Rather then just find an equivalent provider, I chose to buy my own server, and pay for that server to be managed by a different provider more geared to business enterprises. Given the additional requirements I have in the next year or two, such as taking "The Chip Rack" on-line and the possible future hosting of the ccgtcc and mogh sites, it actually works out no more expensive for me (given that I already have 8 live domain names running). They key thing is I will have 'root' access and can control ftp access to various users as and when the need arises.
So I would have looked at buying or leasing a machine in any case, but the Lycos termination has brought things forward somewhat, so I decided to go ahead without waiting. I bought the machine a few weeks ago, set it up and then installed it on Sunday. Last night I put in the formal requests to move the existing domain names to their new locations. At the same time, because my 8 current domains were registered with 3 different registrars, and I had to contact each one in order to 'authorise' the movements, I also initialised transfers to get them all with one registrar. All those changes have been confirmed electronically in the past few hours. Too much info for most of you I know but the techies will know that the process can take between 4 and 48 hours for each domain (and it wont all happen at once) and until it is complete I cant publish live from the new server.
Therefore, there will likely be some interruption to the domains. The amount of data is so much (8 domains, 20 subdomains, 50,000 files, 3 mail servers and 20 email addresses) that I cant hope to either get the whole lot running at once or have everything working instantly.
It is pretty much the same situation Greg was in last year when he moved, and he did a domain a day.
The following things might therefore be unavailable for a while, from whenever the transfers are completed (could be while Im asleep) until I get each thing running.
www.marlowcasinochips.com and all subdomains
www.marlowcasinochips.co.uk
www.marlowcasinochips.eu
www.homepokerchips.co.uk
www.homepokerchips.eu
www.mycustomchips.com
www.preservinggaminghistory.com
www.thechiprack.com
Other external hosting that I currently operate will also be affected:
Images in my ebay store listings
Images that I host for a few people on this bb
Parts of the ccgtcc site (fakes page, cancellations)
The visual chip rack
Probably a few other things Ive forgotten.
All that should be experienced here is a break in service. There should be no data lost. Some functions in the sites (cgi/java/perl scripts) may need a little tweaking to operate (for example my guestbook, mailing list signup). My shopping cart resides externally on an SSL server so wont be affected.
Emails - Unless you get a message that an email wasnt delivered, assume that I will eventually get it, but might be safer to use david.spragg@zen.co.uk for now, as that wont be affected.
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