Clueless - Need some basic VPS help :)

[Dean]

Hey,

Im thinking of buying a VPS for myself in the next few days and have been pricing everything up.

The problem is I dont know what I am getting into!

Until now I have simply used shared hosting for any and all of my websites.

Currently, I have 3 websites hosted at SiteGround. They've really let me down last week or so and people have reccomended a VPS.

But, I buy a VPS and then what?

How does transferring websites/domains work? I dont know the first thing about this, is it simple to switch my websites over? And how does adding more websites in the future work?

Do I still buy my domains at say GoDaddy.com? And is there a time delay in transferring my sites .. basically I know nothing about VPS hosting :P

If anyone could give me a quick basic overview of how it works, if I think it sounds OK I will buy today but just need to be sure.

Thanks in advance to any help :)

Dean

[treacle]

Hi Dean

I was in the same position and decided to buy a VPS recently. I am not sure if you have run a reseller account before, but it is pretty similar to that. I decided to go for www.hostforweb.com as they helped me move sites across (for free), have good customer support and they are not too pricy.

Best of all I still have cpanel!

You can buy your domains wherever you like, it's just a case of ensuring your domain name servers point to your hosting.

I hope that helps a bit - happy to answer more questions.

Treacle

[webbom]

Moving your sites to a new host is really easy, especially if you dont have a forum or any other database with user generated input. Your new host should give you an ip address where you have to upload all your site files, then you need to move the databases. When you moved everything test the site in the ip that they give you. Finally change the nameserver setting in godaddy. That should be it.

[rob]

If you don't know how to manage a server (read: use Linux/FreeBSD, the command line, know how to secure it, etc) I suggest getting a managed VPS where they'll take care of it for you. www.wiredtree.com, www.servint.com, and www.liquidweb.com are ones that comes to mind that offers this and has a good reputation.

[minnseoelite]

Setting up a VPS is not that difficult. Linux/Windows is already installed and some additional applications may be as well. Your VPS may also have "quick apps" like PHPMyAdmin, Webmail, MySQL that you can install/uninstall with the click of a button. Also I might recommend going for a VDS which is similar to a VPS but runs even more like a dedicated server in that if someone elses VDS goes down, gets hacked or what ever it does not effect your VDS. Not sure about VPS but a VDS also gives you the option to do a remote restart of your server whenever you need to.

But the main thing you will notice with a VPS is there are alot more folders you can access through FTP as they give you root access to your server.

[Mixi]

Here are some very easy to follow step by step video tutorials from godaddy. Most of the steps will pretty much be the same even on servers not on godaddy depending on your control panel.


dedicated server
http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=2224&topic_id=&prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=goox2001au

VPS
http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=2224&topic_id=&prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=goox2001au

Video Tutorial Index
http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=1668&&isc=goox2001au

hope that helps, sinced it looked like you were searching for specific steps

[Dean]

Hey thanks everyone this is great :)

After reading and seeing the vids im going to take the plunge and grab a VPS/VDS .. not sure which yet.

Ill let you know if I need anymore help.

Once again thanks everyone :D

Dean

[Dean]

Just signed up to LiquidWebs VPS1 :)

Ill let everyone know how it goes.

Dean

[Mixi]

glad the videos helped you.

[ajarchibald3]

dean contact me please

[mcfox]

ajarchibald3 - please stop posting the same message in every thread you see Dean's name in - it's irritating.

dean - please answer them