London Korean Links

1. Create the new account at your new VPS

In Web Host Manager, go to the Account Functions > Create a New Account page

1.1 Domain information

• Enter yourdomain.com in the Domain box (without the www.)
• The username is automatically generated, though it can be changed. For the purposes of these notes, the username is myuserna.
• Input a password (or auto-generate a really secure one)
• Input a contact email address

1.2 Resources

• Select a package. I just selected the “default” one as I haven’t set up any particular packages as I’m not in the business of webhosting.

• Seeing that I only have one IP address for my different websites I leave the “Dedicated IP” box unchecked.
• Shell Access: checked
• FrontPage Extensions: Unchecked. I assume this refers to Microsoft Frontpage. As my sites are Microsoft-free zones I leave this unchecked
• Cgi access: checked
• cPanel theme: I don’t really care what the cPanel looks like so I left it at x3

1.4 Reseller priveleges

• unchecked. I don’t want to give this site (or any future owner after I lose interest in it) the right to start its own webhosting business on my virtual server.

1.5 DNS settings

• “Use domain registry nameservers (ignore locally configured ones)”.

If I check this box, the existing nameservers for the webhost where my blog is currently hosted are displayed (ns1.oldwebhost.com and ns2.oldwebhost.com). I bought my domain name from buyaname.com, and my account settings at buyaname.com point my domain name at my old webhost’s nameservers: ns1.oldwebhost.com and ns2.oldwebhost.com. I read in a support forum (if I understand the comment correctly) that this is a once-only lookup. So if you check this box my guess is you will forever be tied to ns1.oldwebhost.com and ns2.oldwebhost.com. Since you’re moving your account, that’s not a good idea. So I leave this box unchecked, and the default nameservers of ns1.mynewvpshost.com and ns2.mynewvpshost.com should be displayed, and that seems like a good idea.

• Overwrite existing dns zones. I left this unchecked because I don’t know what it does.

Then I clicked OK. WHM says it has emailed me the account settings.

2. Check it’s all working

2.1 Check the webspace itself

The WHM software sent an email to the top-level email address associated with my VPS account (not the email address I set up for the new blog account in 1.1 above). And it didn’t contain any info on how to use my new account. Fortunately I half knew the ropes from my previous experiences with cPanel at my old webhost.

To check that the account had been created, I logged on to

http://11.111.111.111/~myuserna/. (where of course that string of numbers is the IP address of the VPS). Bingo. I get to a screen which gives me a brief index of /~myuserna. Needless to say, there’s not much there, but at least there’s something.

2.2 Check your Control Panel

Then, to play around a bit more, I logged on to the control panel by entering http://11.111.111.111:2082/ using the username and password created in step 1.1 above. Success again.

2.3 Install WordPress

Next – I installed the latest version of Wordpress supported by my cPanel’s Fantastico plugin: 2.3.3. I’ve tried installing WordPress manually before, but what’s the point when you’ve got a routine which does it all for you? I don’t like faffing around with configuration files. The Fantastico installation is a breeze.

Now if I go back to http://11.111.111.111/~myuserna/ . I get an error message:

Not Found
The requested URL /~myuserna/ was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

That’s fine, because it shows that WordPress is trying to do something. WordPress is getting confused because, as of now, the blog’s domain name isn’t yet pointing to the right server. That should all be fixed when I update my DNS settings at my domain registrar.

But, to give you confidence for the move, it’s worthwhile playing around with a test installation of WordPress in a subdomain of your existing site. That way you can practice the steps of moving data to see how it all works. Once you’ve got comfortable with that process, all you have to do differently when trying it for real is the additional step of switching the DNS settings.

2.4 Configure your FTP software

I use CuteFTP Professional. I created a new ftp account in CuteFTP thus:

File > New > FTP Site, inputting
Label = My new blog
Host address = 11.111.111.111 (the VPS IP address)
Username = myuserna (generated when I set the new account up in WHM)
Password = the really strong password generated by WHM in 1.1 above.

Everything seems to work. I can see the Wordpress files in public_html. Time for the next steps.