New Host

I changed hosts for my web stuff a couple of weeks ago. My old host tanked big time. I got an email message a couple of months ago saying they were migrating to new servers and I had until the end of November to move my stuff if the auto-migration did not work or it would all just be deleted. I got another message at the beginning of November saying something similar with a link to a page where I could get updates on the success/failure of the migration process. I went to the page and couldn't get anything useful out of it. My stuff wasn't migrating but it wouldn't generate error codes or anything. I called tech support and had to wait for over an hour to talk to someone. The guy dug around and finally said that he'd found the problem: the quota for my account on the new system was set to zero. Ah! Nothing could migrate if I didn't have any available space on the new server!

He went off and came back saying he couldn't fix it but would get someone higher up the chain to fix it and that I'd soon be able to use the migration tools. I tried later that night. Same deal. Nothing was working and no error codes were being generated. I opened a chat session. Another wait of over an hour and finally connected to someone. I explained the situation and they said it could take up to 48 hours for the fix to kick in. I also submitted a ticket on their system asking if they could help me get myPhpAdmin working on the old site so I could export my databases so I could at least make a local copy of my blogs. I never heard a peep regarding my ticket. I didn't try it again for about 5 days. When I did log in, nothing had changed.

I called tech support again. Another wait of over an hour. Finally connected and explained the situation rather thoroughly. The tech went off and came back to report that my site hadn't migrated to the new system and she couldn't help. I told her I knew the site hadn't migrated and explained to her (again) that the problem was that the quota for my account on the new system was set to zero and that I had been waiting for 5 days with no change in status. I also asked her about the myPhpAdmin thing and she said she couldn't help with un-migrated systems and that I should submit a ticket. I told her and had already done that and she couldn't find my ticket. I tried submitting a new ticket with her on the line and she couldn't find it. I couldn't find it either. She offered to submit a ticket on my behalf. As soon as she did that, both tickets showed up on my old control panel. She could only see the new one. I asked her to transfer me to someone who could help with un-migrated accounts and she said there was nobody in the phone chain who could do that. Sigh. I hung up. I eventually got a couple of completely blank messages regarding the tickets (at least I think that's what they were but they were blank and provided no info).

Argh! I gave up on them. I logged into the blogging software on the old system on the 22nd of November and exported all of my content to text files that I could (hopefully) import into a new blog. I found a new host and updated DNS and started working on moving everything over. I used the online tools at the old host to cancel my account. One of the things it made me do was acknowledge the cancellation policy. The link to the cancellation policy went to a 404-Not Found page. Really. I have no idea what their cancellation policy is. I could not find it doing a google search. Bums. I'd used them (and their predecessor) for nearly 20 years. I never had a problem with them until now and have no idea what's going on over there. Oh well. BTW, I got an email message on the 28th or so of November telling me the migration had failed and my account had been shut down. About 8 hours later I got a message saying I had until the middle of January to move my stuff. Two completely different systems seem to be at war over there. It's almost comical.

So, here I am in a new home. I don't much like the design but also don't have the motivation to do much about it. Things seem to be working well enough. I think all of the old content is here. I decided to officially shut down my baseball blog (I hadn't posted there in over two years) and my photography blog (I hadn't posted there in over 6 years!) but am keeping the archives around.

If you see anything broken, give me a holler. Thanks!

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