Downtime due to move

Hello all, Jacques here.

This site will be off the air tonight (December 15) to allow a server move. Normal service will be restored in the morning (December 16).

Edit: The move seems to have been largely successful after wrestling with my old friend, MySQL-encoding-stupidities.

As some of you know, I host Andrew’s site on a server I run. It’s been a good arrangement so far. I also host Skepticlawyer.com.au as well. When I first set up this arrangement I looked at using the WordPress Mu platform, which turns vanilla WordPress into a multi-blog system. However at that time WordPress Mu did not ship with proper domain mapping, so it wasn’t much good for the purpose. So at the time I simply installed two copies of WordPress, one for each site.

This works well enough, but it means that I have to manually manage two installations. I have to install plugins twice. I have to deal with two copies of all sorts of things. When bugfixes come down the spout I have two sites to update. (Three, actually, if you count Club Troppo).

Recently I was contacted by another popular Australian blog, asking if they could be hosted with me. This has prompted me to re-enter the server market for a better deal and to re-examine WordPress Mu as a consolidating platform. Since I last looked they seem to have added proper domain mapping functionality in the form of a plugin. This means that I will be able to consolidate installations of WordPress down to one, while retaining everyone’s unique URLs.

I have asked Andrew to be the first to move across to the new server. Subject to warning all of you, he has agreed.

What will happen:

1. Nothing visible will happen until this evening. At 6pm WST I will put the site into maintenance mode. During this time it will not be possible to view the site.
2. While the site is in maintenance mode, I will move the site’s database to the new server.
3. I will redirect the DNS entry for andrewnorton.info to the new server and activate the domain mapping plugin.
4. You will see the site come online shortly thereafter, depending on when the new DNS records propagate to your ISP.

Assuming that all goes well, the site will be online before tomorrow morning. It will look and feel exactly the same (perhaps it will load a little faster).