Moving Web hosts

So many times we hear the term — caveat emp­tor (buyer beware) — but the selec­tion of a good Web host is one of those times we need to be extra wary.

When the Clan Lam­ont / Scot­tish Forums were first opened, the deci­sion was made to go with one of those ‘too good to be true’ hosts. And the les­son was quickly learned — if it sounds too good to be true, there is a reason.

After about 12 months of really poor ser­vice, the deci­sion was made to move to a host that offered an attrac­tive host­ing plan, but the price was more in accord with what was being offered. After being with this sec­ond host for about a year, we felt they had earned a fairly high mark for their ser­vice. They had a few short­com­ings, but over­all, the ser­vice was acceptable.

At about this time, the sec­ond host offered me one of those ‘too good to be true’ pack­ages. And I had man­aged to for­get the lessons learned with the first host. How’s the old say­ing go? ‘Fool me once, shame on you…’ Well, the shame is all mine, because I rose to the baited offer the sec­ond host made. I was gut-hooked and they jerked me cross-eyed when they set the hook. I spent a bunch of money on what was pre­sented as a V.I.P. pack­age. It was my mis­take for wrong­fully think­ing V.I.P. meant some­thing it quite obvi­ously did not. But hey, they did ‘give’ me a sec­ond host­ing plan for free and they even reg­is­tered a new domain for me at no charge. I pur­chased a sec­ond vBul­letin license and the T-Bucket Forums were brought into existence.

Ser­vice went down the drain, within a cou­ple short weeks. And server per­for­mance was even worse. It was at about this time I dis­cov­ered this host had indeed reg­is­tered my new domain. In their name! It only took a few terse exchanges to get the domain prop­erly reg­is­tered in my own name.

After 5 or 6 months of really shabby ser­vice, the hunt was on to locate a new Web host. And after some patient shop­ping, I man­aged to locate the host every web­mas­ter and forum admin dreams of find­ing. I was ner­vous about putting all my eggs in one bas­ket, so I pur­chased a small plan from Down­town Host and we moved the Clan Lam­ont / Scot­tish Forums to one of their servers. Server loads have always been low and in the few times when a trou­ble ticket was nec­es­sary, DTH’s cus­tomer ser­vice has been outstanding.

After suf­fer­ing all the lousy ser­vice I can bear with the sec­ond host, the deci­sion was made to move the T-Bucket Forums over to Down­town Host, as well. Except the sec­ond host had locked the domain reg­is­tra­tion. Once again, it took a few terse exchanges to get the autho­riza­tion codes to ini­ti­ate the trans­fer of this domain into my domain port­fo­lio with GoDaddy. The domain trans­fer has finally taken place and I’m hop­ing we will be mov­ing into a new host­ing pack­age within the next few hours. I’m pur­chas­ing a large enough pack­age to allow the Clan Lam­ont / Scot­tish Forums, the Clann Alba Forums and the T-Bucket Forums to all reside in one place, each with their own con­trol panel.

For the time being, I’m plan­ning to leave a cou­ple of blogs resid­ing on the sec­ond host’s servers, with an eye toward mov­ing them to greener pas­tures, at the first hint of problems.

For those of you look­ing to estab­lish a Web site, we highly rec­om­mend Down­town Host as your best bet in host­ing. If you pre­fer to find your own com­pany, just remem­ber the line — buyer beware. When a host is offer­ing 5 ter­abytes of disk space and 25 ter­abytes of trans­fer for only $2.99, I hope you’ll not be tempted to sign on the dot­ted line. When you’re pay­ing a lit­tle bit of noth­ing for your host­ing, that is the same amount of ser­vice you will be able to antic­i­pate when prob­lems arise. Don’t be shy about ask­ing around about hosts and their plans. The Web Host­ing Talk forums are a good source of host­ing reviews. Spend a few days edu­cat­ing your­self before pulling the trig­ger with any host. It might take you a few days more to get your Web site up and run­ning, but you’ll be thank­ful for that after the first few months.

Related posts:

1. We made a move
2. Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime…

Tagged as: Clan Lamont / Scottish Forums, Clann Alba Forums, Downtown Host, T-Bucket Forums, vBulletin, Web hosting