Arve Bersvendsen

If you can read this ...

… the transfer to DreamHost will have been successful. Moving from one server to another, and trying to make the transfer seamless has been quite an experience.

During this transfer, I have learned the following:

• BerkeleyDB sucks:
  • I tried copying the BerkeleyDB files from my old to my new host, running mt-db2sql.com. No success. The tables were created, but were empty.
  • I tried dumping the DB on my old host’s SSL. No success, no db_dump
  • Running db_upgrade locally on the downloaded is not a recipe for success.
• TypeMover is a nice idea, albeit somwehat poorly executed:
  • It refused to import any of my weblogs: It just froze when I started installing. I assume something failed during import, but telling what is impossible, since it doesn’t log into any error log, be it MT’s own, or the Apache error log.
  • Converting any ISO-8859-1 character outside the US-ASCII range into HTML entities, is not the same as converting to UTF-8. That is converting to US-ASCII. The output might be UTF-8-safe, but I’d rather not have my documents polluted with å and similar characters.
  • The idea, though, is really, really nice: I would very much like this to be integrated into Movable Type: A big red button for importing your old weblogs.
• MySQL on the other hand is really, really nice. Dumping the database, and then just reinserting it on the new host is a breeze.
• The end result: I actually have to use Movable Type’s export function and set up all the templates again for one of my weblogs. A bit cumbersome, but workable.
• Changing to user friendly URIs before switching hosts is a lifesaver.

Other observations:

• DreamHost offers easy WordPress installs: Just a few clicks via the administration interface.
• The WP interface is still as exceedingly ugly as it was when it was named b2. It reminds me of Mac, back when the Mac had 128k RAM and a tiny black and white display.
• For some reason not at all understandable, the UTCDate plugin I started using when I first created an Atom feed stopped working when I moved. Not a big problem, though — it was a matter of changing eight lines in two templates.
• Finally having your Movable Type installs merged down to one single installation is quite nice: One login to rule them all, One configuration to find them, One blacklist to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.