Herself’s Webtools

I was asked to help set up a website for a local non-profit. Last time I set up a custom domain name for Blogspot with GoDaddy it was totally painless. It sure wasn’t this time. 404 errors, name servers that wouldn’t update and Google’s directions on Blogger just don’t work.

Here is what does work.

1) Log onto Google
- go to your blog
- go to settings then publishing
Your domain = http://www.yourdomain.com
Be sure to put in the www
Do not check the box for the redirect.
Save settings.

[ click on image for larger view ]

2) Log onto your GoDaddy Account
- go to Domains then My Domains
- check that the name servers are ‘Default Parked Nameservers

3) Go to Total DNS Control and MX Records
- under cnames set host www to points to ghs.google.com

[ click on image for larger view ]

4) Go to Forwarding
- Forward Enabled
- Forward To: http://www.yourdomain.com
- Redirect type 301 Moved Permanently

[ click on image for larger view ]

That’s it. If everything is correct all should be well in a couple of hours. Possibly as long as two days but I’ve never had it take more than a couple of hours. Just replace herselfsgreenthings.com with your domain name in each of the three pictures.

[ I just set that up temporarily to solve this problem. That domain will probably be reverted to its proper home by the time you read this. ]

Hosting companies seem to attract more fly by night businesses than just about anything else online and its hard to find a hosting company you can stay with for any length of time. I’ve moved to my fifth hosting company in 10 years and here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

The first hosting company I had was and still is an excellent hosting company. Problem is they didn’t keep up with the times on the tools and services they offered. I was with them for about 8 years.

Then I converted my old website to blogs and moved to Blogger. While an excellent free service, the servers would be flakey a couple days a month, the same days every month, and it is extremely limited in what you can host and do there. I lasted nine months there.  Wordpress.com hosting is nice but also extremely limited.

So on to the next hosting company, GoDaddy. While popular and offering more tools than my original hosting company, the servers are not the speediest.  It’s a good starting jump for a first website, but not a good hosting company if you run multiple websites and like to get in and play with everything. I was with them about a half a year.

Notice the times with each company seem to be shrinking?

Then I looked at a company that offered cPanel. The tools were excellent, they weren’t. They lasted a week.

Now I’m on yet another company. This one also offers cPanel, the servers scream ( at least so far ) and all is well. At least for this week. I’m seriously hoping it’ll stay good for several years. Time will tell.

It is almost impossible to find accurate information about which hosting companies are good and reliable and which are fly by nights. Since many of them now use cPanel, moving when times get bad should be easier. Less things should get lost and need re-configuring.

If you are switching hosting companies here are a few tips:

1) Don’t prepay until you know you the company is reliable. Start out month by month and if they do well, they pay for longer times to get the discounts. If they turn out not to be a fly by night, or the service is not good, you’ll never see your pre-paid fees again.

2) Do not let a hosting company register a free domain name for you. If you find out you don’t like them, they will be holding your domain name hostage. Register your own domains and keep them safe somewhere else.

3) Backup, backup, backup. To your home computer not to the hosting company server.

4) No matter how careful you are you will find missing things. Do not delete or close your old account until you’ve checked and re-checked your new hosting setup. Give it a week, there’ll almost always be something you forgot to backup.

5) When choosing a hosting company give preference to ones with cPanel. It makes ongoing maintenance of your sites and relocating ( if needed ) much easier.

I have to say this is the easiest of all the Wordpress upgrades I’ve done.  Previously I had troubles if I didn’t delete the previous Wordpress install.  Not this time.

I upgraded 8 blogs today.  I just ftp’d the new files up to the server and everything went painlessly.  Database upgrades took mear seconds, all the plugins I have installed work.  The automatic update plugin worked flawlessly.

I find I like the new dashboard much more than I thought I would.  I played with the release candidates last week and was so so on the new dash.  However I find in actual use it is greatly improved.

The new editor alone is worth the upgrade.  This one remembers where the line breaks and paragraphs are located.

The new multimedia is not yet ready to replace Coppermine or other galleries of that sort as I hoped but has greatly improved the ease of storage and embedding multimedia into your site.

I think it is a huge improvement over 2.3.x and highly recommend it.

Wordpress 2.5 information