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We are Now on a Dedicated Server with HostGator

VagabondJourney.com is now on a dedicated server under the care of Hostgator. The transfer process from Inmotion was a bit arduous and took the past three days to get everything up and running properly. This job is now finished, Vagabond Journey Travel has a new home, our very own dedicated server. A dedicated hosting service, [...]

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VagabondJourney.com is now on a dedicated server under the care of Hostgator. The transfer process from Inmotion was a bit arduous and took the past three days to get everything up and running properly.

This job is now finished, Vagabond Journey Travel has a new home, our very own dedicated server.

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. –Dedicated hosting on Wikipedia

Dedicated hosting packages are expensive, and the costs of running this website are now greatly cutting into our earnings. The expense/ earnings ratio of this operation have just gotten a little closer. This was probably the worst time for us to allow for an increase in expenses — as I am truly going belly up financially — but it was a much needed move.

Now on Hostgator

Shared hosting — and yes, VPS is shared hosting — was not doing it for us. We would push the server resources beyond their allowed capacity on whatever hosting company or shared/ VPS package we were on. This was a constant annoyance, and I have been finding my site shut off or otherwise inaccessible nearly every month for the past year and a half. This is an unacceptable way to run a business, to operate the gears that make me my living. This incessant downtime was also incredibly frustrating, requiring me to put vast amounts of time on the horn with the hosting company which would detract from my publishing output. I was searching for the impetus to switch hosting companies and move to a dedicated server for many months now, and the recent Inmotion hack provided this in full.

Now we have more bandwidth and storage space allowance to run 10 VagabondJourney.coms without problems. We are on the fast road now, there is nothing in our path from here to eternity — I can do ANYTHING with this site now.

This new found potential is riveting.

It was an arduous three days of transferring the site over which was not done without errors. If you find anything that is not working properly please let me know.

Filed under: Vagabond Journey Updates, Website Construction

About the Author:

I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 91 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. has written 3699 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

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VBJ is currently in: New York City

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  • Brandon October 2, 2011, 4:08 am

    I’ve heard a lot of good things about hostgator and as a former GoDaddy employee, I’m glad you did not choose Godaddy for dedicated hosting.

    It’s also a relief to hear that you finally have a reliable server and support, as longtime readers well know that you have been plagued for too long with unreliable hosting.

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    • Wade Shepard October 2, 2011, 9:52 am

      Thanks Brandon,

      Yeah, really hope this works out. As of now, it has taken them three days to transfer my site over and it is still not complete, some things are not yet working properly. Haha, I guess this is just the way it goes. Hopefully in a day or two we will be running at full speed. Thanks for the support!

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  • Matthew Derrick October 2, 2011, 5:20 pm

    Hey Wade, can you share what dedicated hosting package you decided on? I’m curious for the day when (hopefully!) I can reach the level of traffic you have 🙂

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    • Wade Shepard October 2, 2011, 11:07 pm

      Hell Matthew,

      We went with the basic dedicated server plan. What you warned me about HostGator on a previous page actually happened haha. It’s been a slight disaster, but I think we are running good now. Thanks.

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  • Darren October 2, 2011, 5:20 pm

    Hi Wade

    I’m interested to read about your hosting pushing your costs too high.
    I have a Servint VPS, it costs $49 per month. I run a website that gets similar traffic to yours, based on your sitemeter.com badge in your footer. I use aggressive caching that means that the website isn’t served from the database, but from files on the disk. I run this website and 80 others (low traffic) from a single VPS account without any troubles. It’s been running for a year on Servint now.

    Have you tried caching your Wordpress site? It will take a massive load off the server, and make your site really responsive.
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

    Regards

    Darren

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    • Wade Shepard October 2, 2011, 11:04 pm

      Hello Daren,

      We use super catche, widget cache, and use Google libraries to decrease the server load, but it is too no avail with VPS hosting — many problems.

      The current data in the sitemeter is not accurate.

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  • Chris April 4, 2012, 10:25 am

    Im in the same boat as you

    I currently have a shared hosting with inmotion but anytime i get more traffic they suspend my account – and VPS is too expensive with inmotion/ Im looking into Hostgator

    How do you like them? Any problems?

    I fear that it will be hard to transfer out all my domains from inmotion to hostgator

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    • Wade Shepard April 6, 2012, 5:53 am

      Hostgator has been excellent so far. I highly recommend them.

      There is no need to move your domains to another registrar, just point them to your new hosting company’s DNS. Ask a Hostgator rep for more on this.

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  • Matt Derrick April 6, 2012, 1:05 pm

    I continue to have a ridiculous amount of SSH problems with hostgator. I’m pondering a move to Domain.com.

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    • Wade Shepard April 6, 2012, 9:52 pm

      That’s good to keep in mind. We have not had any major problems yet. Good to know though.

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