Pre Move Etiquette... maybe some shared recommendations

[Poki]

Just wondering what you guys do before you move from one hosting provider to another.
My site is very small, so I could simply just... move, but for future reference.

My current hosting provider recently re-branded their name, and the crazzy part of my brain can't handle that. At first I was just going to deal with it, no big deal, but now that I can't login to my cPanel I think I might just pack things up and move. Nothing against my hosting provider, but after all I am still within the 30 day money-back time frame.

I suppose this might get asked allot, any recommendations for shared hosting provider? I'm looking at asmallorange, love that they don't advertise "unlimited", think its neat that they have a support forum, and love that they don't have ads in their cPanel.

For the fun of it, what does this mean:
I log in to my cPanel (using both the link provided and mydomain.com/cpanel... the generic message appears "Login successful, redirecting..." then the browser hang loads for a long time until a blank page with an error message appears:

"Invalid license key: MD5 Checksum Verification Failed"

Never had any issues before the company changed names.

 

[WSWD]

They probably didn't change names...they were likely bought out by somebody else. Doesn't sound good.

Asmallorange is owned by a group called EIG (Endurance International Group), which is known for buying out decent hosts and running them completely into the ground. Asmallorange is no exception, and the recent reviews reflect that.

 

[Poki]

Interesting, did EIG buy out ASO? Reading some reviews (not at any "hosting review domain websites), I was under the impression that ASO was good.

looks like around 2011 was pre-EIG

 

[WSWD]

Interesting, did EIG buy out ASO? Reading some reviews (not at any "hosting review domain websites), I was under the impression that ASO was good.

They used to be very good. The recent reviews over on WHT and such show otherwise. There is a good one here and there, but mostly bad.

HostGator owner (Brent) originally owned ASO, and ASO was part of the HG sale.

 

[HittingSmoke]

If you want a good shared hosting provider, switch to Webfaction. I can't recommend them highly enough.

You can use their shared servers which don't contribute to your RAM usage or you can compile anything you want in userland to run your own servers so long as it doesn't go over your RAM allotment. The basic tier is 512MB which is better than some VPS's and that doesn't include any overhead.

 

[Moshe1010]

What's your budget?
Do you have a preferred location?

 

[Mouth]

Just wondering what you guys do before you move from one hosting provider to another.

Did it 2 weeks ago.
1. Configure and secure new server
2. Set TTL on DNS record for your domain down to something like 1 hour
3. Copy across entire XF www to new server
4. Dump old server XF database, copy to new server, import.
5. Check XF working fine on new server
... When ready to move site to new server (usually in a very quite time period for your majority users) ...
6. Set both old server XF and new server XF to offline mode
7. Repeat step 3 and 4
8. Test new server XF working fine
9. Set new server XF to online (leaving old server XF still offline, with offline message saying site moved to new server and waiting DNS)
10. Update DNS records so that domain changes to new server. Restore TTL to original value (eg 24 hrs)
... wait a while (up to a couple of hours, if step 2 done) until global internet picks-up your new server IP address, and your users see new site.