Hey guys, here in this post you’ll read how I love A Small Orange. If you don’t want to read the entire post, you may skip to what happened to me today with them.

_______ lead me to them

It was the rage of Dreamhost users; the time when downtimes as long as four hours FREQUENTLY happened. That time I decided to move on a new host — good thing A Small Orange do have a good and cool web design (even if it’s simple). Their design made me remembered them when I needed a new host most.

And so…

As an impulsive buyer I am now, I swiftly checked out their plans. Then picked the right plan for me — added it to my shopping cart and checked out. Voila, I was officially the latest A Small Orange account holder that time.

Here’s a review.

Features

Uhm, I got a $5 a month plan which featured 400MB web space and 10GB bandwidth. The per-capita cost (cost per megabyte or gigabyte bandwidth/webspace) of my plan was far more than I had in Dreamhost. I do have about 240+ GB webspace and 5TB (that’s 5,000 GB) bandwidth. But it was no big deal since I was not able to utilize all my resources in Dreamhost. The ASO plan gave me something that best suited my current traffic.

As most of the current web hosts, they support PHP — both 4 and 5. Also with MySQL 4 or 5, Ruby-on-Rails and a lot more. You may request them to add special modules for you if you need them.

Reliability

Reliability-wise, they are FAAAAAR better than Dreamhost. Although I experience downtimes, they were mostly fast — some were even just seconds while the average is 10 minutes (but the longest was two hours) as compared to Dreamhost’s at least an hour downtimes.

I usually contact them when my site is down, and they respond right away and fix it in a snap. (more…)

Yesterday dawn, I posted some 136 free mobile Java Games in my blog.

Now, lots of people are swarming over it.

Tomorrow, my shared server could crash or my web host would force me to upgrade to a higher plan.

People are getting crazy with my post. Most of my traffic now are from the free mobile Java Games I posted. An hour past today’s midnight, I already reached the average number of hits I get in a normal day. Amf!

Later, I’ll be revealing my secret on how I gained lots of traffic on a single post. Stay tuned and subscribe!

I was playing with StumbleUpon a while ago when I saw Zymic, a company that offers free web hosting.

I signed up for an account ’cause I believe it’s worth a try. Their website’s interface is clean and professional. They don’t have a cPanel though. Uploading of files is still thru FTP or their web-based File Manager.

They offer 2,000MB (approximately 2GB) web space and 35,000 (approximately 35GB) monthly bandwidth. PHP and mySQL is supported; both of the stable latest versions. PHPMyAdmin is also available, as well as Webalizer for logging statistics. Unlike other free webhosts, they DO NOT automagically add advertisments on your header or footer.

Another good thing with them is that they give cash prizes to the authors of top 3 websites hosted to them. They also give out free domains for deserving websites.

For domain-owners, you can host with them. They announce their nameservers so that you can use them.

Anyway, this post is not sponsored. I just happened to stumble upon their site and got happy of what they offer.

If you want to try it, finally here’s the link to Zymic’s Free Webhosting. I’ll be glad to hear feedbacks about the webhost.

Hey, guys. I’m making this post after having successfully migrated my blog from the crappy slow DreamHost to the uber-cute-named A Small Orange.

Here’s it.

Requirements

• Patience. Patience is a virtue.
• Preferably an FTP client. An online FTP client would do.
• Access to your mySQL server; I recommend using PHPmyAdmin in managing your database although using the console would do.
• Basic knowledge on mySQL.

Back-Up

First of all, you have to backup your blog’s files. Access your blog’s root thru your FTP client. Copy all the files in your blog’s root to a hard disk destination of your choice.

After backing-up all the files, the next move would be backing up the entire database. Thru your SQL interface (PHPmyAdmin is again recommended), access your SQL server then your blog’s database.

If you are using PHPmyAdmin, just click the Import button at the top, then check the tick box below that says something like “Download File”. Save the imported SQL file to a hard disk destination of your choice.

But if you’re not using the nifty tool, you have to do it your own provided you have knowledge on it. You may also ask your web host to do it for you.

Copying the Data to New Host

Then, we’ll be making something senseful. Access your new SQL server (your new host’s SQL) thru PHPmyAdmin or console. If you’re using PHPmyAdmin, just click the Export button above, then upload the file you just saved on the hard disk destination of your choice to your SQL server and have it copied there by itself. Again, if you’re not using PHPmyAdmin, you may ask your new web host to do it for you.

Yey, you already have a copy of your database on your new host. Then, we’ll be copying the blog root files you saved in the hard disk destination of your choice. Using your FTP client, upload it to your new host. On some modern FTP clients, drag-and-drop would do the entire job.

CHMOD Time

Ooops. we’re not that done yet. You still have to set the chmod of the following folders and its folders and files to 777:

• /wp-content/themes/
• /wp-content/uploads/
• /wp-content/plug-ins/

To change a folder’s chmod, you may use your FTP client. If you’re using FileZilla, just right-click the folder and click file attributes. Type the value ‘777′ on the textbox then check Recurse in files and subdirectories then click okay.

Before I forget

I almost forgot this one. Using your favorite text editor (Notepad’s one), modify your local copy (the one on the hard disk destination of your choice) of wp-config.php.

The file looks like this:

/** WordPress's config file **/
/** http://wordpress.org/   **/// ** MySQL settings ** //

define('DB_NAME', 'yourdbname');     // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'yourdbuser');     // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourdbpassword'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'yourdbhost');     // ...and the server MySQL is running on

// Change the prefix if you want to have multiple blogs in a single database.

$table_prefix  = 'wp_';   // example: 'wp_' or 'b2' or 'mylogin_'

// Change this to localize WordPress.  A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to wp-includes/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to 'de'
// to enable German language support.
define ('WPLANG', '');

/* Stop editing */

$server = DB_HOST;
$loginsql = DB_USER;
$passsql = DB_PASSWORD;
$base = DB_NAME;

define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__).'/');

// Get everything else
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>

Now, you have to change the values in bold to your new hosts’ configuration.

Last Step?

Uhm, the last step. You have to login to the place where you bought your domain aka domain registrar. Change your nameserver settings (steps differ from a nameserver to another) to your new host’s nameserver. It usually sounds and looks like ns1.yourhost.com, ns2.yourhost.com and in some cases ns3 to ns4.

After setting, wait for at most three days for the change in DNS info to propagate around the world. Your blog at your old host will be the one displayed when the viewer’s ISP’s DNS server hasn’t received the DNS update.

Enjoy.

Ooops, the lastest step.

Check your blog once it propagates around the world. If you experience problems, try rechecking your wp-config.php. You may also try disabling some plugins. My PHP Speedy plugin caused me some problems in migrating.

Hi.

This blog will be down for a short span of time. I will be migrating from Dreamhost to Hostgator.

Why? Trip ko lang. Hehehe. Naisip ko lang na bumili ng bagong hosting account. Tangengerts no.

Bye!