All Narfed Up words (and some photography pre-2010) by Bryan Villarin

How I switched to Media Temple

In Life on 28 December 2009 tagged Email, IMAP, Media Temple, web hosting, WordPress with 3 comments

I write about a wide variety of topics because I’m not sure when it’ll help someone. This is part 2 of switching web hosts.

Searching for a new place

I briefly considered WordPress.com, but I need the flexibility. I looked at WordPress.org for web hosting suggestions, but I’m skeptical about anyone offering unlimited disk space and/or bandwidth — there’s no such thing. I searched around Web Hosting Talk and asked for suggestions on Twitter.

• “Have you looked at Godaddy for hosting?” (@redwallphoto)
• “I avoid [hosts offering unlimited disk space and/or bandwidth] on principle. ‘Unlimited’ actually means the limits are secret. Much rather do business with an honest company.” (@yafd)
• “Brian‘s got unlimited with Acenet. Check them out.” (@askmeques)
• “I am currently using Media Temple and previously used A2. I’m looking at futurehosting.com. I avoid ‘unlimited’.” (@cruciformity)
• “NOOOOOO!!! NOT GODADDY!! [They're] fine for domain management, but they are a poor excuse for an actual host.” (@plasma2002)
• “Nope. [Never] tried them myself, but [I've] read one too many horror stories online from people having bad experiences. Spammy also.” (@plasma2002)
• “GoDaddy sucks as a domain registrar. No support + overpriced + shady. Go with namecheap.com” (@shibbydacury)
• “[Namecheap has been my] registrar for several years. They are always helpful [and] willing to bend over backwards for you.” (@shibbydacury)
• “If you’re looking for cheap, reliable hosting, go with DreamHost. You can find coupons online to give you your first year for $20″ (@shibbydacury)
• “I recently moved a whole bunch of sites over to Media Temple. [I] didnt have too much trouble migrating and they work great for me.” (@JsonStone)
• “I use [HostGator] and have been very happy with their service and prices.” (@mikekang)
• “I’m using 1&1 for some simple hosting and seems to be ok. Nothing special.” (@nickmomrik)

Ryan Goodman (@ryangoodman)¹ from Media Temple sent me an email after seeing all my Twitter updates, and I went with (gs) Grid-Service Lite. Now, I proudly display the (mt) badge in the footer².

Preparation

I went to the WordPress Codex, then read “Moving WordPress.”

Old server:

• Close comments, trackbacks and pingbacks for the whole blog with Extended Comment Options.
• Backup my database with the WP-DB-Backup WordPress plugin³.
• Copy files from old server.

New server:

• Log into new server and copy files.
• Create a new database.
• Restore database within phpMyAdmin. (Maximum file size supported is 10 MB. You can upload gzip, bzip2, and zip files. My gzip file was 1.3 MB.)
• Edit wp-config.php file to reflect the new database name, username, and MySQL hostname⁴.
• Preview website before the DNS switch.
• Go to my domain registrar and change the nameservers.

Email

I use IMAP on my server, not Gmail. In Thunderbird, I copied email from my IMAP folders to Local Folders. After my email account was setup on the new server, I copied those from the Local Folders.

If you’re switching to Media Temple, don’t forget to enable local mail. I forgot and wasn’t getting email for about one day. When I finally remembered, previous email that I sent from trying to test came through.

One of my domains (The Scarlet Paradigm) has a few email forwarders⁵. Set those up before you switch DNS servers and you shouldn’t notice any downtime.

Final thoughts

Media Temple has a thorough Knowledge Base. That helps a lot.

It’s tough to find a solid web hosting company. When you find one that’s honest, responsive and passionate, I hope this helps you move smoothly.

Lastly, thanks to Ryan Goodman for helping me out!

Related

• Migrating WordPress from DreamHost to Media Temple (gs) Grid Server – Part 1 (MySQL Backup)
• Migrating WordPress from DreamHost to Media Temple (gs) Grid Server – Part 2

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