I have decided to say goodbye to the shared hosting once and for all and finally moved all of my personal sites and blog to a virtual private server (VPS) running CentOS 5.2 and Plesk. I didn’t do this because I was unhappy with my former shared hosting provider as they had good up-time and the support was fast and helpful. I did it because I needed greater access to my hosting then shared hosting can provide; e.g. tweaking the server, installing custom software and controlling the versions of software installed on the server (e.g. symfony and subversion).
The switching process took a little more than a week. A little slow I know, but it wasn’t a full time gig. But at last I can announce that my switchover to a VPS set-up is complete.
Now here’s hoping my new host does not upset me with frequent downtime 🙂
Just in case you were curious, my shared hosting was with A2hosting and I highly recommend them if you are after shared hosting. They also offer VPS hosting but I have not tried their offering yet.