Best Blog Host

I thought I would test out a WebHostingHub (Hub) account for myself to see if their web hosting measured up to their claims of being optimized for WordPress.  I’ve installed WordPress on other hosts and right out of the box, with no posts or pages, both the Dashboard and the site itself ran like a dog.  So let’s see how Hub hosting stacks up.

Migrating WordPress to Web Hosting Hub

On you current website, make sure you’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress and that your plugins are all up-to-date before you migrate.

Set Up Nameservers – I went to my domain name registrar account at NameCheap and added (NOT changed) the following nameservers:

ns1.webhostinghub.com
ns2.webhostinghub.com

By adding them at this time, it allows enough time for the servers to resolve so you have no downtime when you pull the plug on the old DNS nameservers.

Export the Database- All the posts, pages, tags, categories, etc. are stored in a MySQL database, not in the file system like a regular website, so you have to export the database.  However, do NOT use the WordPress Export tool found in the Dashboard because it will not backup tables created by plugins. 

Yea, you can export the database from myPhpAdmin in your control panel, but the easiest way to get a full export of the WordPress schema AND plugin tables is to install a free plugin called WP-DBManager.  You can get it here from WordPress:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dbmanager/  Besides, this is one of the most important plugins you can install on your blog to routinely backup your database.

After it’s installed, go to your WordPress Dashboard and you’ll see a new menu entry down at the bottom left called Database. 

1. Click on the Backup DB link. 
2. Click the Backup button. 
3. In the menu on the left, click on Manage Backup DB.
4. Click the radio button on the right to select the database backup.
5. Click on the Download button and save it to your hard drive.

Download Themes and Plugins – I FTP’d to the installation of the WordPress blog I wanted to move ( http://DontHaveACreditCard.com ) and downloaded the entire wp-content folder to my hard drive to grab all the themes, plugins, media uploads, backup folders and everything.  The WordPress wp-content folder is sorta the equivalent of the My Documents folder on your PC.   

On the WebHostingHub Hosting Account – I already have my hosting account, so logged into cPanel and created an addon domain for the blog I’m going to transfer, keeping the domain name the same, of course.

Install WordPress – In cPanel, I went to Software/Services and clicked on Fastastico Deluxe and installed WordPress on the addon domain.

Import the Database – In cPanel, I went to Databases and click on phpMyAdmin.  I clicked on the database it created.  It was _wrdp1.  On the right panel, I clicked on the Import link and browsed my computer to the location of the .sql backup file I created.  Then clicked the Go button and waited a few seconds.  The import was successful. 

Copy Themes and Plugins – Then I FTP’d to my WebHostingHub account.  In the public_html folder, I  located the addon domain I created.  From my hard drive, I dragged the entire wp-content folder up to the server, over-writing the existing folder.

The End Result

I had some minor issues, but NONE of them were due to ANY fault of WebHostingHub.

It took between 1 and 2 hours for the IP address to resolve to the WebHostingHub web server. It takes longer to propagate an existing site than a brand new one.  I left the house to get something to eat and it was resolved when I got back.  I have my domain names at NameCheap and they usually resolve in about 20-30 minutes, so a couple of hours was unusual.  Turns out NameCheap was having a brief, temporary issue with their upstream provider.

I had a couple of issues with the WordPress migration, but again, not any fault of the Hub’s.  When you have a lot a plugins installed like I do (26 on that site and that’s on the low side for me), you better anticipate the unexpected.  The more plugins you have, the more that can go wrong.  I’ve migrated a good 40 blogs over the last couple of years and while most of them come quietly, there’s always a few that gave me grief, but like I said, it’s the plugins.

1. There was a path issue with the WP-DBManager plugin because the configuration settings were brought over in the backup files from the old server.  I had to uninstall the plugin from the Dashboard, Database, Uninstall WP-DBManager menu, then reinstall it.  Then it got the path to the backup folder right, but I had to manually enter the path to mysqldump and the path to mysql which are /usr/bin/mysqldump and /usr/bin/mysql respectively.
2. Then I ran into some permalink problems.  I use the /%postname%/ format.  When clicking on the post links, I got a page not found errors.  I know the pages and posts were there because they loaded in the Dashboard.  So I repaired them with the WP-DBManager plugin by going to the Dashboard, Database, Repair Database.  BAMM!  All posts and pages loaded fine again.  I always wondered what that repaired.  Now I know.   LOL  I’ll be honest with you, that was a stab in the dark.  Glad it was easy cause I had no idea how’d I’d be able to fix that without doing a lot of research. 

Faster Load Time

Ok, so this was my main topic of interest with the new Hub hosting account – was the load time going to be any faster than on my JustHost reseller account server?  The Hub says their servers are optimized to run WordPress.  Are they?  Drum roll, please…oh HELL yes!  My site always had sort of a tic (slight hang up at a certain spot) to it at JH when loading posts.  Once it was up on my Hub account, I only saw a split second delay on the initial load (to be expected), but no way anything like at JH.  Subsequent pages loads of the same page where so much smoother loading than at JH.  The WordPress Dashboard also runs so much better.  At JH, I was always waiting after I’d save something and so many times it would timeout on me.

And that’s why I recommend WebHostingHub for WordPress hosting.  It really is so much faster than other hosts I’ve used.