Downtime News

There will be some downtime for this site as I have to switch servers. I will try to minimize it as much as I can but it will likely be a few weeks before everything is back in order, bigger and better than before. The hosting plan I'm on is being deprecated, it runs out in about 3 weeks. I am switching the site and the various subdomains to a new and much more flexible plan from the same host, this does mean rebuilding almost everything on the new server, which means a lot of extra work for me to bring things back up to speed.

This isn't a problem, it's actually a blessing in disguise as I'd have had to do that at some point anyway, and it does allow me to refocus the main site while I'm at it, When I built it initially it was a blog, and I tacked other stuff on and it kinda grew. I now have a lot more Drupal miles under my fingers and decided in hindsight some of the things I was doing wasn't such a good idea, so best build with that new knowledge. I've found that while Drupal is incredibly flexible, it's not a good idea to stack too many functions into the one domain.

I am building the main site as a shop front for my Drupal skills and to a lesser extent other web design stuff to try and get work as an independent site builder for individuals, small businesses and small charities. I'll be splitting parts off into separate subdomains, my blog and screencast are two obvious examples. I'll also be building portfolio sites on subdomains.

As much as this is a major upheaval for me my web host Birch Hosting has been amazing, first in giving me notice that it was close to the date, and then to give me an overlap of the new account to build in then (in theory) switch the nameservers and nobody else would notice the changes. I cannot recommend them enough in price, and specially in service. If you like you can use the code thistleweb to get 10% discount there, on already damn good prices.

If I didn't rely so heavily on Drupal this would be great; but almost all of what I do on my site is Drupal, it's an issue. Drupal put that plan out the window in that it doesn't like temporary addresses, as a result I have no choice but to make the switch then rebuild on a live server.

The long and short of it is that my site is going to be down for a while. The blog will be easy  although time consuming to replicate so that will be done first, the rest will fall into place after that. It also means changes for the new TechBytes site, it needs rebuilt in the new server so it will be delayed a bit more. It will mean stuff like RSS feed url changes too sadly.

The CPanel does look incredible in the sheer range of one-click installs of stuff, so after this upheaval is settled, I'll be exploring more stuff; but one thing at a time. Once again, sorry for the inconvenience.