I MOVED MY ENTIRE SITE TO A NEW SERVER

So, most of you probably won't have to deal with this.... but, since I am running my own video server... and since I have 35+ students downloading these videos simultaneously, during class time, there were issues with my previous server.

I was on what is called a "shared server"... which means that I share bandwidth with who-knows-how-many other web page clients. During peak internet hours there just was not enough bandwidth to handle the load.... My videos would freeze and that is not good in the format that I am using (students have to reload the entire lesson if a video freezes and fails to load.)

So I am going with the same company (www.fatcow.com) but am paying for a VPS server. Now I basically get 1/4th of a whole server to myself, with 1 TB (yes, 1 terabyte!) of bandwidth for www.colbysworld.net.

The downside: I have entered a whole new universe of webpage hosting. They have given me WAY too much control over the server and things have gotten way too complicated. Luckily they have GREAT customer support and they have guided me through the rough spots. After a couple days of FREAKING OUT and getting very lost and upset.... Everything is BACK ONLINE on the new server! Yes!

On Friday I took ONE CLASS into the computer lab (5th period) and the videos all downloaded fine. (That was not really peak internet hours though.)

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I am going to take my other for classes into the computer lab during 1st through 4th period to see if my move over to the new server was worth it.

I will post a brief update RIGHT HERE after tomorrow. Let's see what happens... (keeping fingers crossed for now.)

UPDATE: The new server worked great! Not a single student (out of 130 students) had a frozen or locked up video or had to "refresh" and start the lesson over today, and this was 1st through 4th period during some peak Internet traffic hours.

Time to set up new server: (previous two hours logged in plus at least another 8 hours