Site Upgrade and Maintenance In Progress

edit: All right people everything has been upgraded, tweaked and transferred. So far the sites all looks like they are running fine. So lets get back to regular programming at Design Sojourn!

Sorry for the slow down in posting in the last couple of days. I was actually maintaining this website’s server and at the same time slapping my hosting provider around for poor reliability, server up times and download access speeds. As a result, my hosting provider will be moving my data over to a newly purchased server system sometime next week. I’m not sure how this is going to affect things but they assure me their new server is more “robust”.
However that’s not all.
As a backup, I have been thinking for a long time now to sign up at another hosting provider so that not all my websites (currently about 10) are on one host (basket). Just 2 days ago, after much research and talking people, I decided to sign up with Dream Host. So far I am more than please with the customer service, results and value for money. Just as an example, I’m currently in Sydney, this site is hosted in Singapore, and Dream Host is somewhere in the USA. As a test I set up 2 similar sites 1 on my current host and 1 at Dream Host, and guess what? The site hosted at Dream Host loads twice as fast! Not only that, access to the FTP and domain control panel was just as quick. Now last time I checked, the USA is a lot further from Sydney than Singapore, so I believe my current hosting provider in Singapore has a lot to answer for.

Guys if you have been looking for a budget hosting provider with great customer service, I do recommend Dream Host. If you do decide to, please click on this link, or the Dream Host banner on the right. By doing so you will do me a favour by giving me referral credits that helps defray my hosting cost. I recommend that you sign up for the USD $7.95 / month plan. It has, at this price, one of the biggest disk space and bandwidth available. The only catch is to get this price you need to pay the plan for 2 years. However the good news is, there is no set-up fee and you can get a unique domain name of your choice for free for the life of the plan.

All right so in the days to come I will be backing up most of mySQL databases and websites and carting some to my new host. I will also take the opportunity to upgrade this site and another to the newest WordPress version 2.2.1. I’ve noticed that this new version manages plugins differently as well as has system bug fixes, so I believe I need to be extra careful in the upgrade this time. I also want to ensure that all software is in tip top shape, which will give my hosting provider no other excuse for slow download speeds and/or failures.
So if things look a little weird or the site is down, please wait a few minutes and then hit your browser reload button. Sorry for any inconvenience caused and please let me know of any site issues you experience.
Finally I like to thank Koh TW, who suggested, and I’ve implemented, increasing the line spacing to make this site easier to read!