Peter Warwick-Mahoney

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Moving email between servers

February 27, 2017 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney Leave a Comment

Moving email between servers Peter MahoneyThere are plenty of reason to move servers for your website, but email is often an afterthought. Even though it’s something we use hundreds of times a week.

Speed issues, cost and possibly (hopefully) needing to upgrade to cope with all your traffic are all excellent reasons to consider a server move.

Moving the website is one thing, files, databases and DNS work all need to be done – but what about all your emails? Inbox, folder, sent items, drafts. How do you get those across?

And if you’re a server admin with full control over them, then this post isn’t for you. Because you have some clear pathways to move email from the old server to the new one.

But what about everyone else? The 99% of people who just pay for shared space with an existing hosting company, who just have a web based control panel (like Plesk or cPanel) they log into?

If that’s you, prepare for pain. Well, to varying degrees.

Simply put there’s never been a decent tool made to move email from server to server.

If you connect to your email currently via POP, that will mean you’re downloading your email to you local computer and therefore have a local copy. So losing the email from the existing server wouldn’t be a problem.

If you connect via IMAP (and most people do) then all your email is stored on the server, and would be lost. In this case you have 3 courses of action*:

  1. Be prepared to lose your existing email.
  2. Change it so you do connect via POP, then have all that email download to your local machine. The downside with this is usually you’d only end up with the emails on one machine. If you’re used to checking the same email accounts via perhaps two computers and a mobile, then you’d lose the option to have old emails on those.
  3. Get the new server setup and running. Set up the new email address (using IMAP too) and get those all setup on your computer. Then connect to the old email accounts again (you’ll need to change the server address to the IP address, which is a tad cumbersome). But then the really awful bit comes in, you have to drag the emails from the old accounts to the new – and because they’re set up on your local machine it downloads them all then uploads them as it copies them across. Sometimes I can copy a folder at a time, sometimes you need to do emails one at a time – it depends on the setup of the old server.

That last one is a horrible job. I’ve done it on request before, but for an average small office email setup it can easily take a day.

My preference is to start again. Suck up that there’s going to be email lost, make sure you have copies of any current message threads and communication, and bite the bullet.

 

* = If you’re moving from one type of hosting control panel to another one that’s the same (for example cPanel to cPanel) – you have another option fortunately. Again it’s messy: you need to download your mail folder then recreate all the same email accounts on the new server and upload the mail folder to the same place on that new server. This often falls down though because of permissions issues, or server settings you can’t control (where mail is stored, etc.)

 

Filed Under: Hints & Tips, Hosting Tagged With: change webhosts, cpanel, email, hosting, move servers, server, whm

Web hosting comparison

June 14, 2013 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney 2 Comments

There are a huge number of webhosts to choose from. Prices vary widely, which isn’t too surprising because quality does too.

Don’t just assume the cheaper web service is right for you. Here’s a guide to some of the players:

Hostgator

Web hosting comparison Peter MahoneyFrom the long list of cheap options to host your website, they’re certainly my recommendation. Their user interface is easy to get your head around, and their after sales care is pretty good.

There’s not much more to say about Hostgator really; it’s very competitively priced, and does what it says on the tin.

Hostgator

GoDaddy

Web hosting comparison Peter MahoneyBasically, just don’t. Never ever.

GoDaddy aren’t so much in the hosting business, as they are in the spamming business. Having an account with them isn’t too different from paying someone to send you constant emails that you don’t want.

If you want more information see my case study on how to tell at a glance that Godaddy doesn’t prioritise existing customers.

Bluehost

Web hosting comparison Peter MahoneyBluehost are an OK, very cheap option.

They have some unusual clauses in their contract that gives them the right to cancel any account they deem inappropriate. And being owned by a strict Mormon family, they’ve been known to block sex-education websites used by schools simply for having the word “sex” in them. That seems to be a fairly isolated incident, but funny enough to mention.

Their after sales support isn’t great, and they tend to put a lot of users on each server which can impact the performance of your site. Basically they’re an exercise in “you get what you pay for”. And as I say, they’re very cheap.

Bluehost

Pete’s Boutique

Web hosting comparison Peter MahoneySay what? It’s true, I’ve created my own boutique hosting service. It’s based on my ethos that I want to make sure my clients get the best online presence they can.

Most web hosts keep costs down by protecting their server processing overheads, and turn off a bunch of features that can really improve the speed and reliability of your site. I turn them all on.

It’s a small, personal service that treats you as a real person with real dreams for your business, rather than just a line in a database somewhere.

Read all about it here.

VPS.NET

Web hosting comparison Peter MahoneyI really like their service, although they’re certainly the most expensive in this comparison. And their system is a little confusing; it’s geared towards having people sign up for full virtual servers rather than just hosting websites.

There is an option to do the latter, called Cloud Sites, and starts at £13 a month but quickly starts to rack up to £40.

Their support is excellent, which is helpful because the slightly confusing nature of their interface means you’ll be using it quite a bit at the start.

VPS.NET

Filed Under: Hints & Tips Tagged With: bluehost, boutique hosting, compare, godaddy, hostgator, hosting, hosting comparison, Pete's Boutique, vps.net comparison, web hosting, website host

Making your site faster

June 6, 2013 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney Leave a Comment

Making your site faster Peter Mahoney Much faster.

If you read my blog regularly you’ll know Google in particular takes page speed into account when ranking your website.

But did you know research suggests any page that takes longer than 4 seconds to load starts to lose business? And anything over 7 costs you most of your traffic? Visitors to your site simply hit the back button to get out of there.

Google and Yahoo! both have tools that show you how well your site is performing for speed, and what you can do to improve it. They’re called Page Speed and Yslow, and you can test them both at once using this tool:

http://gtmetrix.com

Just put in the URL for your site, and hit go. In a few seconds you’ll see exactly how well your site is, or isn’t, doing.

Case Study

I recently sat down to improve the speed of bordersundials.co.uk. It was woefully slow, with a 7.4 second initial load time, and “C” grades for both Page Speed and Yslow.

After I’d finished with it, I’m thrilled to say it’s loading in 1.84 seconds, with two “A” ratings.

As part of this I also suggested the website be moved to my boutique hosting solution, which is configured and tailored to include all kinds of speed extras that regular ISPs turn off.

Test your site, get in touch, and let’s improve it.

Making your site faster Peter Mahoney

Filed Under: Google, Hints & Tips, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Tools, Wordpress Tagged With: bordersundials.co.uk, boutique hosting, case study, Google, google spage speed, hosting, much faster, page speed, site speed, solution, speed, website speed, yahoo yslow, yahoo!, yslow

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Recent Posts

  • Back in…purple?
  • I love a good new year
  • Webmaster of the Year Award
  • Moving email between servers
  • Nonsecure Collection of Passwords will trigger warnings in Chrome 56

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