I moved the blog to an external server today. It is now hosted by pair Networks as opposed to running on a 500MHz iBook via a DSL line.
Hopefully, it will be faster.
Switching took less than an hour.
First, I signed up for pairLite. This gave me an account that includes a MySQL database. Then I installed the WordPress package. The hardest part of that was to figure out that I could not configure MySQL via the usual command-line way, but had to use pair’s admin/management webpages.
Once WordPress was up and running, I exported the original blog(on the iBook) to an XML file, and then imported that into the new blog.
The last thing I did was to move the svgeek.com domain name. That needed two stops: one at the pair admin webpages and the other at Network Solutions (which, true to form, tried to sell me a bunch of other domain names).
And then, voila! The move was done!
The advantage of this is cost. The pair Networks account costs $99 per year. Now, I can switch to a low cost DSL service instead of the premium Speakeasy one that I currently use. Goodbye static IP addresses.
Maybe I’ll even have money left over for a wireless WAN card for the Macbook.