This is the most unfortunate moment for Atniz.com blog since 3 years as it was down for more than 36 hours. I apologize to all my readers and visitors for this situation. I was with Hostgator for more than 3 years now paying $10/month using Baby croc package for unlimited domains and hosting package. They said my site is permanently banned from their shared hosting server due to CPU outage limit. I tried to convince them to get my site up as usual by following their guidelines to remove or add any plugins that can make my blog hosting friendly. But, this time the trick doesn’t work anymore.
After installing several addon domains for my trial blogs, they send me warning that I’m using a lot of resources on their shared server and asked me to install W3-Total-Cache plugin and enable page cache, minify, database and object cache. It does help to increase overall page load time too. This time, they are out of idea to get me out from their shared server. The only option I have is to upgrade my hosting to VPS or dedicated. So, I have requested for VPS Level 1 hosting which will cost around $30 per month (including cPanel with a charge of $10/month). Sadly, they said that it is still a downgrade if I use Level 1 VPS hosting. They suggest me to get minimum Level 5 VPS hosting for Atniz blog which cost about $100/month.
There are over 800 indexed pages and less than 500 UV per day that contributes about 800-1,000 page views per day for Atniz.com blog for now. I don’t think I need a huge VPS account to support this blog at the moment. They have blacklisted Atniz.com from the account but all the other addon domains are working fine. So, I guess my negotiation to keep my site in Hostgator collapsed. I even asked them to consider keeping my site under shared hosting environment and I have agreed to remove all my addon domains to keep the resources used at minimum level. Unfortunately, for Hostgator, if you are blacklisted, even if you are a loyal customer for more than 3 years paying monthly $10, you will not get your site back to normal again anymore.
I’ve learned that lesson from hard way that took up nearly one day negotiating and trying to convince them to get the site up ASAP! I have no other choice but to hunt for other hosting service. It has been a smooth ride with Hostgator for past 3 years until I add some addon domains and keep my blog active with one post a day recently. I guess that is too much for Hostgator to keep up with. No wonder, I can see at least one negative review in 10 in most hosting review sites about Hostgator. I have introduced Hostgator to many friends and family members even without selling affiliate. It’s not that I’m firing back at Hostgator now after 3 years with them. It is their policy that doesn’t give more chances for their long term clients.
Moving a site especially a wordpress blog aged over 3 years is not an easy task. Too bad my account disk usage is above 2GB. So, I want to get the back up of all my files since Hostgator can shut down my other sites anytime since my primary domain is blacklisted in shared hosting. I need to send the support a ticket to get the latest back up file of my account. Last back up date was somewhere in October 2009. That is more than a year now. Luckily, I don’t depend on the hosting default back up or RAID program. Imagine if anything goes wrong and you will get your site back “up-to-date” again with last update from more than a year ago. WP-DB-Backup plugin comes very handy to get our site back up and sent to email weekly or daily basis. But, this will use some resources of your hosting and can lead to CPU hangover too. So, use it whenever necessary.
In my case, I just want to move the whole hosting account files from old host to new host. Since, the addon domains are just trial basis, I’m not going to support these sites anymore on new host. I’m going to dedicate the new host solely for Atniz.com blog. As for trial purpose, I will get another host since I have bad experience messing the same hosting account with Atniz blog. Anyway, I got a great deal at Webhostingpad for just $1.99/month paying for 5 years upfront which comes to a total of $120. They have better reviews than Hostgator, Justhost, Monsterhost, Bluehost and Fatcow in most hosting review sites. The only better hosting than this is Inmotion, iPage and Webhostinghub. So, now I’m upgrading my hosting from top 10 to top 5 with just 20% of money used on Hostgator. I guess I’m getting the best deal in hosting industry here.
Downloading to computer of zipped back up file of 1.2GB size takes about 40 minutes. Uploading the same file in public_ftp of new hosting takes more than 6-8 hours time. I still couldn’t get my site working after transferring all the files here. Too bad, this is my first experience in moving a wordpress blog to another host. To make it worse, the site is banned and could never go live in Hostgator. So, I got no choice but to learn moving wordpress blog with Atniz.com blog. I could never imagine of moving a site especially an active 3 years old blog. I felt like reaching end of the world after trying all the methods moving wordpress blog but failed. Luckily, I found a great guide showing step-by-step wordpress moving to a new host or new domain in below video. It took nearly an hour following the steps give to get my site up. I wish I could find this video 3 days ago.
This is the story of my 3 days site down experience with Hostgator that lead to migration. Luckily, support at Webhostingpad can help our migration if we have fully cPanel hosting. It will be good if we have less than 1GB disk usage where we don’t need to do anything on migration. All will be done by Webhostingpad support by just providing our earlier host IP, cpanel username and password. If you have larger file usage of more than 1GB, then you need to ask the support to get the latest backup file. Usually, it will take about 1-2 hours time depending on the response from your current hosting support.
Using free open source FTP client like FileZilla can really help us upload larger files. Of course, in cPanel we can upload any files less than 500MB. Migrating larger sites may need FTP client program to help you upload the file in your new host account. Once upload is done, notifying support team at Webhostingpad will get our site sorted out. This is extremely useful for new users or those who don’t have any experience in migrating websites or hosting. Are you a loyal customer of Hostgator? Think again if your site is growing fast. Be prepared to pay $100/monthly for Level 5 VPS minimum from your $10/month Baby croc package upgrade proposals from Hostgator. When my site was still new with low traffic 3 years ago, they supported me with unlimited hosting baby croc package with smooth riding. When my site starts getting good traffic, Hostgator abandoned me to give way for barely new sites which have much lesser traffic.
Now, the site is successfully moves to a new host. I’m going to dedicate this hosting account specially for Atniz.com blog only. Have you ever try to migrate your blog before? Share you experience that you go through to make a successful shift.
Hostgator is not a good host. They are so popular that their servers are overloaded and they have a reputation of refusing customers who are using dynamic IPs all because their IPs don’t match their location. For hosting, the best policy is to always go off the beaten track.
Nicely said! I guess I’m starting to realize that after hell of an experience.