The other night I decided to move my blog ElectricBandits from a .co.uk domain extension to a .com. Although the blog is written from a UK point of view I think that long term the .com domain is better for branding and promotion. I have changed the domain of one of my sites a few times in the past, most notably last year when I changed BloggingTips from a .org to a .com. It’s a very easy process, all you need to do is change the domain extension of the site in your server’s WHM and then make sure the database and mod rewrite settings are ok.
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This easy process turned into a not so easy process because I decided to do this 2 nights ago at 3am when I was half asleep. So what caused this problem? Well, I sometimes snap up similar variations of sites I run. For ElectricBandits I have ElectricBandits.com, ElectricBandits.co.uk,ElectricBandit.com & ElectricBandit.co.uk. When I checked to see if ElectricBandits.com was pointing to my server I looked at ElectricBandit.com (ie. without the S) and so didn’t update the correct domain. Granted, it’s an easy mistake to make but one which is more likely to happen late at night when you’ve got one eye open!
Due to this and a problem with a redirect the blog was down for about 2 days. It just goes to show how much working when you are tired can backfire on you!!!
Thankfully, my hosting company WiredTree came to the rescue and everything was fixed once the dns changed over.
Remember kids, get a good nights sleep!
