How to migrate blog and wiki away from Dreamhost — and to what?

February 10, 2015 4:38 PM

I have had a number of technical difficulties with Dreamhost that have worsened over the last year and my account is up for a two-year renewal. I have two sites: one a WordPress blog and the other an old MediaWiki installation. What are good alternatives to Dreamhost, and how would I migrate the WP and wiki installations off their servers and onto the new hosting service?
posted by a lungful of dragon to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

The how is relatively straightforward:

1. Copy across the files with FTP.
2. Dump the databases and import the dump files into databases on new host, either via the control panel or phpMyAdmin.
3. Change config files where appropriate: database names/users, any file paths that are explicitly named.
3a. If changing PHP versions makes a difference with plugins, fiddle about with that.
4. Done.

The where? I like and use WebFaction for low-maintenance shared hosting when I don't want to be sysadmin, but it's not as straightforward as a more traditional cPanel/Plesk host where you just dump your site files into a public_html directory. My general sense is that the big commodity providers, especially the EIG BlueDreamGatorHost brands, are much of a muchness: they oversell their servers, and get a bit shit over time unless and until you reach the right support tier. A lot of hosts are just reselling boxes on one of those mega-providers. As hosting becomes more commoditised and developers drift over to VPSes and cloud services, smaller hosts that own and operate their infrastructure can sometimes have trouble competing with the megahosts for cheap shared plans. Still, I've heard good things about A Small Orange and LiquidWeb, and they've both been around for a while.
posted by holgate at 5:13 PM on February 10, 2015

I too was on Dreamhost and left them to go with WebFaction. As holgate said, it's a good host but it's not as click-install-done as other hosting options. I like the flexibility it gives me but it come at the cost of simplicity.

Another option for moving the blog is to use a plug-in. I used Duplicator to move my blogs. I don't know whether there's anything similar for MediaWiki.
posted by neilbert at 5:28 PM on February 10, 2015

Oh Dreamhost is awful, huh? Going on, like, a decade now. I use A Small Orange, which someone recommended to me on here, and pay $35/yr. They must be a reseller to have packages that cheap, but I've never had any problems with them and chat support is super helpful--although to be fair, I'm extremely small peanuts and use WP as a CMS for a low-traffic site I update once a month, at most.
posted by tapir-whorf at 6:01 PM on February 10, 2015

I left Dreamhost (ugh - the only bad advice I've ever got from AskMe) for Pair Networks. The interface isn't the easiest - no cpanel - but otherwise they've been great.
posted by BinGregory at 8:02 PM on February 10, 2015

Yeah, Pair's another host that's been around forever and has grown without getting massive, or fundamentally changing what it does. That's a good sign.
posted by holgate at 9:36 PM on February 10, 2015

I'm also with WebFaction. They're great.
posted by samizdat at 12:03 AM on February 11, 2015

Webfaction is wonderful.

I used the Duplicator plugin to move WP sites.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:08 AM on February 11, 2015

I am all about A Small Orange.
7 domains, 3 Wordpress installs, and nary a problem or glitch.
Their customer service is brilliant.
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 9:12 AM on February 11, 2015

After suffering through more than a decade of Dreamhost service and support getting worse and worse, I jumped ship a while ago to ASmallOrange. My VPS there handles things (12 or 15 sites, none all that busy other than MefightClub) beautifully (far far better, without breaking a sweat, than the more expensive plans I had at DH), and although it was a huge amount of work doing the move and a bit of a learning curve, their support is fast and mostly excellent. Highly recommended.

I use and recommend Backupbuddy for moving Wordpress sites, but there are free alternatives.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:05 PM on February 11, 2015

I moved my Wordpress blog from DreamHost to Siteground and I love it. ASmallOrange is also a good one. I found them via this comparison (be sure to check out the update).
posted by tommasz at 5:49 PM on February 11, 2015