Seawind Has a New Host

Starting today, the Seawind Network is hosted in JustHost.com and saying goodbye to its old home in HostMonster. The move is pretty straight forward and even made easier by the friendly support group of JustHost.com. The move can be summarised in these few steps.

1. Ensure that you have ssh access in both servers.
2. Ensure that you have access to phpMyAdmin on both servers.
3. Run rsync to synchronise the two website directories. I used the instructions written here.
4. Export the MySQL databases in HostMonster via phpMyAdmin
5. Import the MySQL databases in JustHost.com
6. Edit wp-config.php (for WordPress) and config.php (for phpGedView) to point to the new databases
7. Edit the MX Entries via cPanel to point to the external mail server. (This extra level of re-direction has actually saved me a lot of work, as I do not need to rebuild my email addresses as they are not dependent on the web hosting company.)
8. Edit the nameserver in my Domain Registrar
9. Wait a few minutes … viola, we’ve just move from Utah to London … or perhaps Australia (don’t really know where the physical location of JustHost servers are.)

Total time spent to move rommelpascual.com and its sub-domain familytree.rommelpascual.com, is about an hour.

What Prompted This Move

My sister Helen had seen it coming when I received an email from HostMonster asking me to reduce the number of files in my site from 500,000+ to 50,000. She knew that I will move my site.

I have nothing against Host Monster about this request. Their offer to have 1.5TB of disk space came without any proviso for about a year. Reducing the files to less than 10% of its size means I need to give up all my Gallery2 sites. There will be no more offsite backup for our photos. I protested and Host Monster offered a pro-rated refund if I move.

Without the Gallery2 sites, the move would be straight forward and very minimal. Just Host offered to host my site for A$2.95/mo for 2 years with unlimited disk space but still have a 50,000 node limit. Well, Host Monster cost US$6.95/mo – so the move had a bit of savings for me.

Tagged as: web hosting