This morning when checking email I got a unknown host error, that was rather unexpected. After a few more checks it looked like a problem. When logging a ticket with 8-95.com, my host, it was learned the data center which physically houses the server the domain is on had a fiber line cut. Not only did they have problems with their primary circuit but their redundancy failed as well, not good. I’ve been following the outage on Webhostingtalk and I should consider myself lucky my site is not business related.

Since around 10:40 this morning that facility has been down but as of 6:15 looks like we’re back up. According to the thread on Webhostingtalk the carrier has routed around the fiber cut.

I noticed yesterday afternoon problems sending email, same old smtp connection issue that crops up from time to time. Normally I don’t think anything of it as my hosts forum comments about domain email traffic and what they will do about it. This ran into the evening and I also noticed no email being received. Guess I shouldn’t complain about ‘not’ receiving my regular spam but you never know when something important will show up.

So I headed off to the forum. I didn’t see anything current about email issues but did notice some posts about domains on servers using a specific administration tool. It peeked my interest since one of the tools mentioned is the same tool that comes up when I log into mine. Some further reading mentioned shutdown dates that had since past. Hummmm, server to be shut down, date has past and my site is still up…. do I really want to know the answer, do I want to be surprised when the site goes down. I think naught.

It might be good to mention at this point it’s getting somewhat late and trading emails with support over the next couple days was not where I wanted to go. Not to mention Kay was starting to complain about email… we don’t want that to keep up. I would later realize the move wasn’t really necessary but in the long run it was for the best.

So time to migrate, following directions for moving. I backed up the blog database, pulled down all the files from the static pages and signed up with 8-95.com. Within minutes the confirmation emails showed up, and no email was not fixed yet I used a non habbenet account. After logging in and creating the accounts, (I keep passwords in a list cause you can’t remember them all) I moved all the files to the new host and the static pages tested fine. Udpated DNS at Network Solutions and then started in on restoring the blog.

Restoring the blog is where things got interesting. I use WordPress and their is a world of info about upgrades, migrations, etc but I didn’t think I’d need it. Well as it turns out I did need it as I’m no MySQL expert. The easy part was uploading the files, creating the database and running through the install. The problem came when attempting to login and receiving “.. you are not authorized to view this page”. That was the last thing I figured I’d run into.

Now comes some digging and even though I’d rather not be doing it theirs no reason to panic. I have a backup of everything and it was working before the backup, so it will work again. Also the amount of info that’s available from how to’s, forums, and documentation I should be able to find help. A quick google pointed me to a number of resources but none of them did the trick. After a little more searching and I ran across this post that pointed me to some of the sql tables and how others made changes for their problems.

Once I checked the tables it was nothing more than a simple rename on some rows where the old database prefix was referenced. With the move to the new host I couldn’t keep the old table prefixes when creating the database, but I didn’t think some rows within the tables would be affected. Live and learn. As of this afternoon the DNS changes seem to be propigating quickly mail is back up and all is good.