The Next Step

        The Old Newark web site was down on February 27 & 28.  This was due to going over the allotted bandwidth for that month.  The bandwidth allotment that I have contracted for is 5 gigs per month.  With the success of the web site, we have now surpassed that figure.  This of course leads to problems which I now have to solve.  Will I decide what to do to remedy this, I will get an extra gig from my web host for the month of March (I see we are well on our way to needing it) .

        Before I explain the possibilities for the future, I'd like to discuss how we arrived here.  The web site began in March 1988 as Virtual Newark NJ.  At that time I housed the site on the Rootsweb (not for profit) servers for free.  I did this due to the fact that I belonged to the USGenWeb (not for profit) which worked closely with Rootsweb helping people discover their roots.  I was the Essex County NJ County Coordinator and also the New Jersey State Coordinator.  

        In the beginning of 2000, Rootsweb was sold to genealogy giant, Ancestry.com.  This move made me very nervous, having all my work housed on a site that was run by a for profit company that could have absorbed my work with a change of their rules.  Needless to say, the site was moved from the Rootsweb servers in July 2000 to a company called Kingswood, based in Texas.  I had many problems with their hosting abilities.  Kingswood was sold to Burstnet in 2001 and I hoped my problems would end.  They didn't and it became so bad that when their was a problem I had to contact their tech support and tell them, not only the problem, but how to solve it on their end.  I learned by having the previous tech support explain to me what they were doing.

        The final straw with Burstnet came when they told me they couldn't renew my domain name because they weren't contracted with the same domain name registrar as Kingswood was.  This led to a web site down time in July of 2002.  I immediately scrambled to become a domain name registrar myself and to also look for a new web site host.  Both came about in a week.  I was able to get the Virtual Newark NJ web site back up and running plus I found a new home for the site and NoMonthlyFees.com.  

        After working feverishly on the site, by the end of July 2002, Virtual Newark NJ became the new and improved web site, Old Newark.  Everything has worked great since then until now.  Bandwidth was never a problem, only the size of the storage.  Since NoMonthlyFees.com gave me 600MBs I figured I'd be safe.  Unfortunately, I've reached only 300MBs of storage for the site but I've exceeded the bandwidth allotment.   I contacted NoMonthlyFees.com to solve the problem but they have told me that they do not offer extra bandwidth on a yearly basis, only monthly (it is expensive and not feasible to do it that way).  So now what to do?

        I believe that the only choice is to again find a new web site host, which I've been doing the past few days.  This will mean that when I make the move the site will be down for about 4 days.  Other problems will be how, and if, I can move the current Guestbook, Discussion Group and Mailing List.  If the Guestbook can't be moved in its entirety, then I will have to copy it page by page.  The Discussion Group may have to be started again.  For the Mailing List, I will probably have to manually resubscribe everyone, which would be no problem to me.  The only drawback and I would have to assign everyone a new password and then have them change it when I subscribe them.

        Currently, the best web site host that I have seen offers 1 gig of storage space & 20 gigs of bandwidth for $240 per year.  The money is not the problem at this time, it's the storage space and bandwidth.

        I would like some feedback on our problem from everyone who reads this.  Maybe you have a suggestion on a different approach or you know a web host that offers more bandwidth at a comparable price.  Please use the link below for your feedback.

3/9/2003

I have been researching web hosts for the past week and I have narrowed the possibilities down to a few.  Hopefully I will have one chosen in a few days and then it will take me a few more to work out the logistics of moving certain parts of the web site.  After that we will start the move.

3/10/2003

Back to the drawing board.  I narrowed the choice down to two hosting companies and both are no longer on the Internet.  I don't know what happened to them.  I am currently reviewing another 200 hosting companies.

3/12/2003

Things are looking good.  The first part (easy part) of the transfer has been successfully completed.   I've narrowed the choices for the new hosting company down to one and I will be asking them questions over the next few days.  If all goes well I will begin the site transfer next Monday, March 17th.  When this occurs the site will be down for 3 to 4 days.  After that, the site will be at its new home.

3/13/2003

Important Announcement!!

We're moving!!.  I've settled on a web host today.  We spoke on the phone and discussed the move.  Everything should be moved intact with no loss of data.  The move will take place sometime over the next few days.  This means that the site will be down for 2-3 days.   The web site should be back to normal by Tuesday, March 18th.

Thank You,

Glenn G. Geisheimer
Old Newark Webmaster