We are happy to announce that Code-pal is now being hosted on a new web host – wpWebHost. So we thought of discussing our experience of shifting the site from our previous host to the new one.]]>

We are happy to announce that Code-pal is now being hosted on a new web host – wpWebHost. At the same time we are also sad and are truly sorry for the inconvenience caused to all of you who visited us during the transition phase. Though our previous web host, 000WebHost has been very good to us, we thought it was time to shift to a new one and expand code-pal to new extents. To say something about our previous host, all we can say that 000WebHost has been just great! Even though we used their free hosting service, the site’s downtime was minimal; almost nil and we received all the features any good webhost would provide us. We would recommend them to anyone who is looking to start up his blog and wants a host. Their support was also fantastic and quick.

Now you might be thinking that if we really loved them so much, why did we go for wpWebHost? Well, many of our friends have been using it and they were really happy with it. They recommended it the day we started looking for a new host. So we thought of giving it a try and given the fact that it is a host which is specifically wordpress oriented, it might prove to be a quite good. At that very moment we got the news of their super discount offer because of their newly renovated site. This even confirmed out decision of moving the site to a new host.

During the transition, we were really worried how the whole thing is going to end up after it is all over. We contacted the support of wpWebHost and their reply was quite quick, which was soothing because if something went wrong, there would be some support we could go running to. But the information they provided was not enough. They guided me to a post which mentioned on how to export a WordPress blog from the Tools panel. We already knew about that (as most of us out there that have been using WordPress for quite some time). So we thought of discussing our experience of shifting the site from one host to another.

When we move from one place to another, we take all our stuffs along with us; inform the proper authorities about our new address and then set up our moved stuffs in our new home. Shifting from one server to another server is just the same. ‘Our Stuff’ is our website’s content, ‘Our Address’ is the domain name, the proper ‘Authorities’ are the name servers at our domain’s manager. These are the primary steps involved in it.

Step 1. Backing up files

First of all, we just backed up our data, specially the wp-content folder and all the other files in the home directory. So the next time If you are backing up your wordpress site, don’t just backup the wp-content’s folder and also take a look at the files in the home directory because they might contain some identifying html files for various services like Google analytics etc.

Step 2. Downloading the Database

The second step was very important. This is the step where you take back up of your database. We took the backup in all the formats available and downloaded the files at least two times just in case if one of them turns out to be corrupt. I read somewhere that downloading the sql file in gz format via Firefox may corrupt it sometimes. The wordpress codex’s guide to backing up databases was very helpful to us.

Step 3. Updating the DNS

The next step was to update the domain name servers (DNS) at our domain provider’s domain management section. This was the most irritating part of the lot because the DNS updating takes time. It generally takes around 2 to 3 hours but it might even take a day to update it. We were lucky, so it got updated within 3 hours after changing it. This step was again important because we could not access our new host’s ftp without our domains pointing to it.

Step 4. Loading the Data

Once our domain was pointing to the right server, the only part left now was to upload the site on the new host. First of all we installed WordPress on it. Then going to the phpMyAdmin, we restored the previous database and deleted the newly created one. Again, WordPress Codex’s guide to restore database was very helpful to us. Once that was done, the last thing left was to upload the wp-content’s folder.

As soon as the theme was uploaded, we went to the backend, activated the theme and any plug-in which was inactive. Our site was the same as it was previously but on a different location. This article was of immense help to us during the whole process and most of our steps were followed as per its guideline. Shifting from one host to another may sound complex but it is not that tough neither that complex. The most important thing is to take proper backups before starting anything and patience.

One Minor Problem

The site was working fine but, there was a problem when we tried uploading any file. The error which came was “Unable to create directory /home/xxx/public_html/wp-content/uploads/20XX/XX. Is its parent directory writable by the server?” The problem was that the database table wp_option still contained some values of our old host’s account name. This messed up the path to the upload directory. As we did not import the website using the wordpress’ default import/export tool, hence this update was not done properly. To solve this issue, we went into the phpMyAdmin, searched the database with that ‘xxx’ term which was creating the entire problem. After all its occurrences where listed, we replaced each one with the new term. This completely solved the problem. We would recommend you to follow this
guide to properly move wordpress from one directory to another within the same server or moving from one server to another

Conclusion

Our experience during the whole transition from one host to another was quite pleasant. We didn’t face any hiccups during the whole process.
How was your experience when you shifted from one host to another?