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November 21, 2005
The Migration Saga
By QBlog in Blog News
The Quixtar BLOG has been down for a couple of weeks. This is due to several factors. I hope my explanation will answer any questions. Thanks for your patience during this time.
The Beginning
The webraw.com domain (which is where this blog is hosted) has been hosted at ThinkHost since 2002. ThinkHost has been very, very good to me and I continue to recommend their services to people needing a host. Their customer service is great and I really like that ThinkHost can host multiple domains under a single account for a great price.
The Strain
However, the Quixtar BLOG has been growing. Really growing. Growing so much that it started straining the ThinkHost servers. The folks at ThinkHost struggled valiantly trying to keep the site up and running smoothly — even moved it to a better server. But the strain continued and problems persisted.
The server would slow down under the strain and, on occasion, it would be inaccessible. This was frustrating to me, to site visitors and to the good folks at ThinkHost.
The Decision
And so on October 29, 2005, I decided to find a new host. My decision was a bit rash because I hadn't fully pursued a resolution with ThinkHost but I just felt it was time to move on. And really, it was time to move on and that's exactly what I did.
Media Temple
I set up an account with Media Temple, a hosting company that has a boffo who's who list of clients. I thought that if Media Temple had super cool clients then it must be a great host. Not!
In order to get my site of the ThinkHost servers and onto the MT servers as quickly as possible the great folks at ThinkHost offered to do the migration for me... for FREE! I'm not an uber-geek and the thought of a server migration gave me a migraine (get it?). It was a relief to know that some skilled people would be handling the migration.
However, something went wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong. I can't be certain but it looks like Media Temple has some problems. Or maybe not. I don't know. I just know that the site never got back to where it needed to be and in frustration (again) I started searching for a new host.
The New Host
I got an account with a new host, Pair Networks. So far, so good. Pair comes highly recommended. Imran, my friend from Toronto, did the migration to Pair. He's a wiz.
There are still a few minor bugs to work out and a couple of changes I need to make but about almost all of the site is back to normal. I didn't lose any data either. I always worry that data will be lost during a migration. But Imran saved the day.
The Forum is back. The blog is back. Everything is back as it should be... except email. I still need to set up my email to work like it did before. I'll get to that tomorrow.
Thanks
Thank you to all who sent me messages of support during the downtime. It's encouraging to know that so many people like this site. I plan to be back to a frequent posting schedule but it may be a couple of weeks before things settle back to normal.
Comments
Glad you survived!!
Way to go Imran. Nice save!!
Gotta hand it to the Goat Man!!
I wish I could say it was an easy job and be proud of being a 'wiz', but it took us nearly a week, from monday to friday last week. I was more like a goat than a wiz.
My unix DBA skills were getting rusty and needed some training.
Welcome back Eric,
I must admit, the web is just not the same without the Qblog.
Thanks Imran~
good to have you back Qblog.
It was indeed lonely :-)
Likely some difference in PHP versions or something Qblog...but thats just the ubergeek in me talking
Glad Qblog is up and running. The net wasn't the same without this site!
Good to see you back!
I miss my QBlog fix :)
Welcome back Qblog! I checked the site everyday and when it failed, my wife cackled at me...
ALSO 3 cheers for Imran!!! You da MAN!!
Welcome back!!!
Posted by: John | November 21, 2005 5:57 AM