It started small, simple and easy.
I should have seen it coming.
After realizing that my WordPress installation was getting kind of ancient, I felt the urge to update (simply for the sake of keep things somewhat safe). Unfortunately, I couldn’t fail to realize that even my server was ever so slightly (ahem…) lagging behind. In fact, it couldn’t stomach a new WordPress installation. Especially the mySQL installation couldn’t handle a new WordPress version. Ok, so simply first updating all necessary stuff on the server. Shouldn’t be that hard…
Yeah, I’m known to be slightly over-optimistic from time to time. In fact, my Provider (HostEurope) has completely changed it’s line of virtual servers since my inital purchase, ages ago (2004). Meaning, that either I would have been forced to comb through a really mature SUSE installation and update everything manually (oh, please…), or I update to a new virtual Server. Shouldn’t be that hard…(where have I heard THAT before…?)
So I made my first mistake: I’m quite ok with Hosteurope, but I have another site running with another major German Provider (einsundeins, Puretec). So for the sake of simplicity, I thought I’d better compile everything in one place. After half a day, I simply gave up – I was not able to purchase something as ordinary as a small virtual server from Puretec.
Why? Because those geniuses require a computerized phone-check after the purchase. Meaning, a computer calls you and asks for a confirmation code that you got via email. Sounds easy enough, right?
Yeah, right.
Unless you’re in Sweden. They obviously tried to call me in Bremen, using my German contact details. Just 800 km off target. Ok, those things can happen – although it certainly would have been nice to get some warning in advance that a phonecall is needed during the purchase. Then I would have simply bought the server at a time when my wife would have been home.
Anyway, so I called technical service… Ah, scratch that. The guys neither had the slightest clue of any technical details – nor did it resemble anything even remotely related to “service”. Actually, the only hotline I could reach from Sweden was the sales hotline (surprise, surprise). All other hotlines were simply blocked for long-distance calls. Great.
But hey, we’re living in the age of emails, right? Yeah… but the email addresses that I got from that “technical hotline” (aka “we try to SELL everywhere, but that’s it”) were either simply dead (my mails bounced immediately), or seem to be located in the direct vicinity of a black hole. So, after waiting for two days and haven’t received ANY response (despite 5 calls and the same number of emails), I cancelled the purchase. Now I’m only waiting for the confirmation that they received my cancellation. Well, it’s only a week since I sent it over… Maybe they are using carrier pigeons?
Ok, so I decided to stay with HostEurope, they have performed very ok in the past after all. So, time for mistake 2:
I bought a Windows 2008 server.
Yeah, I guess I deserved the following punishment. To cut a long story short: after a couple of fruitless attempts and a technical support that was starting to get slightly grumpy, I ditched that server and went back to a Linux machine.
And then I tried to take the easy way out and asked the technical service whether I could hire them for organizing the move of my domains (new DNS-Zone entries, etc.) after moving the files to the new server. Although the technical service at HostEurope was certainly leagues more professional in comparison to the one at Puretec, they really slipped at this point. Although they are offering those service (against decent payment, obviously) on their homepages, I simply received a quite condescending mail that it’s my server and that hence I have to take care of moving things around.
So I spent the better part of this weekend browsing through HostEurope’s online documentation (which is pretty lousy organized, to put it mildly), getting to know the new Plesk server management system, unraveling the intricacies of the nameserver system at HostEurope, synchronizing it with Plesk, backing up stuff from the old server and then moving it to the new server.
The WordPress installations themselves went rather smoothly. With the exception that for one strange reason all links to all photos had an additional “11″ attached to their filenames after the import to the new WordPress system. So I need to go through each and every post and delete all the 1′s… Anybody got a trained chimpanzee that I could rent for a couple of hours?
I’m done. Completely. I think, I’ll now seek refuge to some aged, smoked and fermented malt lemonade. Mh, I guess, Caol Ila is going to be my victim for now 
Cheers!
Thomas
PS.: Sorry for being offline for a while (in case you tried to get to the site), and I would be grateful for any feeback in case of technical glitches.