Switched Host

[harlemangel]

Last year I made the decision to move away from NamesCo (on a shared server), and decided to invest in a dedicated server with BK.

120+ sites & 6+ months involving :

• packaging all files & databases, and seting up the sites on the new server, testing the sites before the DNS changes
• notifying clients of the switch,
• chasing domain access details, in some cases the domain was registered for 10 years, no-one had the access details or knew how to get them,
• applying the necessary DNS updates,
• emails going down for a handful of clients, and fielding calls from these irate clients
• contacting all POP3 clients to update their email accounts
• realising that for a handful of sites, libraries that existed on the old servers didnt exist on the new one, so had to purchase seperate (shared) space for these sites

I knew before I made the switch that it would take time, but I wasnt prepared for the amount of work it involved. But in saying that, there were only 'serious' issues with about 8-10 clients, which out of about 120+ is not that many.


However, I have experienced a huge reduction in hosting related issues, and the number of calls I have to take from clients has reduced from about 10 per week, to about 1 every two-three weeks. There was a time that I dreaded checking the R365 status site, in case there would be an entry about some server going down. Now, I dont even worry about that stuff, as I know that I have full control over the server, and for any serious issues, the guys in BK will be on it even before I make the call. I dont need to contact them that often (usually now its only for technical problems relating to server setup causing coding problems), but when I do they are extremely helpfull.

One of the previous posts here said that in relation to shared servers, 'you get what you pay for'. I have to agree now, after purchasing a dedicated server, that the extra few euros is well worth it.

Hope this is helpfull to anyone who is in two minds about switching.

 

[neweb]

Just as a point of interest!

Did you have any clients using exchange server for there email (Custom MX)
and how difficult was it to move them?

I have a number of clients I want to move to my new VPS package on Blacknight but a lot of them custom MX, joomla and word press sites and a couple of Ecommerce sites.

How easy was it for you to move this type of customer and what was involved!

 

[harlemangel]

Hi Alan
The client who used exchane servers had their own cusomt MX settings as you said, so in these cases I just changed the A records on the domain, leaving the MX records alone. In those cases where I needed to change the nameservers, I recreated the domain DNS settings on the BK domain server, and then made the nameserver switch. The routing of the mails was not affected as the records existed in both places.

In regard to the other sites, for the ecommerce ones, I was using oscommerce for a couple of them, and unfortunately the libraries didnt exist on my new server, so I had to find an alternative. Moving Joomla & WordPress was not a problem however.

Hope this helps.
HA

 

[sposs]

There's a big difference between hosting on a shared and dedicated server platform , when possible you should always look to move onto a VPS or dedicated platform to improve reliability and performance.

 

[neweb]

Hi Alan
The client who used exchane servers had their own cusomt MX settings as you said, so in these cases I just changed the A records on the domain, leaving the MX records alone. In those cases where I needed to change the nameservers, I recreated the domain DNS settings on the BK domain server, and then made the nameserver switch. The routing of the mails was not affected as the records existed in both places.

In regard to the other sites, for the ecommerce ones, I was using oscommerce for a couple of them, and unfortunately the libraries didnt exist on my new server, so I had to find an alternative. Moving Joomla & WordPress was not a problem however.

Hope this helps.
HA

Very interesting to know, thanks for the info.

 

[mneylon]

In regard to the other sites, for the ecommerce ones, I was using oscommerce for a couple of them, and unfortunately the libraries didnt exist on my new server, so I had to find an alternative.

What kind of libraries caused issues?