First, I thought transferring blogs to new hosting will be quite simple, but it required quite a few steps to follow before we can really transfer the blogs. I was having hard time this 2 days, so I would like to share how did I transfer my blogs to Hostgator successfully, so that newbie can be following the guide before moving on too.
Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to transfer blog to new hosting :
1) Upgrading To Latest Wordpress Blog Version
You need to upgrade your wordpress blog to the latest version if you tend to use Fantastico to install the wordpress script in your new web hosting because Fantastico will install the latest version for you. If your wordpress blog has different version, when you upload your old blog folder to the new web hosting, they can’t be matched.
2) Backup Your Files And Folders
You need to backup your old wordpress blog before moving on, usually people will only backup /wp-content folder because they store all the images, plugins, themes, and etc in this folder. If you have any other files or folders, backup it as well. For me, I used to backup the whole blog’s folders in case I missed out any important folder, at least I still have a copy of it.
3) Backup Your Database
I’m just like a newbie in transferring hosting, I just knew the purpose of the database. Database keeps all the settings for your site, posts, themes and etc. Backup your database from your old web hosting’s control panel, under phpMyAdmin, you can read how to backup your database by following the step-by-step tutorial from Wordpress team.
4) Addon Domain In Your New Web Hosting’s Control Panel
So now you need to add an addon domain in your new web hosting’s, so that you’ll have a folder for the blog that you want to transfer. You can do this from your new web hosting’s control panel.
5) Change Domain Name’s Name Servers
You need to change the name servers for your domain name to the new name servers that provided by the new web hosting company by using your domain registrar control panel.
As an example for Hostgator’s name servers, they are “ns1075.hostgator.com” and “ns1076.hostgator.com“. DNS propagation will take some time to complete, it took only few minutes from my experience, if it’s completed then you’ll not be able to access to your blog anymore, or you can clarify this with the new web hosting company, then you can proceed to the next step.
6) Installing New Wordpress Blog In New Web Hosting
Before installing a new wordpress blog in your new web hosting, you need to access to your new FTP server to see whether it’s accessible, if yes then you can start installing a new wordpress blog in your new web hosting by using Fantastico, it takes you few seconds to complete the installation.
7) Upload Files And Folders
Login to the FTP server, upload the old /wp-content folder and re-write the new /wp-content folder. I used to upload the whole blog folders and re-write them, I didn’t face any problem.
8 ) Upload Database
You need to upload your previous database to the new web hosting by using the phpMyAdmin in control panel. Remember that database keeps all the settings of your site, posts, comments, themes and etc, it’s important to keep a copy for your previous database, otherwise you need to do all the setting all over again.
You can only upload database that is not more than 52mb, I had a 12mb database and it took quite long for me to upload, so I request Hostgator to upload it for me. You can contact your web hosting company technical support to see whether they’re willing to import it for you.
9) Connect Your Wordpress To The Database
You need to connect your fresh installed wordpress to the previous database, you need to open wp-config.php in the root folder and change the database name, username and password to the previous database’s details.
10) Completed!
So you’ve completed moving your blog to the new web hosting, if you follow the 9 steps above correctly and your blog should work like usual now.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
How to estimate your website hosting needs
I write this article especially for people who are new to web hosting. This is why I will only talk about the basic needs (in a shared hosting environment): space, bandwidth. Most of the people looking for advanced features (scripting, databases) already know what they want/need anyway.
So let's start with the space. Web space (disk space) is the amount of data you can store on the hard disk of the web server. Each web hosting accound comes with a certain amount of space, usually over 50 MB and less than 1000 MB.
Obviously, the amount of needed space depends on the size of the website. Most websites are composed of html (text) pages with a few images (gifs or jpegs) or even a little bit of Flash animation. Text is very economical; it occupies very little space. Images and flash are more expensive; they require a lot of space. If you're new to the web you might think it's great to have a lot of colorful images to make your website really beautiful. Don't make this common mistake!
Your aim should be to say as much as you can on a page while maintaining it's size under 50-60 KB including images. The reason? There are still lots of people using slow dial-up connections of under 56 Kbps. For them a 150 KB will take more that 21 seconds to load. A 60 KB page will take more than 8 seconds to load. That's still a lot of time! A good page size is under 30 KB. A maximum page size is 50-60 KB.
Considering an average page size of 30 KB, you can put approximately 33 pages on 1Mb of space. If you have 10 MB of space available, you could host 330 pages. I only wish I had so many pages to put online. Don't worry, I'm working on it!
The idea is this: unless you run a busy forum your needs for space are likely to be rather modest. Just keep in mind to achieve an average of 30KB/page and you should be more than fine even with 10 MB of web space.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that you're allowed to transfer per month. It includes all uploads and downloads regardless of the protocol used (HTTP, FTP, POP etc.). Bandwidth depends very much on the average page size, but it also depends on the number of visitors your website will have and the average number of pages they visit. For an average page size of 30 KB, 20,000 visitors per month and 3 pages per visitor your website will need about 1800 MB (1.8 GB) of bandwidth per month. Most low cost hosting packages include that amount of bandwidth. Not to mention that 20,000 visitors per month is only a dream for most websites. Most don't even have 2,000 visitors per month.
I took you through all those numbers just to give you an idea how to estimate your needs. If you're just launching your website you will not need neither a huge amount of space, neither a huge amount of bandwidth. For 99% of people a hosting account with 10MB of space and 1Gb is more than enough.
Conclusion: Unless you have reasons to believe that your website will definitely have lots of visitors and unless you'll offer movies or music for download (legally of course ), I see little reason for you to worry about space and bandwidth.
Just make your own calculations and also try to make sure that the host you choose allows account upgrades. That is to make sure you will be able to get more space and/or bandwidth if/when you need it without going through all the trouble of changing hosts.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Hidden Scary Costs Of Cheap Web Hosting
The very obvious attraction of cheap hosting is that...err it's cheap!
But what is hardly ever discussed are the hidden costs of cheap web hosting which could quite literally drain your pocket dry!
So first and foremost you should learn to differentiate budget hosting from cheap hosting though they both technically fall under the category of cheap web hosting!
Budget hosting classically ranges from $5 - $9 and is generally quite reliable whereas cheap hosting falls within the $2.75 - $3.50 dollar range!
The following list highlights some of the more common problems associated with cheap web hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
2. Poor Server Response
3. Very Attractive To Spammers
4. Susceptible To Search Engine Ban
5. Lack of Customer Support
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
7. Exposure To Infections (Viruses, Trojans etc.)
Let me elaborate in a bit more detail about these little discussed hidden costs that almost always invariably plague cheap hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
One of the more common problems associated with cheap hosting is the increased frequency of website downtime; in other words the amount of time when your website is not available!
This often occurs with cheap web hosting services because all too commonly there are way too many websites sharing a single server. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the longer your site is down (in other words unavailable) the more business and traffic you lose.
2. Poor Server Response
Another issue common to cheap hosting arises (as mentioned above in point 1) because of the huge number of websites loaded on a single server.
The end result of overloading a particular server with too many websites is that it greatly magnifies the server response time. This happens whenever multiple browser requests are conducted at the same time for a large number of sites hosted on the same server!
The end result of this means that if a person tried to connect to your website they will experience the hanging browser phenomenon (a browser that takes forever to connect to a queried site). Once again you don't have to be a genius to figure out most people will rather abandon their attempt to access your site than wait forever!
3. Cheap Hosting Acts Like A Spammer Magnet!
Cheap hosting is very attractive to spammers for the very obvious reason that it is cheap! You see web spammers make their money by commanding an empire of thousands of sites, each one of which makes some money and though that amount on its own may be insignificant when totaled as a whole becomes quite substantial!
Obviously to increase their profit margin spammers need to keep their expenses as minimal as possible which undoubtedly includes cheap web hosting!
Sharing hosting with spammer sites in and of itself does not necessarily jeopardize your website but if your cheap hosting service happens to host thousands of those spammer sites then sooner than later your website is going to get:
4. Penalized/Banned By The Search Engines (The Bad Neighborhood Phenomenon)
Okay let's consider a situation where your website happens to be sharing the same server as that of thousands of spammer sites. In such a scenario there is a very good chance that somewhere down the line your website will get penalized (or even banned) by Google when invariably those spammer sites with which your site is sharing cheap hosting get involved in search engine malpractice.
You see when your website is hosted on the same server as other sites (shared hosting) you share the same root IP address as those other sites, and when a search engine gets fed up with spamming from a certain IP address it doesn't bother going into details to weed out which specific domain is the culprit, it simply bans the entire IP address. OUCH!
Having your website tossed from the search engines can be a very traumatic experience especially if that website had been ranking well for keywords you had spent time and money optimizing for.
This by the way is not a hypothetical situation and actually happened to me not to mention the thousands others who have had the misfortune of suffering the same experience!
5. Lack Of Customer Support
One of the means with which cheap hosting services keep their prices dirt-cheap low is by cutting corners on essential services like customer support.
If your site happens to be parked on some cheap web hosting server and you get into a jam that needs urgent attention, then the following lists a number of very practical options you can pursue:
a) Cross your fingers and mumble juju to voodoo the problem away (just kidding)
b) Contact customer support and say a prayer while hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The worst in this case being a very, very long wait before you get a reply...if at all!
c) Be prepared to pay a hefty fee to get any help at all; that hefty fee is usually in the region of $20 - $35! Management rightfully figures that if your cheaply-hosted site is doing well and gets a problem, then you'll probably be very willing to shell out a $35 fee to fix that $2.95 per month hosted site of yours!
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
If you have spent any length of time online then I am sure you know how fickle transactions online can be. So it shouldn't come as a big surprise that there are no lack of companies that are here-one-day and gone-the-next.
In the business such companies are called fly-by-night for obvious reasons and the cheap hosting arena is no stranger to this phenomenon. A lot of cheap hosting services fall under the category of fly-by-night not because they are necessarily out to dupe you from the get-go, but because eventually it dawns on them that their profit margins do not make for a viable business model.
What this means to you is that one morning you could wake up to find that your hosting service has simply vanished in thin air! Once again there is no need to point out how painful this can be if your site had started performing well!
Once again this all boils down to sharing the same server as countless other websites managed by a hosting service that cannot afford state-of-the-art defense software! If any one of those thousand of websites on that server gets an infection it can spill over to all the rest including yours, like an unchecked influenza pandemic!
What If Any Benefits Do You Get From Cheap Hosting?
Okay despite the bleak picture I have painted above it's not all bad news as far as cheap hosting is concerned because vast improvements have been made over the past few years. Just so long as you conduct your due diligence (research) there is absolutely no reason why you cannot acquire a good quality cheap hosting plan. It is a well known fact that competition in any business drives down prices and the web hosting arena is no different.
In fact it is actually a mandatory requirement for any web hosting business of today that wishes to grow and continue to be competitive to offer cheap hosting services! Why? Because there is way too much competition to afford to do otherwise!
There Is Cheap Hosting. And Then There Is Cheap Hosting!
If you are going to opt for cheap hosting it obviously makes sense to get your service from a well established and reputable web hosting company that has a proven track record rather than some spotty hosting company that is little known! I mean cummon...does it make sense to go for a $2.75 cheap hosting plan from an unknown web host rather than opt for a slightly more expensive option of $4.95 from a well-known company that you know will still be around in a few months?
Because of their sheer size an established web hosting company is going to be able to provide state-of-the-art services like defense software even for a budget hosting plan, something an upstart web host certainly won't! One final consideration you should take into account when opting for a cheap hosting plan is whether your web host provides a means for you to upgrade your plan seamlessly if the need ever arises.
That need will certainly arise when the traffic volume of your website (bandwidth usage) exceeds the capacity allotted it in your current plan. Ideally you want to be able to upgrade from a shared server to a dedicated server with minimal downtime and as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
Source : http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard
But what is hardly ever discussed are the hidden costs of cheap web hosting which could quite literally drain your pocket dry!
So first and foremost you should learn to differentiate budget hosting from cheap hosting though they both technically fall under the category of cheap web hosting!
Budget hosting classically ranges from $5 - $9 and is generally quite reliable whereas cheap hosting falls within the $2.75 - $3.50 dollar range!
The following list highlights some of the more common problems associated with cheap web hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
2. Poor Server Response
3. Very Attractive To Spammers
4. Susceptible To Search Engine Ban
5. Lack of Customer Support
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
7. Exposure To Infections (Viruses, Trojans etc.)
Let me elaborate in a bit more detail about these little discussed hidden costs that almost always invariably plague cheap hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
One of the more common problems associated with cheap hosting is the increased frequency of website downtime; in other words the amount of time when your website is not available!
This often occurs with cheap web hosting services because all too commonly there are way too many websites sharing a single server. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the longer your site is down (in other words unavailable) the more business and traffic you lose.
2. Poor Server Response
Another issue common to cheap hosting arises (as mentioned above in point 1) because of the huge number of websites loaded on a single server.
The end result of overloading a particular server with too many websites is that it greatly magnifies the server response time. This happens whenever multiple browser requests are conducted at the same time for a large number of sites hosted on the same server!
The end result of this means that if a person tried to connect to your website they will experience the hanging browser phenomenon (a browser that takes forever to connect to a queried site). Once again you don't have to be a genius to figure out most people will rather abandon their attempt to access your site than wait forever!
3. Cheap Hosting Acts Like A Spammer Magnet!
Cheap hosting is very attractive to spammers for the very obvious reason that it is cheap! You see web spammers make their money by commanding an empire of thousands of sites, each one of which makes some money and though that amount on its own may be insignificant when totaled as a whole becomes quite substantial!
Obviously to increase their profit margin spammers need to keep their expenses as minimal as possible which undoubtedly includes cheap web hosting!
Sharing hosting with spammer sites in and of itself does not necessarily jeopardize your website but if your cheap hosting service happens to host thousands of those spammer sites then sooner than later your website is going to get:
4. Penalized/Banned By The Search Engines (The Bad Neighborhood Phenomenon)
Okay let's consider a situation where your website happens to be sharing the same server as that of thousands of spammer sites. In such a scenario there is a very good chance that somewhere down the line your website will get penalized (or even banned) by Google when invariably those spammer sites with which your site is sharing cheap hosting get involved in search engine malpractice.
You see when your website is hosted on the same server as other sites (shared hosting) you share the same root IP address as those other sites, and when a search engine gets fed up with spamming from a certain IP address it doesn't bother going into details to weed out which specific domain is the culprit, it simply bans the entire IP address. OUCH!
Having your website tossed from the search engines can be a very traumatic experience especially if that website had been ranking well for keywords you had spent time and money optimizing for.
This by the way is not a hypothetical situation and actually happened to me not to mention the thousands others who have had the misfortune of suffering the same experience!
5. Lack Of Customer Support
One of the means with which cheap hosting services keep their prices dirt-cheap low is by cutting corners on essential services like customer support.
If your site happens to be parked on some cheap web hosting server and you get into a jam that needs urgent attention, then the following lists a number of very practical options you can pursue:
a) Cross your fingers and mumble juju to voodoo the problem away (just kidding)
b) Contact customer support and say a prayer while hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The worst in this case being a very, very long wait before you get a reply...if at all!
c) Be prepared to pay a hefty fee to get any help at all; that hefty fee is usually in the region of $20 - $35! Management rightfully figures that if your cheaply-hosted site is doing well and gets a problem, then you'll probably be very willing to shell out a $35 fee to fix that $2.95 per month hosted site of yours!
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
If you have spent any length of time online then I am sure you know how fickle transactions online can be. So it shouldn't come as a big surprise that there are no lack of companies that are here-one-day and gone-the-next.
In the business such companies are called fly-by-night for obvious reasons and the cheap hosting arena is no stranger to this phenomenon. A lot of cheap hosting services fall under the category of fly-by-night not because they are necessarily out to dupe you from the get-go, but because eventually it dawns on them that their profit margins do not make for a viable business model.
What this means to you is that one morning you could wake up to find that your hosting service has simply vanished in thin air! Once again there is no need to point out how painful this can be if your site had started performing well!
Once again this all boils down to sharing the same server as countless other websites managed by a hosting service that cannot afford state-of-the-art defense software! If any one of those thousand of websites on that server gets an infection it can spill over to all the rest including yours, like an unchecked influenza pandemic!
What If Any Benefits Do You Get From Cheap Hosting?
Okay despite the bleak picture I have painted above it's not all bad news as far as cheap hosting is concerned because vast improvements have been made over the past few years. Just so long as you conduct your due diligence (research) there is absolutely no reason why you cannot acquire a good quality cheap hosting plan. It is a well known fact that competition in any business drives down prices and the web hosting arena is no different.
In fact it is actually a mandatory requirement for any web hosting business of today that wishes to grow and continue to be competitive to offer cheap hosting services! Why? Because there is way too much competition to afford to do otherwise!
There Is Cheap Hosting. And Then There Is Cheap Hosting!
If you are going to opt for cheap hosting it obviously makes sense to get your service from a well established and reputable web hosting company that has a proven track record rather than some spotty hosting company that is little known! I mean cummon...does it make sense to go for a $2.75 cheap hosting plan from an unknown web host rather than opt for a slightly more expensive option of $4.95 from a well-known company that you know will still be around in a few months?
Because of their sheer size an established web hosting company is going to be able to provide state-of-the-art services like defense software even for a budget hosting plan, something an upstart web host certainly won't! One final consideration you should take into account when opting for a cheap hosting plan is whether your web host provides a means for you to upgrade your plan seamlessly if the need ever arises.
That need will certainly arise when the traffic volume of your website (bandwidth usage) exceeds the capacity allotted it in your current plan. Ideally you want to be able to upgrade from a shared server to a dedicated server with minimal downtime and as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
Source : http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
