salguod Posted April 5, 2006 Posted April 5, 2006 Hello, I'm planning on transfering my Moveable Type 3.2 blog from another host to TCH. I think the Silver plan is what will best meet my needs. The reason I'm moving is that my current host has a server limit that my blog is now hitting very regularly (every comment, new post, trackback, etc.) causing 500 errors. That limit is 6 secs of 100% processor on shared plans. I know that folks in the MT community recommend TCH pretty highly and many run MT here, so I assume that will not be an isuse with the silver plan, is that right?. My big question is how do I do this with minimal down time. I don't believe my host (1and1 if that helps) is using cpanel. How can I check that? I've been blogging for 2+ years and getting fairly adept and maintaining and changing my site, but I really don't know how to proceed. I do know I need to back up my site, and sign up at. TCH. Beyond that I'm lost. - What about my domain at the old host. It's paid through the end of the year. I guess I need to find out if I can keep my domain with them and point it to TCH? - Folks frequently mis-spell my site a certain way, so I want to add a second domain to point to the same place, is that doable? - How long will it take to have my domain point to TCH? - What about email, how long does that take to change over? Is it possible that some email would get 'lost' in the process? (I provide email for several folks in my family, so I don't want to mess thm up!) I just want to be educated and prepeared. Is there a "transfering hopsts for dummies' link out there? Thanks for your help.
TCH-Bruce Posted April 5, 2006 Posted April 5, 2006 Welcome to the forums salquod - What about my domain at the old host. It's paid through the end of the year. I guess I need to find out if I can keep my domain with them and point it to TCH? If you can modify your DNS name servers you can leave your domain name with your current registrar and just change them to the TCH name servers. - Folks frequently mis-spell my site a certain way, so I want to add a second domain to point to the same place, is that doable? Yes, you can park another domain on top of an existing domain. Just open a help desk ticket and request it. - How long will it take to have my domain point to TCH? Propogation can be up to 72 hours. - What about email, how long does that take to change over? Is it possible that some email would get 'lost' in the process? (I provide email for several folks in my family, so I don't want to mess thm up!) Same thing as propogation for the site, up to 72 hours. When you login to your administration panel on your current host it will say cPanel or what ever admin software they are using. You could start by purchasing your parked domain name and setting up your movable type installation. Once you have it all set up you can take a backup of your current database and upload it here. That would be the simple way to do it with minimal downtime if you do not have cPanel on your current host. Hope that helps.
TCH-Thomas Posted April 5, 2006 Posted April 5, 2006 Welcome to the forum, salgoud. Any more questions, don´t hesitate to ask.
salguod Posted April 5, 2006 Author Posted April 5, 2006 I've got a support call into my host regarding pointing my domain to TCH servers. It's not obvious how to do that from my control panel. If past histories are any indication, it may take several days for them to respond. So Bruce, if I understand right, you're saying set up my mis-spelled domain with TCH first, get MT installed and running and then transfer my other domain after everything is OK. My TCH site would be acessable through the mis-spelled domain name as I get it worked out. In the mean time, my site with the current domain will still be accessable at my old host. Is that right? I'm sure this is no big deal, I jsut gotta get my head around it.
TCH-Rob Posted April 5, 2006 Posted April 5, 2006 So Bruce, if I understand right, you're saying set up my mis-spelled domain with TCH first, get MT installed and running and then transfer my other domain after everything is OK. My TCH site would be acessable through the mis-spelled domain name as I get it worked out. In the mean time, my site with the current domain will still be accessable at my old host. Is that right? Yes, and welcome to the forums.
TCH-Don Posted April 5, 2006 Posted April 5, 2006 Welcome to the forum, salgoud if you can forward your current e-mail to your ISP e-mail then during the transistion you can get e-mail from old host.
Guest Guest Posted April 6, 2006 Posted April 6, 2006 Don - I'm afraid I don't understand at all what you mean, can you try again? Thanks,
salguod Posted April 6, 2006 Author Posted April 6, 2006 Phooey, forgot to log in. That last comment was me.
TCH-Bruce Posted April 6, 2006 Posted April 6, 2006 On your current host set up a forward for your domain email to go to your email address from your Internet Service Provider is what Don is suggesting. This way any email sent while propagation is going on will arrive in your ISP email account.
salguod Posted April 12, 2006 Author Posted April 12, 2006 OK, I'm in the process of doing this and I have what may be a stupid question. I've registered my alternate domain with you and I want to sign up for hosting. When I do, in the second step in the "Web Hosting Order Wizard" I have to "select primary domain" and the only choice is the one I just ordered. This domain is a common misspelling of my main domain (salgoud instead of salguod). I don't want this to be my 'primary' domain when people come to my site. In other words, I don't want my current domain to just forward to the misspelled one. If anything, I'd want the opposite. I hope that makes sense. I'm thinking this isn't a big deal and I'm not understanding this right, but I want to make sure. Will selecting the new, misspelled domain have an effect on the 'main address' of my site?
TCH-Carl Posted April 12, 2006 Posted April 12, 2006 You can leave it as it is for now. Once you transfer the other domain here, all you need to do is ask the support desk to change the domain name for the hosting account to the main one and then park the misspelled domain on top of it. This will ensure that your primary domain is set correctly and any reference to the misspelled domain will be pointed to the main one.
TCH-Andy Posted April 12, 2006 Posted April 12, 2006 I would put the correct spelling in (you should be able to edit it) You can then open a help desk ticket in, and ask us to "park" the incorrect spelling on top of the correct spelling. That way, both will work, but the "primary" domain name will be the one with the correct spelling.
abinidi Posted April 12, 2006 Posted April 12, 2006 (edited) Salguod, When you consider domain parking, you should remember that the parked domain will always show in the URL, if that is the domain the user entered into the browser. For example, lets say you have two domains: example.com and exampel.com (a misspelling of the original). Example.com is the main domain, and exampel.com is parked on the domain. If a user enters exampel.com into the browser, that URL will be displayed for all site pages the user visits. So when they follow relative links off the main page, they will go to something like exampel.com/photos (or whatever). The question I have about that is this: Do you want to have that occur? The danger in it is it LOOKS like your site IS spelled as exampel.com. All the pages they link to will have exampel.com as part of the URL. This will cause you problems with e-mail, unless you create a forwarder with the parked domain for ever e-mail address on the main domain. This means that if you have john.doe@example.com as an email address, but a user thinks your domain is really exampel.com, and they try to send a message to john.doe@exampel.com, the message will fail because there IS no account for john.doe@exampel.com. In order for john.doe@exampel.com to work, you would have to create a forwarder for john.doe@exampel.com to forward to john.doe@exampel.com. Does that makes sense? If you are okay with that, then great. No problem. Park away and enjoy. If, however, you decide that you don't want to legitimize the misspelling of your domain, you have a couple of options. First, you can modify your domain with your registrar to set up URL forwarding. They would basically park the domain on their server, and point all users to your main domain at TCH. This is NOT a violation of the TCH policy as long as the domain points to the root of your main account. (The same effect as parking your domain, but in this case, the main domain url is always shown to the end user.) Second, you could make all the links on your main page be static links to the main domain. So instead of having the follwing code: ><a href="/photos/index.php">Photo album</a> you would use the following code: [code ]<a href="http://www.example.com/photos/index.php">Photo album</a>[/code] A third option that I don't know much about would be to park your domain at TCH, and then use commands in your .htaccess file to make sure the main domain (in this case, example.com) is always shown in the URL. If that is the route you want to go, write back and an .htaccess expert will help you write the code to make that work for you. Hope this additional, unasked for, information is helpful. Have a great day. Edit: Yes, I can see how your name is often misspelled. I misspelled it at the top of this message! But its fixed now. Edited April 12, 2006 by abinidi
salguod Posted April 13, 2006 Author Posted April 13, 2006 When I started blogging I thought I was clever in using my first name, Douglas, backwards. I've realized since that folks spell it wrong a lot, reversing the 'u' and 'o' (two others have done it here too :-) ). While I'm not interested in legitimizing the misspelling, I also want to make it a bit more error proof. So if someone makes that common typo, it still goes through. I like the first option, URL forwarding. The misspelled domain is registered with TCH, the real one is registered with someone else. Can I have TCH point the misspelled to the good then? Thanks, even though Andy and Carl disagree , the main thing I guess is that it can be changed later.
abinidi Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 All my domains are registered with an external registrar, so I'm not sure how it would work with the TCH registrar, Wild West Domains. However, I assume that there is a control panel that you can log in to. Once there, you should look for a domain forwarding option (maybe near the same location where you enter your nameservers). Most registrars do not charge a fee for domain forwarding (although some might. I don't know about Wild West). On the domain forwarding page, you'd type in your correctly spelled, TCH hosted domain. Borrowing from my previous example, you would enter: >http://www.example.com Just remember that unless you have a reseller account with TCH, any links to a site or subdomain within example.com would be a violation of the TCH AUP, and would result in either a stern warning or possible site suspension. That means, you CANNOT use any entries similar to the forwarding option: www.example.com/photos photos.example.com You have to point the public_html folder on your account, which you do by entering: www.example.com Hope that is clear. Write back if you have any questions. Somebody that uses TCH their registrar can then answer more specific questions about how to forward a domain within that control panel. Best wishes.
abinidi Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 Turns out that I gave you incomplete (ok. I'll admit it: WRONG) advice yesterday. According to TCH-Andy (who knows pretty much everthing): If one domain is parked on top of the other, then you can set up automatic forwarding in cpanel for all emails going to domain1 to go to domain2 as you require. * Paul eats his words. Yumm. They were tasty.
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