wordpress it is for gen12.com

After four years of not using my main domain gen12.com for any purpose other than email, I've decided to use wordpress as my cms application. "Helping Today's Tentmaker" will be the site concept for gen12.com.

I've also decided to try out wordpress.com and our 1st church-planting blog will be situated at churchplantingchiangmai.wordpress.com

wordpress is very open and I can port my blog to any other blogging application without losing anything.

Brainstorm it by Sitesell

I've been spending the last few days trying to brainstorm for my new site. It's a great tool, probably the best that I've ever come across in trying to work on a new site concept.

It's Christmas too. So if you want a "two for the price of one" deal, now is the time, click on the link

It's a great tool. You won't regret it. The only thing for me however, is the stuff I'm interested in may not really be all that profitable "moneywise" but infinitely and eternally profitable.

Dada Mail works great.

I've been using Dada mail for 4 years and it's a great way to send out mass emails. Hostmonster has an hourly limit for 500 emails. They don't have as many restricitions as the new powweb. I was able to migrate everything with minimal adjustments. Basically setting the right path to the lists and changing usernames.

Planning your website carefully

Planning! Prioritizing! Proceeding!

There's always so much to do and so little time. Choosing what to do first. What's important versus what's urgent. What's attractive versus what's necessary. These are considerations that need attention and discipline to follow through

Taking all things into account.

Planning! Planning! Planning!

Sometimes one major change can affect many little things along the way. For example, my profile photo disappeared.

Hostmonster is a snap.

1. Control panel is easy to navigate. Was able to setup my email accounts, subdomains and even install coppermine with little trouble.
2. Forgot to backup mysql database for coppermine so I guess I'm installing from scratch.
3. tech support is responsive.
4. At US$4.95/month, it's got an overall good balance of features for most anyone.
5. Very fast.
   

Powweb is history

Actually, powweb has been hard at work making improvements. However, not within the same time line I'm on, I'm afraid. If I were a new customer, I would be okay signing up with powweb. However, now that I'm on hostmonster, I've been very happy with their control panel and like the way things are laid out.

powweb was very gracious in terminating the account.

gen12.com is transferred to Hostmonster

At last, the domain servers are pointed to Hostmonster, my new webhost. I've been very impressed by tech support. I've been able to call and work through things on the phone with them without hassle. It took about 48 hours for the domain to get transferred and things are working very well.

Hostmonster IN Powweb OUT

Just got off the phone with powweb customer service....it was a difficult call to make as bad news always is hard to tell.

Here's the email that I wrote to powweb:

I've been with powweb 4 yrs and I had great service. The thing that I could not handle was with the transfer of ownership and the new server + restrictions. All my stuff transferred over fine but the problem began when I began to make new installations and modifications, that's when things became problematic.

Support staff have been helpful but the point is....I don't want to have to keep calling support to get things fixed. It defeats the purpose of having a product that keeps breaking and then spending time to fix it.

My problems include:

Dada mail - my main lists work but my new list just won't send out even though it says it's sending out.
confusion between mailing addresses. user@gen12.com or user@nateheng.powweb.com
It was never consistent when logging into webmail. The last straw was the new email vcrsn which i just setup. I couldn't even log into it from my offline mail reader even though i could get in via webmail.

Since my account is due for renewal, I figured it was a good time to switch as I could start with a clean slate and not have to monkey with what already worked and what didn't and then try to figure out why. Sorry, I can't afford the time to do that kind of troubleshooting.

"If it isn't broken, don't fix it"

Basically that's what happened when powweb got bought out and they upgraded their servers. Interestingly, things would probably be fine if I just joined them and started from scratch. It was nice of them to offer 2 months free service but I guess that would still mean troubleshooting. The "problem solver" in me would love to do it but I don't have the time nor energy.