bassplaying.com where bass guitar takes center stage

As some of you know, mediatemple.net, the hosting provider I use for bassplaying.com and wheatdesign.com, recently launched a new hosting platform called gridserver (gs). The old accounts, upon which we are still running, were called shared-server (ss). Existing customers--and I've been with (mt) for quite a while--have the option of migrating on their own time line rather than being forced, but they'll force us all eventually.

What will all of this mean for you? A lot of things we currently can't do with Drupal running on the (ss) accounts have to do with something called PHP safe-mode. The safe-mode restrictions affect file uploading, among a great number of other things. These go away when we upgrade to (gs). We'll also get some additional server space, which doesn't matter too much, but won't hurt either.

The migration is a three-step process. I've started the first step, which is just a nameserver update. This takes 12 hours to complete and shouldn't affect anybody. The second step is just a billing step, I can either go with the new (gs) "lite" account (i.e. same money I've been paying) or I can upgrade to a full-fledged (gs) account (quite a bit more money but lots more space and bandwidth). I'll probably go with the cheap option, for now. If AdSense and store revenue spike enough to cover the full (gs) package, I'll upgrade at that point. Covering the hosting costs is a big priority. I love spending time on the site, but I don't like to spend money out of pocket on it unless I have to. :)

Step three migrates the site and the databases and requires some back-end adjustments caused by new database server naming requirements. If we run into any trouble, it'll be with this step, but I'll keep you posted before we get there. I'll probably do that next weekend (on Sunday) as that's a fairly slow day around here.

So, get ready and contact me by email (wheat at wheatdesign.com) if anything odd happens. Jot that down so you'll have it. After we get past this server upgrade, I'm going to start testing a Drupal upgrade. That should be a lot of fun. I will be tapping some of you to help me beta test that!

Wheat