The other day I admitted I was a blogaholic and mentioned a new blog I’ve been talking about launching. Since then I’ve been learning all about multiple domain hosting, exploring new hosting providers, and preparing to switch to a new host. Why? Well, it would make things easier in the long run.
I started down that path today, and it’s an ugly path. It involves transferring my domain, possibly some down time with my site and my e-mail (gulp), and a lot of reinstallation work. As I was realizing this, my FTP transfer with my new host kept stalling. Add that to the fact that I submitted a support ticket this morning and am still awaiting an answer. Then I realized the other option would be to just open a new account. It simplifies some things and complicates others. But it might just be worth while.
So here’s the short story: I have two support tickets in to two different places asking about two different options. I think whoever answers first will be who I go with. Call me spoiled, but my current host answers support tickets with in an hour. That may just be worth its weight in gold.
I just finished that process this week — Wednesday, in fact. It was a nightmare. I had never moved a domain name before. My old web host/domain registrar had a procedure for locking and unlocking your domain — and no indication that I needed to do anything other than unlock my domain to have it transferred. In fact, the instructions seemed to imply that all I needed to do was unlock the domain.
Finally, after five days of waiting patiently, I contacted customer (alleged) support and was informed that I had to go to their special cancellation web site (no link to that from the regular web site, at least not that I saw), fill out an online form, print out a paper form, sign it and fax it back in.
I will never host anything with those folks again.
I knew that propagation of the new web hosting and domain information wouldn’t be immediate, but it behaved strangely. For a while, lakeneuron.com worked while http://www.lakeneuron.com didn’t. Also, I’m on a dial-up connection here at home, and for a while some of my ISP’s servers had the new domain name information and some didn’t — so that I could dial in once and be able to access the site, then hang up, dial in again and not be able to access it at all.
My reason for changing web hosts was that I wanted to try WordPress and my old host only supports PHP for their expensive business packages, not for the cheap home-user package I was on.
I am very happy so far with my new web host, Total Choice Hosting. I transferred my domain registration to GoDaddy; someone had suggested that it’s a wise idea not to host and register with the same company, although I’m not sure why.
Anyway, Kevin, I feel your pain. :)