Tag: hosting

Some of you may have noticed that most of the images on my blog have been missing for some time.  Actually, if I’m honest, I very much doubt if anyone has noticed.  Let’s face it, who reads blog posts from last year?  Hmm?  Anyone?  No, I thought not.  Nonetheless, the images were missing, and it was only this evening that I managed to resolve the issue.

The problem started when I moved from my old hosting provider, PearTreeUK, to my new hosting provider, WebhostingUK.  I was determined to be clever, being a professional web developer, and decided to merge a load of old domains onto one master domain and host my blog there, so now you’ll find that www.minipix.co.uk, www.chapternine.co.uk and www.giftlistcentral.co.uk all redirect to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk.  Seamlessly.  Well, almost seamlessly.  The trouble was, despite all my cleverness, I forgot to download all the images on my blog before cancelling the old hosting.  Foolish fool.

So while everything worked, it looked rather bare.  For the most part it wasn’t a huge issue, but believe it or not there are actually some blog posts that Google quite likes, such as my demonstration of OpenTTD junctions, which is somewhat underwhelming without the images.

Thankfully, the folks at PearTreeUK have their heads screwed on.  I emailed them on the off-chance that they might have my old data lying around somewhere, half hoping that they didn’t (because that would be careless and unprofessional).  The reply came back positive, and thankfully it’s not unprofessional at all – they actually have a policy in place to hang onto expired accounts’ backups for several months before automatically deleting them.  Which is a very wise policy.  And it meant that they were able to provide me with a full backup of my blog, including images.  So I downloaded the images, put them in the right place, fiddled with my .htaccess file to make sure I didn’t get any straggling 404s, and hey-presto my images are back!  Feel free to take a wander through my archives if you like, to marvel at my newly-found old images.

As an extra bonus, I’m pleased to say that something else fairly significant was also recovered at the same time.  I had been writing a pregnancy diary during 2009, before Samuel’s birth, and I’d put it online (though hidden from public eyes) so that I could update it from wherever I happened to be.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Anyway, I kind of forgot it was there, so when I came to migrate all my websites from the old web host I completely forgot to take a backup of that diary.  Thankfully, the backup PearTree were able to send me included all that hard work.  One day I’ll finish off the last few weeks worth of entries (which are currently only in note form) and maybe make it public.  Might make an interesting read.  Maybe.

You should read this if you have previously received services from Matthew Dawkins Web Design or ChapterNine Web Design.

It’s officially over, and my what a journey it has been!  Way back in 2005 I was approached by the St Albans Diocese Youth Service and asked if would be able to design them a new website or three.  And so my freelance business began, primarily offering web design services for churches and Christian organisations.  The business grew, I took on more clients, and I started providing services such as web hosting too.

But, like all good things, it had to come to an end.  In October 2010 I got a ‘real’ job – a full time position as a web developer for another company, and my own business had to be gracefully turned off.  After a lot of dallying and helping clients out with migrations to other web hosts, today finally sees the final milestone completed.  My old websites are being taken offline and my reseller hosting package cancelled.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who I’ve had dealings with over the years who have made it all worthwhile.  Thanks to Rob for being so helpful, especially in those stressful downtime moments, and for resetting the firewall every time I blocked myself by trying to remote MySQL into something!  Thanks to Ralph giving me plenty of work to do, and for being cause for much entertainment.  Thanks to Anthony for getting me started in the hosting business.  Thanks to Liz for getting me my first job.  Thanks to Ellie for putting up with me, for bringing me cake batter at just the right moments, and for reminding me of the time.  Thanks to David for lending me your clients while you were away.  Thanks to Elliot for giving me work when times were quiet, and for looking after several of my clients when I started closing down.  Thanks to antoniojl for selling me the G5 Mac that’s been so useful the last few years.  Thanks to Phill for the opportunity to collaborate with you on a revolutionary idea.  And thanks to God for leading me down this path, for reminding me at regular intervals that I was still on the right track, for providing for me in so many different ways, and for showing me clearly when the time was right to move on.

Will I offer my services again in a freelance capacity?  Possibly.  I can’t rule it out.  But, that said, one of the lessons I learnt very early on (and had to either ignore or find ways round) was that I’m not a natural businessman.  I hate invoicing people, I find it hard to charge a realistic price for my talent, and I still don’t understand all the jargon of the Self Assessment Tax Return form.  For now, God has led me somewhere new and I’m really enjoying it, so I won’t be hurrying back to being my own boss.  But if you do have questions for me, feel free to ask, and if I get a free moment between family and church commitments I’ll try to answer!

So, for now, it’s adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, aloha, arrivederci, hagoonea’, tot ziens, and a fond farewell to all my old clients, colleagues, and various previously-important icons on my desktop.

Yes, this is my second post today, and with the same title, but on a completely different topic.

Some time ago, as some of my faithful readers will know, I got a new job.  That meant getting rid of… I mean, encouraging my old clients to go elsewhere for their services.  Getting everyone’s web hosting moved to new providers was a bit of a challenge, and understandably there were some people who were none too pleased at having to move at all, and others who didn’t have the first idea what might be involved.  So I’ve helped as much as I can, given that I’m no longer actually working from home.

So the time is nearly upon me where all my clients will be migrated, and all that’s left is my own sites.  At that point, I’ll need to move my own sites to a new host too, as I can’t afford the reseller package I’d been using.  An upshot of that is that I can’t really afford to be running lots of personal sites for free, as I used to through my business.  What’s needed is a careful rationalisation of my online presence, to ensure continuity and sustainability.

So here’s what’s going to happen.  ChapterNine (www.chapternine.co.uk) will cease to exist, although I’ll keep the domain for now and just forward that on to another page on another website.  Minipix (www.minipix.co.uk) will also be shut down, again with the domain forwarding on elsewhere.  Now, before you all get cross and up in arms and worried that I’m shutting down my blog, I must stress that I have no intention of stopping blogging, nor of losing the last 10 years’ worth of personal history.  What’s actually going to happen is that my blog will be moved to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk, which will no longer serve as a business website but will be my personal website instead.  So everything you see here on minipix.co.uk will soon appear on matthewdawkins.co.uk instead.  Some of the stuff on ChapterNine will appear there too, as will some of the material currently on matthewdawkins.co.uk.  It’s all a bit confusing, but it’ll make sense once it’s done – basically it’ll all be in one place instead of on three separate sites.

I’m still in the process of building the new site (I’m a web designer after all, I can’t just move it and have done with it, I’ve got design myself a completely new theme to go with it!), but I’m hoping it’ll be sorted out at some point this month.  And, as I’ve said, I’ll keep the old domain names now, so all your old bookmarks and links should continue to work.  It’ll just all appear in one shiny new website over on matthewdawkins.co.uk.

As many of you will know, I maintain and develop the Diocese of Chelmsford web site, which is a big (800+ pages) site with lots of content and serves a lot of people.  One of our monthly printed publications, The Month, is also published online for people to download as a PDF.  I have to be honest, although I upload the file every month I don’t actually read it!  However, it occurred to me that a publication like this would be an ideal place to advertise.

After a few e-mails and phone calls to the publishers, Cornerstone Vision, I ended up sending them a small advert, and I’m pleased to report that it’s in this month’s Month!  The newspaper will be delivered to churches in Essex and East London soon, so you’ll be able to pick up a copy free from any Anglican church in the area, or of course you can download it to view on your computer.  And my advert appears on page 3!  How cool is that?!  I’ve got another two ads lined up for further issues too, so hopefully I’ll see some return on that.

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Funny isn’t it, how a good idea can so quickly turn into a nightmare?  Right now I’m a situation where I have two reseller accounts with different companies and no clear way of transferring web sites from one to the other.  The old server is running Virtualmin, and the new server is running cPanel, and apparently the two don’t get along.  I can transfer the files and database, but getting the mail accounts across is proving to be a pain and a half.  I’ve spent almost all day searching the net for information, and there just doesn’t seem to be anything on migrating from Virtualmin to cPanel.

To add to my frustration, my business e-mails aren’t working at the moment.  I’ve sent a query to the company running the server, so hopefully they’re looking into it, but it’s quite crippling because I rely on my e-mails on a daily basis.  Personal e-mails are unaffected, but anything to do with the business is eerily quiet.  And I have no idea if the e-mails are ever going to reappear – they’re not bouncing back, but neither are they appearing in my inbox, they’re just floating off into another dimension or something.

Nothing else to report really, just expressing my frustration at things not working perfectly.  Technology may have come on a long way in the last 50 years, but it’s still got a long way to go before it’s all completely user-friendly.

I suppose it’s a natural progression for all web designers to feel the need to be offering hosting solutions alongside their web sites.  It makes sense from a practical point of view, and of course it’s an extra source of income.  I’ve actually been offering hosting for my clients for a while now, through a friend of mine who has a hosting business, but I’m reaching the point where I need more.  So far I’ve only really been able to offer my hosting packages to people I make web sites for, rather than to anyone else, which is potentially limiting.

So I’ve been spending a lot of time recently investigating all the hosting options available to me.  And there are lots.  Buying individual hosting packages from companies isn’t really an option, as there is so little markup that it’s just not worth considering.  A reseller package is far more suitable, allowing me to set up hosting packages for people without having to worry about the server itself, which is completely managed by the hosting company.  A step up from that and you’ve got Virtual Private Servers (VPS), which gives you a lot more control and room for expansion.  Above that is a Dedicated Server, which is a VPS without the Virtual bit.  I’ll go into more detail on that in a bit.

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