clear of the limit.

I hope this will save me for some times to come while I am shopping for a new hosting that has “real” unlimited account with good support and server uptime. If you know or actually use one, please let me know.