If..Else Log

As you may or may not have realised, I've now switched webhosts. I've been fairly happy with my old hosts, so my move to Dreamhost wasn't been the result of any major dissatisfaction. In fact, I don't really have any overwhelming reason to move at all. Instead, it was a culmination of little things that eventually pulled me away.

The number one reason is my own lack of willpower. Dreamhost have been dangling a multitude of tempting little baits (192GB worth of bandwidth, 7GB storage, unlimited MySQL db's) that eventually I snapped and said "Gimme, gimme, gimme". The fact that I don't *really* need any of this was irrelevent. They were offering it all for less than what I was paying and so I decided to trade on the fortuitous dollar-pound exchange rate.

There is, of course, a touch of irony in this whole affair. 1and1 have been trading on their "best price/service in the UK" moniker for a long while now despite the fact that they operate out of another country. All my dealings with them have been via email.

There's nothing wrong with this of course. Service was reliable and it's perfectly viable due to the international nature of the internet. However, it's interesting that it was this very nature that allowed me to use an international host without any fear.

Anyways, back to my decision to move. When I previously said that I didn't need any of what DH were offering, it was a bit of a lie. I needed SSH access, something my previous host wasn't going to give me without stumping up twice the amount of moolah. The fact that DH offered a lot more beyond this for a whole lot less helped to tip it over the edge.

In the end, SSH was invaluable in migrating stuff across. No need to use a web interface. I could drop down to the command line and do my magic there. Very helpful indeed as, ignoring all sane advice, I decided to do the whole thing without deferring to wiser resources.

Defying common wisdom, things ended up going smoothly. No war stories or battles against stupidity this time. DNS propagation did bite me in the arse and domain registration transfer was abysmally slow but I made it.

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