It has been about a year since I initially moved over my sites from Eleven2 to MediaTemple. That change was made mostly due to a major crash at Eleven2 and the hype surrounding MediaTemple’s grid sever. Around the same time I got a DreamHost account as well, to take advantage of their referral program, disk space, and to host subversion.

The past year with MediaTemple was kind of bumpy in the beginning, with all the issues they had with the grid server. Even though most of the grid server issues have been resolved over the past year, it still felt like I was not getting what was promised, and the price felt steep too. So, yesterday when I got the automatic renewal email, renewing the grid server account for another year for $160 (that’s minus $40 which was given back for the grid server failure), I decided it was time to move on.

Over the year, I have been very happy with the DreamHost account, and with occasional referrals it kind of pays for itself. So, yesterday, all my sites (Counterjumper, Karmadude, India60, Blogpost), were moved to DreamHost. Since all the sites use WordPress, it was an easy process to move. Here are the steps I followed:

1. Setup domain and DNS at DreamHost
2. Zip up the root folder from MediaTemple server
3. Export the database for the site
4. Import database to DreamHost
5. Unzip site to DreamHost server
6. update WordPress wp-config.php to point to new database server

Everything went smooth, except for a couple of things on the DreamHost end like:

1. For a domain, have DreamHost tech support adjust MX records to point to gmail.
2. Since DreamHost has disabled allow_url_fopen in php for security reasons, I had to change some of the functions to use cURL for file access using url. This was quiet easy to do, and the DreamHost wiki had most of the answers.

Overall a smooth transition from MediaTemple to DreamHost, and all the sites seem to be working. However, I am not going to get too excited about this move yet, as DreamHost has their share of issues as well. So, I am going wait out a few months and then see how the sites perform. In the meanwhile if you notice any bugs, do leave a comment and let me know.