This tutorial assumes that you:

• Know what Tracks is, and have successfully installed it
• Know your way around a shell account
• Are familiar with the Dreamhost web panel
• Know how to use phpMyAdmin (for todomail.pl only)

If you do not have these prerequisites, you are not going to have much luck following this tutorial!
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My website has started off the new year by breaking in a puzzling way. All the widgets on my homepage that are created with PHP are gone. (This applies to individual post pages too.) At first I thought PHP was broken - but no, I was using my own PHP5, and I didn’t change anything. So I fell back on the Dreamhost install of PHP 4.4.2, and that didn’t fix it. I changed it to the Dreamhost install of PHP 5.1.2, which is a slightly newer version than the one I was using (5.0.9), but that didn’t fix anything either. What’s really weird is that my admin side is working fine, and other websites I run that use PHP are fine. A says that if I didn’t change anything, then Dreamhost must have - but I can’t figure it out. It seems like if it’s only affecting the produced version of my journal (and the actual layout is fine, that is also constructed by PHP, it’s just the widgets that aren’t working), then it must be something in the journal design? Right? Hello? I’m so confused.

Added: Also, when I made this post, WordPress asked me if I was sure I wanted to add this post. I said yes, and it posted, and it was fine. But now I’m thinking something is up with my WordPress (which is self-installed 2.0.4), so I’m going to upgrade…

Resolved: Holy crapola. Apparently all of my King Text widgets got set to not run PHP; I have no idea why I didn’t figure this out faster. I also discovered an issue with WP 2.0.5 that caused WordPress to ask me for confirmations for some things; it turns out this is related to FastCGI and can be fixed with the WordPress 2.0.5 Tuneup plugin.

Well, I screwed up my site big-time. I was trying to make WP-Validator work, but I have close to 10,000 entries for it to analyze (that’s posts + comments) and so it needs altered max_execution_time and memory_limit variables. While I was playing around with different ways to resolve this, I managed to delete my custom php.cgi file. Oops. Most of my website is built on PHP - photo galleries, weblog, personal FTP, everything.

So I tried reinstalling custom PHP, but it broke. I filed a support request, choosing the OMG EXTREME CRITICAL EMERGENCY!! EVERYTHING’S BROKEN! People are DYING! option for the first time ever. I realized that the error I had gotten when it died was that the process was killed, and DreamHost occasionally kills processes for no apparent reason, so I figured I’d try again. This time it broke in a different way at the same point, but apparently it was enough for my journal.amanita.net domain to start working again. I’m glad I moved it from /amanita.net/journal to /journal.amanita.net because I think that’s what helped fix it.

Unfortunately my personal FTP and photo galleries are still down; I assume anything that’s actually on amanita.net itself is dead. I am assuming my journal has fallen back on the default PHP installation used by DreamHost; at this point I am more than happy to have it all go back to the default!

*blink*
Oh. I just removed from my amanita.net .htaccess file the part that told it to look for my custom install. Now everything is using the default DreamHost installation of PHP, and my personal FTP and photo gallery seem to be fine. I’m going to leave my support request in place because I would like to know what happened when I tried to install my custom PHP (the part that broke), but it’s not nearly as critical now. There’s no way to change the priority on the ticket, but if any DreamHost people are reading this, well…get back to me when you can, okay?

I was going to say something, but I forgot what it was. Anyway, I’m mildly amused by the announcement of Dreamhost’s web-based FTP. First, it doesn’t offer anything that the original site, net2ftp, doesn’t. And second, I already have my own installation of net2ftp on my site, so I don’t need theirs. Ah well.

But I really do forget what I was going to say…

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.

A friend of mine was asking for advice on web hosts because his daughter’s current host is providing very poor service. I was pretty impressed with some of Dreamhost’s plans - if anybody is using Dreamhost, could you please leave a comment or e-mail me? I’m very curious about them, especially while they have their tripled-space offer.