Painless? I Think Not!

I’ve been dreading it for some time, but it’s finally done. As I mentioned in a previous post, my hosting company decided they were gonna move the data center from one state to another about the same time I was gonna move the blog from one hosting plan to another. Yikes!

I made a couple of serious mistakes too, that cost me a lot of time. That dang “hindsight” vision…don’t you wish just once you could see it BEFORE it happens?

Anyone out there contemplating a move from one hosting plan (Windows based) to another (Linux), grab a pen and paper and let me steer you clear of a couple of things…

• Upgrade your Wordpress version before you attempt a move. (In fact, days before)
• Make sure your backup is up to the minute. See this link on more about backing up your MySQL database. Wordpress Backups — and you will need to do a backup before the upgrade as well, so keep this link handy.
• Pull all files currently located on your domain to your local computer. You are gonna be surprised at how many secondary files you have accumulated, and styles that have been updated and you don’t have a copy of.
• It took me three times restoring my backup before I got it right, so be prepared. I wish I had made a trial run at this, perhaps to a new database that I didn’t care about so much.
• Do not delete the original domain BEFORE you do your FTP down to your local machine. Yeah, I know that one should be obvious, but I guess I got in a hurry. After any new domain is created in your cPanel, it takes up to 48 hours to be visible. I had the new domain sitting on the Linux plan for a couple of days before starting in the mistaken belief that once I put the files on the host, all would be well. Sheesh.

Like I said, it wasn’t painless, but it was a great teacher. It’s also a good thing I didn’t record this one, the FCC would probably have come to the house for language violations.

I have one more blog to move (with similar problems) so I am a little better prepared now. I will try to record all the steps on that blog if there is any interest out there.

Leave a comment on this post if that type of video interests you.