This blog now happily hosted at WebFaction

Well, it’s official.  I have moved my blog to a new web host.  I was using Bluehost before.  I got infected with malware. I cleaned it, but because I was running multiple sites and scripts, the source of the malware is just too hard for me to find.  So rather than pay several hundred dollars to have Sucuri.net clean my site, I just picked up my databases and moved.

I love the way WebFaction works.  I can setup test installations of web apps (wordpress, etc), assign them to domains, and then change to a live domain when ready.  This is really cool because if I want to play around with something before going live I can do so easily.

WordPress moves intimidated me before.  But I figured out how to do everything and it was kinda fun to get this learning experience under my belt.

I had to learn how to use PHYMyAdmin to export a database, and how to import the SQL file into  new, blank database.  I had to figure out how to modify the wp-config file AND modify some of the database entries so that I had a working “test” site before I changed the name servers over to the new host.

I ran into a few snags .. even just today, I thought everything was fine.  But I couldn’t post.  PHP errors everywhere.  It turns out my installation of WordPress (or maybe Thesis theme) doesn’t like PHP version 5.4.  No problem.  Small change to the .htaccess file and I’m forcing it to use PHP 5.3 instead.  The WebFaction support team emailed me that solution within 2 hours of putting in a “low priority” support ticket.  Pretty wicked-good service.

Happy to be malware free