2011-03-17 Moving the Site

Adventures in Frame Forwarding

or How not to host a Website

making the move

Although it uses standard HTML supported by every browser, frame forwarding does not work well.

moving the site

There are various ways to show your content on its own domain name. It should be clear by now that frame forwarding, the method I used for several years, is cheap in every meaning of the word. It does not cost much, and it works, sort-of, but it does not work particularly well. Although it uses standard HTML supported by every browser, frame forwarding does not work well.

picking a host

About a month ago, I decided to move the site to a proper host. It so happens that XS4All allows you to run your own web server at home, but I quickly dismissed that option. I do not want its performance to be dependent on my connection, but most of all, I simply do not want the hassle.

I decided to go with some web hosting provider, but not with XS4All. I am still with them as my ISP, although they certainly aren't the cheapest, because I am willing to pay a bit more for a quality Internet connection. I am not willing to pay the prices they ask web hosting.

Looking for a web host starts with determining your needs.

needs

Looking for a web host starts with determining your needs. Luckily, my needs are simple. I do not need MySQL, PHP, WordPress or any optional package, I merely need a web server to serve my web pages.

An important factor is the size of the web site. I determined that my current site was, including all images, still less than 100 MB large.

I do not know how much traffic the site gets per month. I do not really care to know and do not want to start caring, but many hosting packages have monthly limits, and if you exceed them, you may well be billed for their next, more expensive hosting package.
Some web hosting companies advertise unlimited traffic for just €1 a month, but quite naturally actually limit your usage through their so-called Fair Use Policy. A real problem with these companies is that they not only tend to put too many sites on a single server, but also tend to attract heavy users looking to squeeze every bit out of their ridiculously cheap hosting contract, and because of these users, the performance of your site will suffer as well.

making a choice

There are many reasonably priced hosting options that offer plenty of disk space and bandwidth. There are too many choices, and many of these companies are small outfits that may be gone tomorrow. Luckily, there are several Dutch websites with nothing but user reviews of web hosting services. After studying some of these I came up with a shortlist, and asked them a few questions about transferring my site to their servers. Only one company provided quick, correct and clear answers.

dramatic price difference

The site is hosted with Antagonist now. It's an odd name for a web hosting company, but they've been around for several years, and have good reviews. The price difference with XS4All is dramatic; the cheapest web hosting package that XS4All offers is a domain name, 500 MB of disk space and 40 GB of traffic per month for €23 per month. Antagonist offers a domain name, 3000 MB of disk space and 60 GB of traffic per month for €24 per year. That is affordable.

affordable

Antagonist has a FAQ that claims that they are able to be this affordable because they've automated most procedures. That is certainly true, and quite convenient if you know what you're doing. It is also true that support is mostly offered through detailed online manuals and by other users on their online bulletin boards. They do not even list a phone number on their site; if you want to contact them, you'll have to use email.

However, I believe their real secret to be that they offer only one all-in-one package; everything that could be optional is included in the only web hosting package they offer. They never have to deal with questions about which package is best, complaints about being charged for the wrong package or complex invoice calculations. They've kept it simple. You get everything, if that isn't enough, go elsewhere.

silent contract extension

A business practice I really like is that they do not silently extend your contract and then charge you for it as so many companies do nowadays. They alert you six weeks before your contract is about to expire, and whether you take action to prolong your contract is your decision. I like a company that has that much faith in their own offering.

two sites

There are certain technicalities in moving a site, such as obtaining an EPP authorisation code to start the transfer of the domain name. You do need to pay attention, but you should not forget your visitors. To provide a seamless switch from one host to another, you need to have two identical sites the moment you click that final Yes, really, stop bothering me with all those confirmations, transfer the domain now button; one on the old location and one on the new location.

compare

I created the site in the new location as I created it in the old location, and then, for good measure, compared the two sites. I did this by downloading both sites back to separate directories on my desktop PC, where I used WinMerge to compare the two directories.

I did find differences, mostly files I had uploaded once but weren't part of the site, and files that had changed since I had last uploaded them to the old site. I did not need to bother to examine why; I perform spelling corrections and update links whenever I notice a mistake or a changed link, but do not always remember to upload the new file.

error pages

Antagonist provided five files in the web site's root directory; 400.shtml, 401.shtml, 403.shtml, 404.shtml and 500.shtml. SHTML is the file extension for Server-side HTML. These are error pages for HTTP errors, that the Apache web server will show whenever any of these errors happens. You can easily view 404.shtml: just enter some nonsense after the domain name to produce a 404 error.

These pages can be customised. I had a look at these pages and was surprised to notice that the mark-up of these pages was HTML 2.0. Valid HTML 2.0, but still, HTML version 2.0 seemed a bit too ancient to me, so I replaced them by slightly different, but still very basic pages marked up in valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

final check

I did check the site after the switch was done, and it is a good thing that I did so. I noticed that the icons I use on links were not showing. I soon figured out that Antagonist's Apache server did not see my icons directory because the icons directory was a virtual directory configured to point to Apache's own icons directory - which does not contain my icons. I solved this conflict by renaming my directory from icons to icon and updating the relevant style sheets.

advantages

With frame forwarding there were two hosts, two points of failure. Now, there is just one site, just one point of failure. With frame forwarding, clicking a link did not produce the same result as right-clicking a link. Now the site is hosted properly, clicking and right-clicking produce the same result. With eNom frame forwarding in place, the site appeared to be low quality HTML, and Marc Gueury's HTML Validator showed a red cross. Now that their frame is gone, the HTML Validator plug-in shows a green checkmark in appreciation of the valid XHTML. With frame forwarding in place, Internet Explorer 9 showed a blank page. Now, Internet Explorer 9 shows the web page.

a new problem

A new problem is that there are two sites now; a new one and an old one. Search engines do not like duplicated content, and I don't like visitors going to an old, stale copy of the site. But if I simply deleted the old site, I would break all the hard links, including all the links in the Google index… not a good idea.