Hi,
In response to Graham – yes! To generate and install the Let’s Encrypt certificate was just a matter of clicking the provided buttons in Siteground’s cPanel. Could not have been easier.
Moving web host can be a little trickier.
I moved three sites to Siteground from iNeed (one Freeway and two Sparkle). Siteground included the moving of one site in its hosting deal so I selected the larger Freeway site. My Sparkle sites are small so I just needed to update the publish details in Sparkle. I could have re-published the Freeway site to the new host just as easily.
Moving mail accounts was just a question of dragging and dropping in Mac Mail.
Do bear in mind that when switching host it can take more than 24 hours for the new DNS records to propagate so be patient. To monitor the DNS propagation I put holding pages on the old host.
After 36 hours I encountered one small problem in that I was still being served one site from the old host. It turned out local DNS caching was causing a problem. I had OpenDNS servers listed in System Preferences , Network. I deleted these and everything ran fine. (Note: flushing the MacOS DNS cache does not always work and I could not be bothered to generate .htaccess redirects for the short period needed!)
Robert – any one charging more than about $10 for a certificate is price gouging! Let’s Encrypt certificates are free. Many UK companies are charging 50 GBP or more and this is bordering on the scandalous. As Duncan says, Let’s Encrypt generates absolutely proper SSL certificates for free.
I’ve got three years hosting with Siteground, with certificates, for only slightly more than the cost of three certificates for one year from other sources. Alternatively, if you don’t mind your servers being in the USA, then Inmotion offers an even better deal.
Now to throw another stick in the fire. Many hosting companies will try and charge you more for hosting your site on SSDs because they will serve your site faster. Really? An HDD in a decent server farm configuration should be capable of delivering at least 100 megabytes a second. Ofcom gives the average UK broadband speed at around 32 megabits a second – the Internet is still way slower than an HDD!
Don’t be conned – work out what you need from a hosting company, set a budget, check reliable reviews and then shop around.
Steve
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