Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Moved our Web Sites into reliable Hosting "Host Gator"


Since our websites faced difficulties with our previous hosting "byethost" frequently, I have  moved our websites (qualitypointtech.net, artspoint.net,seoToolsStore.com, etc) to the new hosting "Host Gator".

I have selected "Host Gator" after doing lot of analysis by going thro' reviews of many hostings.

It seems everyone is satisfied with "Host Gator". Everyone agrees that HostGator provides 99.9% uptime and loading speed is good. It is very essential for our websites, because lot of users are using important applications such as Time Sheet and Twitter Tools freely in our website. It is our responsibility to provide maximum uptime for our website users.

So, I signed up for HostGator hosting. They asked me to send the scanned copy of photo id card to confirm the account creation. It was done very quickly. It seems Host Gator support is very active and fast. First I tried to call them thro' Skype. But it seems the international support number is NOT Toll free number.  It seems they are providing Toll free number within US only.



I faced lot of difficulties in moving the websites. First of all, the previous hosting "byethost" refused to provide access to my account even I have paid them till next year January month. Anyway, they provided cPanel back of our websites.

So, I first downloaded this huge backup file using download manager. (I had to download a download manager first)

And, then started uploaded the contents/scripts to the new hosting server thro' the ftp tool "FileZilla".

Before doing this step, I just updated DNS of new hosting in Domain control panels and added add-on domains. And put "under maintenance" message.

Then, created databases and db users thro' cPanel.

After adding db users to the associated databases, I had tried to import the sql file thro' phpmyadmin. But it didn't work, because the sql file size is more than the size suitable for using phpmyAdmin.

So, I tried to connect with the server thro' SSH using putty. But SSH was not enabled in the server. I contacted the Host Gator support thro' live chat, and they enabled SSH immediately.

 I uploaded all sql files thro' ftp and used the SSH for running the command "mysql -u dbuser -p dbname


I repeated sql importing process for all databases. I couldn't upload few sql files which are huge. Because the ftp program fileZilla shows Timeout Error.

So, I zipped those huge sql files before doing ftp of those files.

And, unzipped those huge files thro' SSH by typing unzip command.

After, uploading databases and scripts, I have realized that the cPanel username of previous hosting is different from current hosting.

Since the cpanel username is added with the db username and db name, I needed to change the dbname, and db username in lot of config files which are used to connecting with mysql databases.

Keeping the same username will solve this issue easily. If you are planning to do hosting change, remember to use same cPanel username.

I contacted HostGator support for renaming my cPanel username. But they explained that it is not possible, and they suggested to delete the account and recreate it with the same name. But I didn't want delete the account, because I already uploaded the code and db.

So, I manually changed all config files with the new username and db name.
It took significant time, because we had developed lot of applications/scripts.

After doing these changes I have replaced the "under maintenance" message with the actual content by renaming the folder. After doing this change, the sites were showing "suspended" message. I contacted the HostGator support, and they found that htaccess file is the reason for this issue. ( I guess the previous host byethost had done this htacess file overwriting without my knowledge)

The HostGator support helped me to solve this issue immediately.

And, then I created the email accounts and added the cron jobs manually.

Since the website downtime will create a negative impression from users as well as search engines, we worked hard to bring back our sites soon. Anyway, I took more than 30 hours to bring back everything.

I hope now everything should be working fine. If you find any error, let me know.

And, if you want to start your own website, you can choose HostGator as your hosting.

You can use Coupon code QUALITYPOINTHG to get $9.94 OFF, or you can use QUALITYPOINT25 to get 25% OFF.


If you don't want to waste your time in unnessary hosting change process, better you can start with the reliable hosting HostGator.



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2 comments:

Web Development UK said...

I would prefer to go for the paid ones. Free is good for starters but they have limitations with them. Out of the following, which one is the best to start with(less expensive and good uptime)Hostgator,Godaddy or Bluehost. Could you please give advice on it.

Anonymous said...

I also prefer paid hosting because free hosting has so many disadvantages.web hosting provider

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