Well, I had my site moved from a PHP4 server to a PHP5 server so I could run a new application I’m interested in checking out. Trouble is, after the migration I discovered that I also need Apache2 installed, and this server only runs Apache 1.x.x. I’ve opened a new ticket to see what the chances are of getting Apache2. I don’t even know if Bluehost runs Apache2 on any of their shared servers. Hopefully, I’ll find something out soon. They’re usually pretty quick on the turn-around for open tickets, which is always nice.
Tags: apaches, bluehost, php, servers, webhosting
Well, that could have been a whole lot more painful. After three days of inactivity, we’re back up and running. New host, new server, better control panel, better options, better everything.
After three days of silence and no response from my former webhost iPower, I decided enough was enough. I’d already researched other webhosts and had found one I liked much better (even demoed the control panel), so I switched everything over to Bluehost. That went smoothly, and even the DNS change populated much faster than expected.
File uploads – all 164 MB of them – took a bit of time but went off without a hitch. And three of the four databases I used were imported in myPhpAdmin just fine. But I discovered rather quickly that there are drawbacks to having maintained a blog for over three years – the database that powers Writer’s Blog was 111 MB large – all in a plain text .sql file. The maximum upload size for myPhpAdmin is 51KB, so I had to find an alternative way to bringing that in. It took me a while to find a solution, but ultimately I found this handy-dandy import script called Big Dump, which is a staggered MySQL dump importer. It basically drags a large database in to MySQL in chunks, maintaining the rules of database imports. Once I had everything configured properly, the script took only a couple of minutes to import the database.
All the databases had to be hacked, of course – it couldn’t just be a simple import process. Basically, my database username changed with the new host, so I had to update that in all the .sql files. I also had to modify the file paths throughout the databases in order to get everything to point in the right direction. Nothing that a Ctrl-H didn’t fix, but with my Writer’s Blog database I actually had to make sure I used a fast enough computer to be open a text file of that size. I ended up having to use Microsoft Word (shudder) on my wife’s computer for that one in order to make the necessary modifications before uploading the whole thing back to my server and then running Big Dump to import it into MySQL.
It was a learning experience, to be sure, but now I’m much less intimidated by having to change servers in the future. Bluehost is already amazing me with its intuitive control panel and speedy customer service. I even get root access (if I can just figure out how to use it)! So, here’s to better things.
Time now to get caught up on all the writing I wasn’t able to do the last couple of days.
Tags: big-dump, bluehost, databases, ipower, myphpadmin, mysql, servers, software, Technology
