Site on the Run

I've had a fun time lately, moving The Sleaze to a new host.  It's a move that's been a long time in gestation, but ended being forced on me at relatively short notice.  I've been increasingly unhappy with my previous host for a long time now - steeply increasing prices accompanied by sharply decreasing levels of reliability and support.  It's the sad story that afflicts many web hosting companies: corporate takeovers.  When I first moved to this host, they were a medium sized company relatively local to me who offered decent support for a reasonable price.  They turned out to be far more reliable that my previous host.  Inevitably, though, they were taken over by a larger company, but still maintained better than average services and support for the price.  Then they were taken over, yet, again, by a larger, pan-European hosting firm that managed brands across the continent.  Which was when things started to decline, with support pared back to a minimum and a distinct lack or reliability, all accompanied by rising prices. Unfortunately, the features offered by their hosting packages didn't increase to match their prices - much of what other hosts were offering as standard were extra.  Very expensively extra.  Then the parent company was bought by GoDaddy and things really went downhill, culminating in the announcement, last week, that a long promised upgrading and move to new servers was going to happen within seven days - but at a cost.  The cost of hosting was to double, yet still all the stuff that other hosting companies would include for standard at that price was still extra.  (They'd already just taken full payment for the next year's hosting at the old prices).  So, I was forced to finally move the site away.

The problem has been finding, at such short notice, a new host that would charge me less, but still provide decent service and offer as part of the price all the stuff that the other guys wanted extra payments for.  The reality is that moving to a new host is always a risk - you don't really know how good or bad they'll be until you are actually there.  After considering various big hosting companies - most of which wouldn't have saved me much money, but would at least have included as standard the features that I would otherwise have had to pay extra for if I'd stayed put - I eventually decided to take a gamble on a much smaller outfit with, as yet, not much of web presence or reputation, but who offered reasonably priced hosting packages which included pretty much everything I required.  They also don't mislead with those 'introductory offers' of low prices for the first year's hosting, with steep price rises after that.  Plus, as an added bonus, they claim to be eco-friendly, using green energy and supporting green charities.  

So, yesterday, the site moved to this new home.  From the point of view of visitors, the only visible difference is that the site is now served as 'https' rather than 'http' - which means, in practice, that the little padlock symbol in the browser address bar is now locked.  I have to say, that the move to force site owners to go to 'https', for which you need an SSL certificate installed by your host, is one of the biggest cons in the history of the net.  Sure, in theory, it makes sites more secure. But, if like me, you aren't selling stuff and therefore enabling financial transactions, or asking for users' details for subscriptions or memberships, it makes no difference whatsoever.  But with search engines, principally Google, threatening to not rank sites without an SSL certificate, regardless of content, most site owners feel obligated to fork out yet more money for a certificate and having it installed.  But the new host offers this service as standard, (unlike the old host), so I might as well take advantage.  

It's too early to say whether this new host is going to be a success for the site, but so far, so good.  There were some problems with the site migration, but that was mainly down to my idiocy in trying to use the wrong credentials to access the old site.  Having used cPanel for so long, the move to a different type of control panel feels somewhat daunting, but I'm getting there.  Obviously, these new guys could be bought out by some corporate giant tomorrow, putting me back to square one, but that's always the risk you take with smaller hosts.  Overall, though, there's a lot to be said for using smaller web hosting firms, particularly if, like me, you are running a small, independent site that isn't geared to e-commerce.  Not only is it more cost effective, but you generally get a more personal touch when you deal with them - something I'd come to miss with my previous hosts.