Migration to New Web Host

A few weeks back, I received a reminder from my web host provider for wcgcomics.com that my three-year hosting package was up for renewal. Although the previous two three-year terms, starting in 2019, were approximately $98 for three years, I was shocked to learn that the renewal cost for another three years was nearly $400!

After researching options, I decided on Bluehost, a well established and reviewed web host company. My only concern was the amount of work and tech knowledge that would be required. While I consider myself moderately web-savvy, and had changed hosts before, this was my first time doing so with a WordPress (WP) site. While WP made site management and updates simpler in some ways, migrating was a little more complex than simply copying and moving files from one account to another, because WP is a more complex beast. Beneath the hood, WP is a complex engine involving nameservers, databases, DNS and A records (the latter item I still don't understand) that have to be correctly configured to ensure that when someone types in the specific URL for a domain, the internet correctly points the user's browser to the correct IP address where the website is parked.

Thanks to the time I transitioned to WP in 2022, I was somewhat comfortable backing up and re-installing a WP website (using a plug-in called Duplicator). In this sense, transferring and re-deploying the files to another web hosting service wasn't too much of a leap, nor was simply re-directing my domain name to my Bluehost site either. But making all the other little changes beneath the hood—as well as migrating my domain name email accounts—seemed daunting. (I am sure web host providers rely on people choosing the least path of resistance by simply paying a higher renewal fee than go through the hassle and stress of such a migration.)

Fortunately, saving some bucks is a great motivator. It helped that Bluehost had solid 24/7 chat support which I took full advantage of—while everyone who assisted me was competent and patient, I did sometimes feel like they were not understanding my questions or adequately responding to me in layman's terms. It also helped that there is a consistency in the platforms, particularly in the same use of the cPanel to manage the account and websites. 

In the end, after doing everything I needed to do on my end based on their guidance, I had to make a leap of faith and accept a certain level of uncertainty on my part, and put my complete trust in them. In this regard, they were actually fairly reassuring, and I drew some comfort from the realization that they no doubt did this almost daily. Since I had already installed and deployed the site several times and had all the backups, I figured that if worse came to worst, I could still go back to my original web host provider or start again from scratch.

That all said, once I made the leap and pointed my domain name to the new web host, of course everything went relatively smoothly and quickly.

Migrating my email also turned out to be relatively simple and smooth. Many years ago, I had fortunately set up all my domain name emails (i.e., emails with my wcgcomics.com domain name in the account name) to not reside on the server but to forward to a private shadow gmail account where I actually managed all the emails in a single mailbox (the account is also configured to allow me to send and respond to messages under my wcgcomics.com email accounts). So though any mail sent to me during the transition may have been lost or bounced back to the sender, once I created and configured the same accounts in Bluehost, they automatically re-sync'd to the master gmail account. So, yay! In fact, the change also gave me the opportunity to clean up and streamline the way the accounts are configured.

So, bottom line, though the process was a bit stressful, all turned out well and, all things considered, in retrospect it was not quite as onerous or time consuming as I had anticipated. Indeed, the entire episode turned out to be a good learning experience because the process has now been fairly demystified. I should note that I've gotten into the habit of documenting such efforts step-by-step as meticulously as possible for future reference.