I ended up buy a fourth of a file server at HostGator.com. I spent some time this afternoon looking at our disk space and bandwidth needs, and this is more than adequate for now. At some point we may have to move up to a true dedicated file server (which is what I was planning to do at GoDaddy), but this suits me better for now, if only because I won’t have to be my own sysadmin.
I’m waiting for the booger to be set up now. Once it is, I’m going to move one or two hosted accounts over to see how things go. We control 66 domains right now, but only about half of those are hosted. The rest, like BloodhoundBlog.net, are redirected to hosted accounts. In any case, in addition to BloodhoundBlog, we have four hosted accounts with WordPress weblogs on them, so I’ll be able to practice moving WordPress installations before I have to move the big dog.
Right now, I’m aiming for late Saturday night. Things could change, but I’ll give plenty of advance warning. We’ll certainly be down for some amount of time as Domain Name Servers around the globe take note of our new IP address. With luck, it won’t be a very long time.
And: This little problem sucked the marrow right out of my day. On the plus side, as soon I am able to play with the new host, I can start moving sites. The GoDaddy-hosted sites are all pre-paid, but a bunch of them are coming due shortly, with eggs hatching in succession thereafter. Smaller, low-bandwidth sites have never been a problem, so I’ll move them as I can.
But think about new sites. I control a quarter-server with unlimited domain hosting. Every new site we build will be hosted “for free,” as a part of our overhead costs. Moreover, Teri Lussier just saved a bunch of money: We can host her to-be-built weblog “for free.” Right now, we spend about $43 a year for a new single-property weblog. As of tonight, that cost is around $7.50 a year, the discounted cost of the domain. Add twenty new domains over the next year and we just saved a bunch of money.
Plus which, our throughput, especially on the high-bandwidth stuff (like higher-rez photos and podcasts) that has been killing us, should — had better! — be much, much faster.
All this is by way of saying: Hang tough. We’re fixing our bandwidth problem — and fixing GoDaddy’s wagon, too, I hope — in very short order.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
jim gatos says:
HostGator? Eh? Welcome to the club.. I’ve been VERY Happy with them since I switched there too…
Jim
March 22, 2007 — 8:38 pm
Franz @ Blue Collar Agents says:
I have a couple with Hostgator as well…
Last year Hostgator was the target of a nasty cross site scripting attack, which ended up infecting users of their customer’s sites (including mine). During the attack they were less than forward with communication about the problems – I eventually figured out what was going on by searching through their support forums. (It would be interesting to see if the thread remains in their archives, or if they have erased this dark episode from their history).
Other than that nasty mess, I haven’t had any problems.
March 24, 2007 — 8:30 am
Greg Swann says:
> Other than that nasty mess
Now you tell me… 😉
So far, so good. I moved four accounts yesterday, bascially in my spare time. I have to do at least four more today, including Bloodhound. Then I have 21 more I can do catch-as-catch can. Unlike GoDaddy, these are properly-configured Linux servers. And the semi-dedicated account lets me address everything through one ftp account, if I like, instead of the 29 we have now. Overall, I’m loving it so far.
My real nightmare: Moving the email accounts…
March 24, 2007 — 8:38 am
Franz @ Blue Collar Agents says:
Yeah, my recent move to a similar semi-dedicated plan was like having shackles removed from my ankles.
You really should be fine with HG – from everything I can tell, the incident I described was isolated – I still maintain my accounts with them (mine are the cheap shared plans for small sites).
Hope all goes well with the email. You’re probably way ahead of me, but I’ll share my tip just in case: if possible, access both your new and old email servers by IP address until the domain names finish propagating.
March 24, 2007 — 9:55 am
Jeremy says:
Do you guys have any suggestions for places to find out more about how to run multiple domains through one hosting account? Right now my wife is running about 15 individual domains through godaddy and currently that means 15 hosting accounts. I’d like to consolidate if possible. Comments on your experience and info about the process and benefits would be appreciated.
Thanks
March 26, 2007 — 8:26 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Do you guys have any suggestions for places to find out more about how to run multiple domains through one hosting account?
This is what I just did. I had 65 domains at GoDaddy hosted on 29 server accounts. I just moved all the server accounts to one semi-dedicated server at HostGator.com. One of the domains becomes the master domain for the account, then the others are moved in as add-on domains. In other words, inside HostGator, they look like subdomains of the master domain, but from the outside they look like normal hosted domains. All 29 accounts can be serviced through one FTP account, although it is possible to access each one separately. Slicker than whale snot. My hosting at GoDaddy was running around $105 a month, where this option is $75, and I can add as many more domains as I want at no additional cost.
March 26, 2007 — 10:11 pm
Jeremy says:
Thanks for the input Greg. This definitely looks like the right way to go. Now I just need to analyze when to make the moves. Right now I have hosting accounts set to expire between now and the next two years (stupid me for paying up front). Maybe I will just chalk the cost up to a lesson learned about pre-paying.
March 27, 2007 — 12:50 pm