I think this trip may have the straw that breaks the camels back as far as my web hosting is concerned. I have been getting increasingly disappointed and dissatisfied with my web hosting company. I setup my web page with them originally about three and a half years ago. They were at the time, and still are really, the best value package for features. However, over the last 18 months the quality of service seems to have dropped dramatically. Un-planned, and later un-explained, periods of ‘down time’ are becoming increasingly common, as are interruptions and delays with emails. I find that particularly annoying, as when I’m on the ship I have to rely on the web-based email client which seems particularly susceptible to problems. I’ve spoken before about changing hosting companies and to be honest if it weren’t for the likely hassles that I will encounter with changing over, I’d have done it some time ago. The transferring of the web pages themselves will be relatively straight forward, as theoretically :redface: , I should have them all, up to date, on my laptops hard-drive. The problems will be with trying to migrate the databases the provide the backbone of the forum, guestbook and these blogs.. 😕 I have tried in the past to make backups, but seem to have problems when it comes to restoring them. I did last week manage to successfully export the forum database and restore it to my notebook. In the last few years I have learnt a good deal about how MySQL databases work, information that would have been useful BEFORE I set up my web page! Most hosting services allow you to set up your web page before you set the DNS server addresses. During that time you can preview your site to make sure that everything is okay before ‘going live’. My hosting contract runs out in November, so perhaps the time is right now to locate a new host, get things set up, and then re-point the DNS addresses before I have to renew!
