Goodbye GoDaddy, Hello NameSilo

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Today has marked the day I’ve decided to move my domains away from GoDaddy in almost 10 years being a customer. In the early days of my domain purchasing through GoDaddy I would pay full price for new and renewal domains. Eventually I began to look for coupons to save a buck or two and never had an issue, until recently.

This past year, GoDaddy decided to hike their rates up quite a bit, and even with coupons, the best deal that I could find would coast roughly $8.50. When I began to renew a domain last month in June, the best price I could get was $12.42. Then today I went to renew another domain that is soon expiring, low and behold not ONE promo code would work, which left me with the decision of renewing the domain for $12.95, or transferring it to another registrar. Not wanting to pay the outrageous price hikes, I chose to research a new home for my domains. After a bit of searching and comparing I’ve found a company called NameSilo. They charge $8.89 for new domains, $8.39 for renewals, and if you wanted to save a dollar you could use coupon code RYANKESSEN.

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These are just a few key features that I like about NameSilo:

  1. You don’t have to look for coupons every time one of your domains are up for renewal. There are NO renewal up charges!
  2. You get FREE WhoisGuard for life!
  3. They offer FREE parking of your domains and the ability to keep 100% of the advertising revenue generated.
  4. NameSilo’s reputation is rock solid as apposed to most other domain registrars.

The process of transferring your domains from GoDaddy to NameSilo isn’t exactly very clear due to GoDaddy’s non-user friendly interface, so I’ve laid out some steps for you to follow:

  1. Create an account at NameSilo.com.
  2. Log into your account at GoDaddy and launch the Domain-Manager on the domain you want to transfer.
  3. Under DOMAIN SETTINGS, manage the LOCK setting and unlock the domain(s) so that they can be transferred (This is default locked by GoDaddy and most registrars). Also make sure you turn off any WhoisGuard settings and make sure that the email on the whois isn’t an email at the domain being transferred away (example: [email protected]).
  4. Scroll down to the AUTHORIZATION CODE section at the very bottom and have the code emailed to you (This code is important as it’s what’s used to initiate the transfer from GoDaddy to NameSilo).
  5. Once you have received the authorization code, log into NameSilo and select the TRANSFER tab.
  6. Put your domain name in the transfer a single domain and click search.
  7. Put in the authorization code that was emailed to you and click Transfer these domains.
  8. You will now be transferred to pay for the domain transfer (Using coupon code RYANKESSEN will save you $1).
  9. After you pay for the transfer, you will receive an email from GoDaddy about the transfer, and you then click the approve link given in the email.
  10. Once you approved the transfer, log into your GoDaddy account and click on the DOMAINS tab followed by TRANSFERS, you will be redirected to another page. Click the Pending Transfers Out link where you will be greeted with the domain your transferring away. Click it and then click accept.
  11. You will now receive an email from NameSilo that your transfer is done.

Goodbye GoDaddy! While I still have a few domains that need to be transferred to NameSilo (Including this domain), most all that were expiring soon were transferred away from GoDaddy to their new home, NameSilo.

How to move one cPanel server to another

In this tutorial I will explain a simple and straightforward method for migrating your cPanel accounts from one server to another. This is a great tool if your moving servers or are a reseller moving to another server.

The following are the requirements:

  1. cPanel on both servers
  2. WHM access on the new server (one that the accounts are being moved to)
  3. root access on the new server

Note: The server you are transferring the accounts from is known as the “old server” and the server you are transferring the accounts to are known as the “new server”.

Let’s get started now.

  1. Log into the WHM on your new server and create a new account called “restore”, or something you would remember. Remember to save the FTP address, username and account password because, we will need these things later.
  2. Log into the cPanel account you are wanting to transfer on the old server.
  3. Click on Backup icon on the main cPanel screen followed by Generate/Download a Full Backup on the page you just loaded.
  4. Once there, select the backup destination to be “Remote FTP Server”.
  5. Enter your email address for verification, followed by all of the FTP account information for the account you created earlier called “restore”.
    • Remote Server: new server’s address
    • Remote User: restore
    • Remote Password: restore’s password
    • Port: 21
  6. Then, click “Generate Backup”. This may take some time to backup the files, depending on how large the account is. You should receive an email provided in the above info once it is complete.

Once the above has completed backing up and remote uploading via FTP to your new server, we will need to log into your new server using SSH.

  1. Download Putty if you haven’t already, it’s a great FREE SSH program for Windows.
  2. Log into SSH on your new server making sure to connect to the correct IP and Port (default port is 22).
  3. Type the following in order, one command per line:
    • cd /home/restore/public_html
    • ls

After running the list command above (ls), you should see the tar file of the account on the old server. This means that you have successfully sent the backup file via FTP to your new server.

Now we will need to move the tar file to your new server’s /home directory, which you will execute with the following command in SSH:

mv tar_file_name /home
  1. Now, log into WHM on your new server and navigate to “Backup >> Restore a Full Backup/cpmove file”
  2. Once here, you should see the old account’s username under “Possible cpmove archives found:”. If you do not, log back into SSH and be sure that the account’s tar file has been moved into /home.
  3. Type in the account name in the text field in WHM, which is proceeded by “Enter the username for the account you wish to restore:”.
  4. Click “Restore”.

You are now done! Repeat this process for additional accounts.

How to Import and Export databases in Linux

Using SSH, execute the following command: 

# mysqldump -p -u username database_name > dbname.sql

Once executed, your database will be exported to your /home/username/public_html/ location.

Using SSH, execute the following command:

# mysql -p -u username database_name < file.sql

Now, just the opposite, upload your database raw file to your /home/username/public_html/ location.

How to copy all file names in a directory to a text file in Windows

Step 01:
Open up your command prompt by typing cmd in the run dialog box and hitting Enter.

Step 02:
Navigate to the directory which has the files and type the following command –

DIR /B /O:N > filename.txt

This will save all the filenames in the current directory to a text file. The text file will be saved in the same directory.

Step 03:
To save file names from any sub-directories in the current folder, just add /S like –

DIR /B /O:N /S > filename.txt

That’s all!