About two months ago, I was contacted by DreamHost about switching my host service to them. DreamHost has been around for 16 years & offers a variety of hosting options at low prices. They have recently introduced cloud storage, which (as I understand it) is internet-based storage for your website that you pay for as you go.
This blog has been on Blogger since I first started it. Blogger has been good but the downside is that I don’t actually own that blog. At any given moment, Blogger can take it down for whatever reason. Moving it to a paid host means that it would be protected from random deletion and I would own it. It’s a good thing to do once your blog gets large enough, but it can be a bit of a challenge sometimes…as I have found out.
Transfering from Blogger can be a bit of a challenge. First of all, you will most likely be converting to a WordPress format. Second, if run the risk of messing it up and loosing data if you do it wrong. For a blog my size with a decent following and close to 1000 posts (I can’t believe I have that many!), it’s best to have it done by a professional. I ended up contacting Jacqui at Wacky Jacqui Designs, who also designed my current layout. She has a very affordable transfer package & said that she would be able to convert my current layout to work with WordPress.
The sign up for DreamHost was fairly easy. You can transfer your domain during sign up or you can wait until later. I had to wait because I wasn’t able to log into the Goggle thing to get the transfer token at the time. There were various services, including the cloud storage that you can add in while signing up. I don’t need any of that so I left it alone. After that, you can log into your panel and begin set up. This is where I started having trouble.
The cPanel on DreamHost is their own custom creation…so it’s not like the standard one most hosts use. I’m extremely out of proactive navigating around cPanels as it is, so this one threw me for a loop. After a few minutes, I logged out and decided to leave it for Jacqui to mess with. The transfer was supposed to start while I was on vacation. If you remember, I had very crappy WiFi service where we were staying so it was hard for me to send and receive emails. After a few emails back and forth, I haven’t heard from Jacqui since. I’ve logged in a few times to see if I could figure any of it out, but have had no luck to date.
Overall, DreamHost has excellent up time and is priced right. However, I think that it would be easier to set up a regular website than trying to get a blog transferred over. Transfers are difficult enough as it is, but the cPanel makes it that much harder…especially for someone who is a relative newbie when it comes to dealing with blog coding and setup. It’s best to get someone to do it for you. If I am able to get the transfer completed at some point, I will add on to this review.
I received a 1 year of hosting for free to help facilitate my review.
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