Hosting Transition
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO OUR HOSTING CLIENTS
We’ve had an increasing number of complaints about our hosting service, and our hosting provider has become less responsive to our support requests. They went through a transition a year or so ago, and it’s been downhill with them ever since. We’ve tried to discuss the problems with them; we tried to get them to step up their service and make concessions for their failures, but we’ve gotten nowhere with them. When they finally cost us a client, we knew we couldn’t let things slide any further.
As you can imagine, it’s a lot of work to try to move a whole bunch of Websites, WordPress databases, email mailboxes, Internet directory records, and secure cloud storage space (i.e., offsite backup) from one server to another, and of course, it’s not billable to you, so we wanted to give our existing hosting provider every chance to do the right thing. We saw the writing on the wall, though, and had already researched alternate providers, so we would be ready to make the leap, if needed, and it seems that eventuality has finally arrived.
Over the past several days, we moved all the easier hosted accounts – those with just static Websites and/or offsite Office 365 email service. We don’t believe there were any significant outages or service problems in the process, but as a show of good faith, we complimentarily updated copyright dates displayed on all the Websites we moved.
Soon, we will begin moving the more complex hosted accounts – those using content management systems and/or with onsite mailboxes. We will do our best to make the transitions as seamless as possible. Unfortunately, we have no control over the speed with which the Internet directories update their records – they claim it could take up to 2-3 days, but in our experience, it generally takes about an hour, and we’ll initiate these late at night, when email traffic should be minimal. We will copy the Websites, databases, and email addresses to the new servers in advance of updating the Internet directory records. This way, your customers will still get to your Website, whether on the old server before the directory change propagates throughout the Internet, or on the new server afterwards.
As we move your email mailboxes, though, there are a few considerations about which you should be aware:
- There is a chance that email could be sent to your mailbox on the old server before the directory change propagates, but that you might not retrieve your mail until after the change propagates, leaving a few messages orphaned on your mailbox on the old server. The sender will believe it went through, but you will not know it is there. If this is a concern to you, and if you use an email application such as Microsoft Outlook, simply leaving it running 24/7 during this transitional period will minimize this issue, as it will automatically pull your mail at regular intervals, so there shouldn’t be more than a few minutes for mail to be orphaned, if at all.
- If you solely read your email through our Web portal (http://mavericksolutions.biz/customer.htm), be advised that once the change goes through, email left on that server will no longer be accessible. If this is a concern to you, please archive your email locally on your computer or cell phone, or print out the ones you wish to keep.
- In any event, we’ll delay closing and deleting the email mailboxes on the old server for a week or so. If you need us to recover any old or orphaned email left thereupon, please let us know ASAP.
As we move your CMS-based Websites, such as WordPress, there is also a consideration about which you should be aware. If you were to make changes to your Website after we copy it, but before the Internet directory changes propagate, those changes would be lost when the process completes.
To minimize the impact of the latency of the Internet directory change propagation to both email delivery and Website updates, we will perform the moves of these more complex hosted accounts late at night, and we’ll do our best to keep you advised of the transition status of your own account.
Lastly, the login portals you may have used at http://mavericksolutions.biz/customer.htm to access your Web hosting account or your Webmail will be updated shortly to point to the new server. Until then, if you need access to your Web hosting account or Webmail, contact us for the URL and credentials.
Naturally, feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have. We are confident that this change will permit us to provide more reliable hosting with better customer service (at the same price), and we thank you for your patience and understanding during this transition.
July 6th, 2014 at 20:05
UPDATE: We’ve moved over the vast majority of our accounts, including several of the more complex ones with hosted email and WordPress Websites. So far, most of them have been going smoothly. We even just completed the migration of the hosting of our own Website and WordPress blog!
We also got notification from our hosting provider (by way of a Bcc’d email which was presumably sent to all of their hosting clients) that they are getting out of the hosting business, altogether. That explains a lot as to their horrific service and support, of late. They claim we have until October 1st to dispose of our remaining accounts; we’ll try to be finished well before then.
July 8th, 2014 at 03:34
We ran into our first transition complication – well, technically, it wasn’t a “transition” complication, as there was a problem with the WordPress Website *before* we moved it. In any event, this was our first opportunity to deal with the new hosting company’s technical support on a live issue, and we found them to be not only prompt and responsive, but proactive and helpful! So far, it looks like we’ve made the right decision!