Dreamhost has officially gone to hell. I'm jumping ship. Suggestions?
  • loudersoftloudersoft
    It's official: I'm done with Dreamhost and their Crazy Insane Domain deal. Five years ago, when I started, they were wonderful. Today, I've had constant down time, server failures, it's like an experiment in failure over there.

    Who do you use/suggest for hosting and do you know of/have access to any sweet deals? I keep hearing Media Temple is terrific. Thanks for your suggestions, it is way past time to do this.
  • chromewaveschromewaves
    I ditched them for the same reasons in October.  Went to Webfaction.  Much, much happier now.
  • TimTim
    I'm with HostNine (but my MP3s are still with Dreamhost - thinking of moving them though).
  • TsuruTsuru
    I'm with hostgator and really like it.
  • Sean RSean R
    Still with GoDaddy and very happy with their service.
  • TartTart
    Bluehost and Hostmonster are what I use, no problems at all. And they are somewhat if not completely the same company (not sure how it works, the customer support is shared and the entire back end is identical). Good deals on each and they don't oversell (Dreamheist's problem as far as I could ascertain).
  • SlowcousticSlowcoustic
    Slowcoustic is also unhappy with lack luster hosting by Dreamhost.

    Has anyone here moved from Dreamhost to another host - was it a huge hassle to move your entire site (Frank, I think you did recently). Like how do you move all your hosted music, photos - the whole importing Wordpress thing is fairly easy but to actually move all the hosted media and such?

    Well, I am seriously looking into a new host for 2010 and getting off this roller coaster of up/down time that Dreamhost supplies.

    hmmpf.
  • chromewaveschromewaves
    I moved to Webfaction in October.  Took full advantage of the big fat T1 pipes at work to help with the file transfers - still took about 2.5 days total, I think.  Mostly MP3s and photos... never been happier that I don't host most of the MP3s I link to myself.  Wordpress has a pretty easy import/export process though it was more of a pain for me - with over 3000 posts, the PHP server would actually time out before the exports were done generating the file or the import was done reading it.  I ended up doing an import, going back into my DH WP install and erasing hundreds of old posts to whittle the size of the file down, re-export/import, go back and erase more, lather rinse repeat until everything was done.



    Blogs without 7+ years of posts to move should be less painful.



    But once it was done and I wasn't looking at 5-8 hours of downtime a day, it was allllll worth it.
  • TimTim
    Just as an FYI - the Wordpress export file can be separated by hand into smaller sized chunks, which can get around the import timeout issue.
    As for moving large volumes of files from one server to another - FXP should be the way to go if both hosts support it (Dreamhost does thankfully).
  • TsuruTsuru
    man... as soon as I was thinking of making the jump to wordpress, things like this and seeing Captain's Deads server bills make me make blogger last just a little bit longer.....
  • Lee|KnoxRoadLee|KnoxRoad
    Frank, I know we've discussed this, but when we did the wp import/export a while back to bluehost we were only several months old and even still we had to delete a batch of posts. So, I can only imagine that seven years worth was quite the burden...
  • chromewaveschromewaves
    Posted by: Lee|KnoxRoadFrank, I know we've discussed this, but when we did the wp import/export a while back to bluehost we were only several months old and even still we had to delete a batch of posts. So, I can only imagine that seven years worth was quite the burden...

     


    it was the best time I ever had.  And by best, I mean kinda boring-ass and a bit stressful.  but there's something therapeutic about deleting your life's work wholesale (even if it's already been backed up).  Whole process only took me an hour or two, all told, so no biggie.
  • Sean RSean R
    This is why I backup all my wordpress xml stuff weekly. It's probably overkill, but it makes me feel less stressed.
  • TartTart
    I didn't have to delete anything and the only reason I had any hassle at all was due to user error. Done correctly, and chopped into smaller blocks as Tim suggests, you should be able to move it all over without much hassle from Dreamhost to a similarly built server (Bluehost/Hostmonster) the databases are both of the same kind. That's what matters, how the databases are built, the type and all. There's a load of information on the web on how to do it and a tutorial of sorts here in this forum as well. xoxo
  • loudersoftloudersoft
    There's actually a way you can relatively easily zip all of your directories into a single file, transfer the single file from your old hosting company to your new one via shell (terminal) service, and then unzip the file on your new hosting company's server. When I get ready to make the move that's what I'm going to do.

    One thing about Dreamhost: they make a lot of things easy and/or free. The problem is that free has a price now, and it's called massive downtime.
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