Eric Siebert

I’m always looking to improve my public persona and a few months ago I wrote a post on how to gain confidence to be an effective public speaker. Recently I came across a great paper from Harvard Business Review entitled “How to Give a Killer Presentation” that is a great read. Within that there was a sidebar with great tips focused on surefire ways to ruin a presentation that I thought I’d pass along.

1. Take a really long time to explain what your talk is about.

2. Speak slowly and dramatically. Why talk when you can orate?

3. Make sure you subtly let everyone know how important you are.

4. Refer to your book repeatedly. Even better, quote yourself from it.

5. Cram your slides with numerous text bullet points and multiple fonts.

6. Use lots of unexplained technical jargon to make yourself sound smart.

7. Speak at great length about the history of your organization and its glorious achievements.

8. Don’t bother rehearsing to check how long your talk is running.

9. Sound as if you’re reciting your talk from memory.

10. Never, ever make eye contact with anyone in the audience.

Remember these are all ways to ruin your presentation, not improve it. So if you are guilty of any of these maybe it’s time to stop if you want to become a better speaker.

Nothing beats free and many companies offer scaled down versions of their full products or purpose built mini tools as free tools. SolarWinds is one company which specializes in all sorts of tools that has many different free tools available for just about everything in the data center.

VMware has been developing free tools that they call Flings for several years now. Flings are lightweight, specific use tools developed by VMware Labs that often make up for some functionality that might be missing in their products. These tools often make their way into VMware products later on.

Whatever the motivation that a vendor has for creating a free tool the end result is tools that don’t cost you anything that can make your virtual life much easier.

I just updated my free virtualization tools section with many new tools from companies like SolarWinds, VMTurbo, Unitrends and VMware Labs. So head on over there and check them out and if there is a tool missing that you want people to know about just let me know.

Of course you do, well I started a VVols link collection on them so you can find out more about them in preparation for their upcoming release in the next version of vSphere. There is not a lot of content out there right now but bookmark the link collection page as the links will continue to grow as more information is published. Just click on the image below or the VVols links in the right sidebar to go there.

In part 1 we covered everything you need to do to prepare and backup your WordPress site before migrating it to another hosting provider. Now we’ll continue with setting up the site on the new hosting provider and copying all your data from your old hosting provider over.

1. Setup your new hosting account

I moved my site from GoDaddy to HostGator which had decent pricing and features. I went with the “Baby”  plan which is their middle plan and features unlimited bandwidth, disk space and domains for around $8/month. Below is a basic comparison of their plans, you can see a full comparison here. Shortly after you sign-up you should receive any email with the details to set it up.

2. Setup FTP and copy your files to the new web server

Next I logged in to the website control panel. FTP is automatically setup to the default account name that you choose when you setup the initial website, you can modify your FTP settings in the control panel though. There are also FTP client config files that you can use to easily setup a FTP client entry so you can connect to your website. Once I connected with FileZilla, my home directory on the web server shows several different sub-directories, you want to go to the public_html directory which is the default directory for website content. Note on other hosting providers this may be different and you might only see your default web directory and not other sub-directories.

Next you need to copy all of the files and directories (wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes, etc.) that you backed up from your website on your old hosting provider into the public_html directory. Now that all your WordPress files are there we need to copy the database.

3. Creating the database and importing the tables

Now we have to create a MySQL database and import the tables that we backed up into it. The first step for me was to add my PC IP address to the Remote MySQL administration white list so I can run phpMyAdmin and perform database operations. With HostGator the default is to block everyone except IP addresses that are added, you may not have to do this with your hosting provider. To find out your external facing IP address just Google “What is my IP address”. To set this up I for go into Remote MySQL in the hosting control panel.

And then add my IP address to the access list.

Now we want to setup a database user for WordPress to use, you can use the original username/password that is specified in your wpconfig.php file or specify a different one. If you do use something different you must update your wpconfig.php on the web server with the new credentials. To configure a MySQL user with HostGator you click on MySQL Databases in the hosting control panel and then go to the Add New User section and put in a username/password.

Next I’m going to manually create the database, there is a Create Database statement in the SQL script that is used to import your old database but I’d have to edit that to fit HostGator’s naming convention, so I’ll just manually create it and give it a more descriptive name. To do this go to MySQL Databases in the hosting control panel and then go to the Create New Database section and put in a database name.

Next you want to give the user you created access to the new database you created, to do this go to the Add User to Database section and click Add

At the next screen give the user All Privileges to the database.

Now we have our user and database setup, time to go to phpMyAdmin and import the .SQL file that we created when we exported our database from our original hosting provider. Before we do that we have to comment out the CREATE statement at the top of the .SQL file as we have already created our database. Edit the .SQL file on your PC using a good text editor that understands SQL like Notepad++. I changed this section:

[important]–
— Database: `pla1002002410429`
—
CREATE DATABASE `pla1002002410429` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
USE `pla1002002410429`;[/important]

to this:

[important]– Database: `pla1002002410429`
—
— CREATE DATABASE `pla1002002410429` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
USE `esiebert_thevpad`;[/important]

I put a — (2 dashes) in front of the CREATE statement to comment it out so it will not execute and then changed the database name in the USE statement to match the database I created. Note that HostGator puts the hosting account username “esiebert” in front of the database name so I couldn’t use just the database short name “thevpad”.

Now it’s time to import the .SQL and create our tables and fill them with data. Go into phpMyAmin and click on the Import tab and then select the .SQL file on your local PC and then click Go.

It should execute and start importing, depending on how big your website is it could take a few seconds or a few minutes. Once it is done you should see a confirmation message.

You can verify that your WordPress tables have been imported by clicking on the Database tab and the clicking on your database.

4. Final steps

Now that we have copied our WordPress files via FTP and our database via phpMyAdmin we have everything in place and there are just a few final steps left. The first is to update our wpconfig.php on the webserver to reflect our new database name and username/password. To do this open FileZilla, connect to the webserver, find your wpconfig.php and select View/Edit. Here is the section we need to edit:

[important]

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘pla1002002410429’);

/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘pla1002002410429’);

/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘Admin1234’);

/** MySQL hostname */
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘pla1002002410429.db.5029023.hostedresource.com’);

[/important]

We want to change the database name, username, password and hostname like so, remember with HostGator you need the account name in front of everything :

[important]

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘esiebert_thevpad’);

/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘esiebert_dbadmin’);

/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘Admin5678’);

/** MySQL hostname */
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

[/important]

Next it’s time to fire up WordPress and see if it works, we haven’t cutover DNS yet to the IP address of the new hosting server. Before doing that I like to do a quick test to make sure the basic site works. You usually can’t just enter the IP address in a web browser to get to your site as shared hosting usually runs many websites on a single web server and requires a DNS name to direct incoming traffic to your specific website on the web server. I created a new A record in my DNS zone file something like thevpad.vsphere-land.com and pointed it to the IP address of the new hosting web server. Then I use that to test opening up files on the web server in a browser and then going to the WordPress admin page. Note doing this you will not be able to fully access your website on the new web server as anything you click on will re-direct to the old web server as the original DNS entry is hard coded in WordPress, but this will at least allow you to verify that WordPress is running OK.

Hooray it works:

Now that I know WordPress is up and running on the new web server and my data is all there it’s a simple matter of updating my main A records for my DNS domain to point to the new server. At this point you’re done, what I like to do after I make the DNS cutover is upgrade my WordPress version if its not up-to-date and plug-ins and make any other site changes (i.e. themes, settings, etc.). That way if something breaks from doing all that I can simply update DNS to go back to my old server if needed for an easy failback.

And that’s all there is to it. One of the reasons I documented all this is that I have 5 websites to move and I wanted to make sure I had all the steps documented. I got stuck a few times and had to research some things but once I fully understood the process it was fairly straight-forward. I hope this helped anyone else wanting to move their WordPress site to a new hosting provider.

So you have a virtualization blog and for whatever reason you want to move it to a new hosting provider, where do you begin? I recently moved this site from GoDaddy to HostGator as I was fed up with GoDaddy for a number of reasons. I was initially a bit intimidated by the move as it didn’t seem all the straightforward and I didn’t want anything to break. My main concerns were preserving the version of WordPress I was on and all my plug-ins and successfully moving the database. After doing a bunch of research and finding out all I could about how to move everything correctly I found the whole process to be fairly easy and pain-free. I thought I would document what was involved to make the move and the necessary steps in case anyone else has to go through it.

There are 3 main things that need to be moved when migrating a WordPress instance from one hosting provider to another:

1. DNS records
2. WordPress files
3. WordPress database

1. Prepare your DNS entry for a quicker cutover

Updating DNS to the IP address of your new hosting server is probably the simplest part and also the last step in the process. However because DNS can take a while to propagate out across the internet, you’ll want to change the Time To Live (TTL) value for your website’s DNS entry at least a day before starting the migration. Doing this ensures that your cutover will be quicker as DNS records will be cached for a shorter amount of time and will be forced to lookup sooner and recognize the IP address change, also if you need to fail back to your old server for any reason that will go quicker as well. Go to your DNS control panel and modify your A record and any applicable CNAME records (i.e. www) to 1 hour or less.

2. Backup all your WordPress files

When you install WordPress on your website there are hundreds of files that get copied to specific directories that contain the complete WordPress web application. A new install of WordPress is only about 16MB in size with around 1,100 files but as you add content that will grow. Since we will be moving WordPress from one server to another we will need to copy the appropriate files and directories from the old server to the new server. If you for some reason want to ever install a fresh copy of WordPress you can find all of the versions in the WordPress release archive. Below are the files and directories that are come with a new install of WordPress.

The easiest way to move the files is to use an FTP application to copy them from your old server to your local PC and then to your new server. It’s also a good idea to periodically do this to backup WordPress. If you need a FTP client, check out FileZilla which is a free open source application. You may need to setup a FTP username/password on your hosting site before you can connect to it. Create a new site in FileZilla and give it a name (i.e. mywebsite-old), use the IP address instead of a DNS name to avoid confusion during the cutover and then enter in your login credentials. Once you connect to your web server you’ll see the directory listing of the contents, what you see will usually vary by hosting providers, some providers partition you off so you don’t see much of the web server files. After connecting to my website on GoDaddy here is the content listing:

At this point it’s important to not make any changes to your old website, otherwise they will not be copied to your new websitesite. You may not need all the files you see but its best to copy everything to a subdirectory on your PC so you do have a full backup in case you miss anything that you might need later. In the figure above you can see the 3 WordPress directories that you need to copy for sure along with all the files that start with “wp” in the root directory. I’ve manually copied things to my site in the past (i.e. images) which is why you see some extra files and directories which I’ll copy also. Other files that are part of the hosting platform like “cgi”, “stats”, “webformmailer.php” and “_db_backups” I don’t need to bring over. Once you’ve copied everything to your PC it’s time to move on to the next step, copying your database.

3. Backup your database

Your WordPress database is typically hosted on a MySQL database that is installed and managed by your hosting provider. The WordPress database has many tables that store configuration and content for your WordPress website. You can see what a typical WordPress database structure looks like below, you can find a complete description of the database tables here:

Most hosting providers provide database management tools so you can manage and perform database operations. Don’t be intimidated by this as what we are doing to back it up is fairly simple and you don’t need to be a DBA to do it. Log into your hosting provider control panel for your website and you should see a link for database management via phpMyAdmin which is a free software tool that is written in PHP that is used to administer MySQL over the Web. Here’s how you launch it on GoDaddy in your website control panel:

Note the database name which is usually a mix of letter and numbers, launch phpMyAdmin and you should be prompted for a username and password to connect to your database.

You probably won’t know it or remember it but no worries as you can easily look it up by opening the wpconfig.php file that you copied to your PC as part of the backup in a text editor like Notepad and look for the MySQL section like below:

[important]// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘pla1002002410429’);

/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘pla1002002410429’);

/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘Admin1234’);

/** MySQL hostname */
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘pla1002002410429.db.5029023.hostedresource.com’); [/important]

Note my username was the same as the database name, now that you have the username and password you can login to phpMyAdmin with it. Note some hosting providers may require you to whitelist your IP address to do remote MySQL administration, if they do there should be a section in your hosting control panel to put in your IP address. Once you are logged into phpMyAdmin you want to Export your database, click the Export link as shown below:

On the Export options screen do the following (note your options may be slightly different):

Export section

• Select your database, you should only be selecting one, do not select all as you do not need others like information_schema
• Make sure SQL format is selected

Options – Structure section

• Make sure Structure is selected
• Select Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION
• Select Add IF NOT EXISTS
• Select Add AUTO_INCREMENT value
• Select Enclose table and field names with backquotes

Options – Data section

• Make sure Data is selected
• Complete inserts
• Use hexadecimal for BLOB

Save as file section

• Select Save as file
• Select Compression to None

When you have done as this it should look similar to below, hit Go and it will ask you for a location for the file on your PC and then begin the Export. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

Once you have completed this you have everything you need to move your WordPress site to a new hosting provider. Part 2 will cover how to copy your WordPress files to your new web server and import your database and get it all up and running.