I did it. I signed up with Dreamhost using one of those promo codes. I should have done it through a friend so one of you would have gotten the money, but at least this way I didn’t have to play favorites amongst my several friends who host with them.
I have mixed feelings about leaving Blogomania. It’s run by an acquaintance, so I kind of feel like I’m betraying her, and that’s not my intention – I am making the choice that fits me best financially and also fits my web usage habits. I have somewhere just under 1GB with Blogomania, but Dreamhost is giving me 20GB, and I will probably cram all kinds of stuff on there. (Transfer is unlimited with both.) I will also be able to administer my site from work with DH, because the control panel is on port 80. BG uses Cpanel, which is on port 2082 and therefore not accessible from work.
That’s another thing, though – I love Cpanel. I am quite familiar with it, and with Fantastico; the DH panel is totally different and there will definitely be an adjustment period. Their one-click install section doesn’t have anywhere near as many choices as Fantastico, but they do use phpMyAdmin so I’ll be comfortable with that right away at least.
I’m also scared of making the physical move. I know I can get my files moved, but will the functionality go smoothly? DH doesn’t use localhost for MySQL connections, so I will have to change that for all of my scripts, as well as any paths that will now be different. The likelihood of things breaking is pretty high, from WordPress to the scripts for making updates in my quilting bee pages. That’s what has kept me from making this change in the past: fear of things breaking. I have one site that I maintain for a medium-sized userbase, and I will have to tell them the site will be unavailable temporarily and hope all their stuff moves okay. One thing I really don’t like is that I can’t check my site before I do the DNS change; if there’s an IP address or something else I can use beforehand, I sure don’t know what it is.
But doing things that scare us can be good sometimes, right? So I’m trying it out. The expanded features, improved tech support, and referral program are too hard to pass up. DH has a long money-back guarantee, so even if everything fails I can just throw up my hands and change the DNS back to Blogomania. I’ve been with them nearly four years, so I imagine she will let me keep my stuff there until I’m comfortable the transfer has gone smoothly, even if I am leaving her behind.
Well, I don’t know if it will work once you get it ported over to Dreamhost, but you’ll be glad to know that coComment works with your blog right now. {Ya like how I kept this post on topic? Sort of. A little. Do I get points for effort?
}
I’ve heard mostly good things about Dreamhost. I seriously considered going with them when I moved my site, but their lack of cpanel was the deal killer for me. I had over a dozen sites to move and moving between cpanel hosts means there’s no need to redo all the e-mail and site settings, change PHP includes, etc.
But good luck with DH — I really like how they increase their storage allowance each week.