From GoDaddy to iPower: Switching Webhosts

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I decided this week to switch over my web hosting from Godaddy to iPower. I was a little worried about the process at first, but it was pretty simple and now that it’s all over I’m definitely glad I did it.

I had been thinking about it for over 3 weeks, ever since I got the recommendation. Then a couple weeks ago my blog started being super slow. At first I was worried that it was my design, but even the back-end was going slow. After a little research I came to the conclusion that the GoDaddy MySQL database wasn’t really setup very good for WordPress. I was a little worried because I had just signed up for a two year hosting plan and I didn’t want to be stuck with that service for two more years.

Finally, one day I was just fed up with it and I called tech support to figure out how much money I could get back, if any. The guy I talked to told me that I would be refunded for any unused time, but that they had to manually refund my money. He asked some questions about why I wanted to switch, but I only talked to him for a few minutes.

I backed up my site, setup my my iPower account, and then, after iPower was all setup, I changed the DNS in my GoDaddy account to point to iPower. Then the next day I called GoDaddy and cancelled my hosting account and got 23 months refunded. It was really great. I wish I didn’t have to switch off of GoDaddy, since their customer service was so great, but everything about the experience was slow. Even navigating through their menus was slow with too many steps. When I login to iPower I’m already set to manage my hosting account, but with GoDaddy there were three or four mouse clicks just to get to that point. And with iPower all the options are right there, on one page, whereas with GoDaddy it just feels like everything is more complicated than it needs to be, with too many menus.

One last note: When I first setup my iPower account and I was trying to setup my new blog, it wasn’t working. I didn’t know why at first, but it turns out that CGI scripting wasn’t turned on, so PHP wasn’t working. I went to the support section to submit a ticket for support and within a half hour I had an email explaining what had happened and that the issue had been taken care of. So far the iPower support has also been very good.

Upgraded Macbook HDD and RAM

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I recently upgraded my macbook’s Hard drive and RAM. After skimming the Howtos for the past year, it was a very simple process, and well worth it.

The RAM

To start, I had to research the type of memory that my MacBook uses. There are a million websites that will give the specs on the RAM you need. I don’t recomend that you buy the “Apple” memory, as it’s much more expensive than just buying regular laptop memory from newegg. Not to mention, it’s the exact same thing.

It turns out that even though Apple only recommends that you use 4GB of RAM in the white macbook, people have been able to get 6GB working, with 1 x 2GB and 1 x 4GB. When I saw this I thought about it for about a half-second and decided against it. 4GB would double my RAM, and dual channel memory works best with two identical sticks.

The Hard Drive

For a little less than a year now, since shortly after I got my macbook I have been looking at hard drives to replace the one that came in the system. I explored many options, including small SSD drives and large 7200RPM HDDs. In the end I decided to go with the new 500GB 7200RPM drive from Seagate. I was a little worried at first that the drive would be loud or create noticeable vibration, but so far neither is true. It is also running quite cool, currently at 35 degrees Celsius after running almost all day.

The Process

As I’ve already mentioned, it was quite easy to install the new hardware and get working again quickly. There are a zillion tutorials online about how to do it. The first thing you need to do is check out this episode of Systm, all about upgrading laptop hard drives on Macs and PCs. This one is google: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=macbook+hard+drive+upgrade.

Swapping the RAM is a very simple process. Take out the battery, take out 3 screws on the L-bracket, push the little switches to the other side to pop the RAM out, replace it and put it all back together.

The Hard Drive is even easier. Once you get the L-bracket out, you pull the tab on the hard dive to get it out, put the new hard drive on the tray and slide it back in. If you want to restore your documents and settings you’ll also need a 2.5″ hard drive enclose with USB or Firewire.

After the Hard Drive was back in I put in the OS X disks that came with the computer to install OS X. After the install I plugged in the old hard drive, now in a USB enclosure and chose the option to get documents from another hard dive on the computer. It copied everything in my home directory along with all my applications and network settings. When the computer booted up it looked like I never replaced the hard drive at all. The only thing left to do was Software Update.

Trac and SVN on subdomains

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I finally figured out how to get trac and svn on their own subdomains since when I originally setup the web server awhile ago. The only thing that changes is the vhosts file. In that example it was “/etc/apache2/sites-available/svntrac”. Here’s what the file should look like now:


NameVirtualHost *:80


ServerAdmin you@domain.com
ServerName domain.com

DocumentRoot /var/www/

Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None


Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all


ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
ServerSignature On



  ServerName svn.domain.com
   
   DAV svn
   SVNParentPath /svn

   AuthType Basic
   AuthName "Subversion Repository"
   AuthUserFile /path/to/svnauth


   Require valid-user


#   AuthzSVNAccessFile /path/to/svnaccess
  




   ServerName trac.domain.com

   

    SetHandler mod_python
    PythonHandler trac.web.modpython_frontend
    PythonOption TracEnvParentDir /trac
    PythonOption TracUriRoot /

   

   

    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Trac"
    AuthUserFile /path/to/svnauth
    Require valid-user

New Monitor Setup

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The new monitor setup with the hacked-together portrait stand for the 19"
The new monitor setup with the hacked-together portrait stand for the 19"

I recently got a new 24″ Samsung monitor/tv because the 19″ monitor that I was using was starting to seem small, especially since they have almost all 22″ monitors at work now.

Originally I was just looking at how much 22″-24″ monitors were on newegg. When I saw this monitor/tv I thought it would be great for a dorm room.

The new setup with OS X on the big screen
The new setup with OS X on the big screen

As you can see in the photos, I decided to go with portrait mode on the old 19″ Samsung that I was using, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. A lot of the monitors that are sold come with stands that let you flip them sideways, but mine didn’t. I put together a custom VESA stand out of some wood we had in the shed last night. So far it’s working out pretty good.

Update: By popular demand, here are some pics of the stand I built.

Dvorak Theme for Release

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Well, here is the Dvorak theme as promised:

Dvorak 1.0 for WordPress.

This theme is provided as is, and will probably not be upgraded in the future, but it works with current versions, so go for it.

If you want to take it and change it, go for it and let me know about it. I’d like to know of anything that comes out of this. If you want to use this theme as a base for another theme you are building, also go for it. It’s pretty basic in terms of CSS and graphics, so it should be pretty easy to wade through the code.

If you have any questions, email me. Why not?