Summary
Even though things are working now, it was more work than should have been required. I bet that if the automated backup features in Plesk properly transferred my SSL certificates, I wouldn’t have encountered the rest of the problems that I did — assuming that Plesk’s full server backup/restore feature doesn’t also blow away file permissions and database indexes. GoDaddy support does deserve credit for their handling of my SSL certificate issue, to their credit — they offered to, and successfully did, import my SSL certificate from my old server to my new server.
Still, it was quite a pain to move everything. It took me almost three months total, between real work and playing webmaster, to finally say this morning: please cancel my old virtual server. And cancelled it is. GoDaddy also offered me an unusually high discount if I was to renew my service over the phone today for a full year, and I called back later and accepted the offer. So it looks like 2008 will be another year of GoDaddy for INeedAttention.com.
You might be thinking, that the above described problems have put me off from GoDaddy. In fact, I can’t completely blame them since the configuration of my old server seemed to be the problem. The Plesk backup / restore utilities should have worked better, and probably will even work for you without a hitch. But the GoDaddy virtual servers are more exciting and robust than ever. As I pointed out, PostgreSQL now works properly, and the new virtual servers include all the enhanced features of PHP 5 and MySQL 5 by default.
The GoDaddy virtual private server experience has generally been a positive one for me — but upgrading the server and administering it in general can be a headache. GoDaddy does offer a managed support service, although I can’t speak to the effectiveness of that service since I haven’t tried it (perhaps next time). I believe the virtual private server packages are all good values — but the managed support does seem a bit expensive. However, they might know tricks that I don’t that could make their lives easier. Speaking of GoDaddy support, I’m a big fan of their all-American call centers. I find it extremely frustrating to encounter language barriers with something as complex as web hosting and computers in general.
Overall I like GoDaddy. That’s why I use them. I would give their virtual private server service an 8.0 / 10, but give the upgrade experience a 6.0 / 10.
The best advice to avoid the headaches of upgrading would be to not host websites for people like I do! Leave it to GoDaddy.
Continue reading: Previous page
3 responses so far ↓
1 Pete // Mar 4, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I am facing this exact problem right now. Upgrading to Fedora Core 7 on a Virtual Go Daddy Server. I know nothing about this stuff at all and I’m thinking I should just forget it. I cannot have things screwed up for 3 months, or even 3 days. I just became aware of the Fedora change option and I do not want to do it. I will stick with the old Fedora 4 thank you very much. I have spent too much time manually finding and changing the “PHP ON” areas of the server code and that was beyond a nightmare. As for starting over with a new server and migrating…. I can’t remember all the stuff I have to migrate. There must be a better way, and why must we change the operating system in the first place?
Terminal codes, shell codes, FTP codes… what’s a regular person to do? Go Daddy should offer a per incident support fee for BIG trouble items like this, not leave us all hanging like Chads in the wind. I give them a 0/10 for this fiasco!
2 Time to ditch GoDaddy? // Mar 12, 2008 at 10:34 pm
[…] a GoDaddy VPS customer, and amateur tutorial author and reviewer, this upset me, so I wrote a note on GoDaddy’s public relations feedback […]
3 DrewryNewsNetwork // Oct 26, 2010 at 10:55 am
Hopefully, everything you said will help me upgrade my server, in making php & mysql 5 work on the VPS!
Leave a Comment