In an effort to do some housekeeping with my websites and hosting accounts, I decided to transfer the domain for one of my websites so that all my domains would be hosted by one company. Nice, neat, and easier for me to manage. Or so I thought.
How hard could it be to transfer a domain, I thought? People do it all the time, I’m sure. Even IT idiots like me.
Well, it was obviously more complicated than I realised because after I had transfered the domain name, my site no longer worked. So I checked up the help section.
Ah… that’s because I didn’t upload my website files to the new host! So I did just that. But it still didn’t work.
When I couldn’t find any more information form the help section, I sent a ticket to the helpdesk.
I had to assign my new domain either as an “addon” or “parked” domain. As far as I understand, the gist of it is that an “addon” domain looks unique like it is completely separate from your main domain (if you already have one with the host), whereas a “parked” domain looks a part of your main domain (kind of like a subdomain, I think). Don’t quote me on this - this is just how I think it works based on the explanations that they offered in the help section.
So I assigned my transfered domain as an “addon” domain, but it still didn’t work.
This time I got impatient, so I contacted the live helpline. Let’s just say they weren’t very helpful - at least the guy I got stuck with wasn’t. Maybe it was because I forgot to tell him I didn’t know anything about transfering domains? I would have thought that was self-explanatory from the fact that I was telling him I didn’t know what was wrong with my website?
Here’s the gist of our online conversation:
Me: I get an error page when I try to load my website
Helpline: You need to check your files
Me: Which files? What am I looking for?
Helpline: Config file
Me: I’ve found it. Now what am I supposed to do with it?
It was like trying to pry the information out of him!
In the end, I got nothing achieved. All I can say is, “Thank God for IT friends!” ST who helped me realise that my problem was a database issue and that the scope of it might be beyond me, and MT who transfered my databases for me.
Now we’re pretty much back online with a few minor issues to sort out.
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May 14th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
[...] that we’ve been offline for the past few days… That’s because I was busy transfering my domain to a new host. What I thought to be a simple procedure turned out to be a little more complicated than I [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
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