Moving to ProReviewer.com - An Update
Posted by: Barry Cleave in Articles, tags: Impartial Review, Independent Review, My Free Review, ProReviewer
Tonight I am working on moving the My Free Review blog to Pro Reviewer and so far (touch wood) it’s going far more easily than I expected. I spent a lot of yesterday reading up about transferring blog domains and there seemed to be quite a lot involved, particularly in changing the MySQL database. Much to my amazement everything seems to be happening fairly automatically. Maybe this is a result of the fact that I have “parked” the new domain in the same home directory with my web host. This leaves myfreereview.com as the principal domain and proreviewer.com pointing to it.
Having taken the precaution of backing up everything in sight on my host using both the cPanel (sort of host admin panel for my account) backup utilities and also the WordPress backup plugin I changed the URL in Options within WordPress Admin for the blog. I changed one at a time before testing, each test carried out with with some degree of trepidation that it would all fall apart and I wouldn’t have any access whatsoever. But no, it all carried on working and ‘http://myfreereview.com/wp-admin/index.php’ became ‘http://proreviewer.com/wp-admin/index.php’ in the browser address bar. All much to my relief as this is where I thought I was going to have the most trouble.
Next off to FeedBurner to change the feed. Well after reading a couple of posts in the forums on what to do and seeing the confusion and mistakes that others had made I decided not to edit the feed but to create a new feed for Pro Reviewer under my existing account. I will also need to edit the My Free Review feed to point to the new domain, but that can be done a little later tonight.
At the moment my biggest headache is the pathetically slow speed that my 4Mb broadband is running at just like it has been for the last several weeks! Not only does everything take ages to load in the browser but uploading these posts from Live Writer on my PC takes several attempts and making sure that anything that might be using the Internet connection on my home network is stopped or disconnected. Then to cap it all (no pun intended) I can’t even log into Google mail in the evening via my browser but can download to Outlook via POP3.
To add insult to injury I got an email today from my ISP: -
“Newsflash: We’re upgrading your broadband - FREE”
We like to give our customers the best service we possibly can. That’s why we’re upgrading your broadband speed from up to 4Mb to up to 10Mb - free. No catch. No strings attached.
I really can’t make any comments that wouldn’t break the terms of service with both the ISP in question and my blog hosting provider 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway rant over and blood pressure coming down nicely.
Next step in the changeover is to rename the FeedBurner links in the templates and then to go through the existing posts and change any embedded links from myfreereview to proreviewer. Hopefully this will be the back of the task broken, I’ll just have to wait and see if there are any gremlins hiding away 
Other Relevant Posts
Why I Decided to Write this Blog, Pro Reviewer - It’s Hard to Find a Good Domain Name!
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February 19th, 2008 at 4:19 pm - Edit
Glad things are moving forward so smoothly and I do hope your ISP pulls their act together. Had my share of bad service from broadband providers so know how it is.
On another note I think you should work a bit more with your favicon. The current one (as well as the previous one) looks a bit quickly done and quite unpolished. Doesnt quite suit the general look of the site if you ask me.
Same with the water background for the banner. Its actally not all that bad but…just doesnt feel right to me.
But maybe thats just my opinion. A bit picky about design and looks etc but as it doesnt ruin the quality of the site it doesnt matter much. And doubt I would be able to do it that much better myself so I’ll be quiet
Keep up the good work.
February 19th, 2008 at 7:34 pm - Edit
Hi Chris,
I agree on the favicon and the background, but I am no graphic designer and I could spend a day trying to do something better with little improvement. I need to find someone who has a bit of talent in this area
The favicon does serve one purpose that I intended and that is that it is instantly recognisable in my Firefox tabs or on a Google search. Bit like some of those awful adverts on TV that are so bad you can’t help noticing them
All the best,
Barry Cleave
February 19th, 2008 at 8:16 pm - Edit
I do have some graphical talents or at least I did once upon a time. Been ages since I played around with graphics but do have a education connected to it (Graphical design to be exact but graduated 5 years ago). Still find it fun tho.
Could see if I could whip something up for you but cant promise you anything (nor that it will be of good quality). Only thing is that I’ll be unavalible for 10 days starting Friday so wont be able to do anything till sometime after that.
If you want me to give it a try drop me an email to “thalion” at gmail.com saying so along with maybe some ideas about what you want the banner/icon should look like.
Best wishes,
Chris
February 20th, 2008 at 2:51 am - Edit
Chris,
Thanks for the offer, much appreciate it. I will have a think about what would be good and have a look around a few other websites then get back to you by email in a couple of days.
Best regards,
Barry Cleave