Transferring your Website

Are you fed up with the hosting of your current provider?

The bad news

In the ‘old’ days, transferring a website  used to be a matter of copying files to your new hosting. Updating the interweb (OK techies, re-pointing the DNS and possibly transferring the domain registration) and away you would go.

These days things are not so easy. There is usually a database to transfer. More often than not it will need some sort of alteration. If this is done badly, it will corrupt your database. I have used a number of utilities that are supposed to do this automatically, but often they either do not make all the changes necessary or they break the database or (in some cases worse) they send out notifications to all your subscribers about all your historic posts!

The good news

I can do these transitions for you remarkably quickly, as long as you have all the various usernames and passwords. Even if you don’t (for instance, your existing provider does not want you to have all the passwords), I can often help you gain access and do the transfer for you. This may take a bit longer. I pride myself in doing this with minimal (a few minutes) or zero downtime.

I love WordPress for my clients, but can transfer a number of other content management systems (e.g. Joomla!, Drupal.)

Once you are with us, we will give you all the passwords, etc. that you need in order to transfer away from Cloud Genius. Strangely that does not often seem to happen. We do not believe in chaining you to us. We want you to be free to leave but happy to stay.

See you soon!

John.

Website Hosting – learn the easy way

Hello!

I have been spending some time writing tutorials on setting up websites and website hosting. I am doing this partly to ensure that I have consistent documentation, but I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be good if people found out how to set up things themselves’. I have been in the IT business a long time. So long that I soldered my first computer together!

For four years I set up and ran a department for a multi-million pound IT outsourcing company. I used that time to find the best suppliers, find the best ways to set up website hosting and domain names (and enterprise email filtering/archiving and security certificates and administer/set-up CRM packages…) Things have changed over the years and now I think things are ripe for people to do it themselves. True it is possible to use some services (e.g. 1 & 1, Wix) to set up everything for you. However, you do tend to be stuck with templates that look the same as everyone else, you cannot add all the features you want, or they may be a significant extra expense. If you want flexibility of your own website domain (e.g. cloud-genius.com, widgets.co.uk) you suddenly find them becoming expensive or inflexible. What starts out looking cheap suddenly costs an arm and a leg.

If you use my techniques, you can end up with websites that are truly unique, easy to administer (you supply the text/pictures, the website looks after the formatting), work well on mobiles as well as desktop PCs and perform excellently on Google search. You own the domain name (e.g. cloud-genius.com), you have full access to the hosting (so you can move it elsewhere if necessary). You will find that the costs are low and predictable. You want to add new features? No problem (and no cost)!

As I say, I have already had people asking me about this, but I am interested in what you think.

You can either comment on this post to let me know what you think, or sign up for information about my course – then I will let you know when it is coming.

Happy websites!

John
PS I would love to know what you are thinking. Just hit the comment button right now and let me know.

Microsoft phone scam

I am writing about this particular scam because it is so plausible. (First, this does not originate from Microsoft, just people purporting to be from Microsoft.)

I have received a phone call. The person on the other end of the phone informs me that I have a problem with my computer. This is causing issues and may cause my computer to be blocked from the internet. Now, as someone who knows the capabilities of malware, this is not beyond the realms of possibility. The main slip-up was that they told me how to access Windows control panel. I did play along for a while before revealing that I do not use Windows.

Here is an article from someone who played along for a little longer before revealing his hand. He was blocked from the internet, because they deleted his network driver!

[ss_screenshot width=’300′ site=’https://blog.malwarebytes.org/intelligence/2013/04/phone-scammers-call-the-wrong-guy-get-mad-and-trash-pc/’ align=’right’]

My expectation was that they would install a Trojan… I had not expected them to be so ‘hands-on’. Other scammers may try other ways to affect your computer. In the most recent call, I asked them who they were calling from – the line went dead.

Do you have experience of this type of scam? Let me know, as I am thinking of writing a tutorial, if enough people are interested.

By the way, the linked blog is from Malwarebytes. I have used their anti-malware software with Windows to great effect.

Thanks

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