Today is the second day without power in Tampa Bay from Hurricane Milton. I have been watching the Florida Outage map and I calculated these power companies to be restoring power at a rate of 17-20000 restores per hour. That is restoring power at a pretty good clip and I am grateful. There are droves of things that are very bad, to have people working in the field, around the clock that are completely dedicated to the restoration of power for those that have none due to Hurricane Milton is so awesome! Sure, I depend on power for so much, until you have no power at all you take it for granted all the time. I try to flick a light on all the time and I am reminded that I have no power. Then there is the temperature which sux but ai think about this. Irma made landfall in early September in 2017 and September is a very hot month in Florida. Hurricane Ian struck in late September of 2022 and I noticed at night it was like 5 degrees cooler than it was with Hurricane Irma. Then Hurricane Milton made landfall on October 9th and it is like a full 10 degrees or so cooler than it was with Irma. I remember I hunkered down for Irma at my younger brothers house and the power was already out there when I arrived at 10 AM. Irma didn’t come until that night and there was no power. So I wasn’t going to die, but it was miserably hot! I rinsed off the house today and there was insulation pretty much all over it. This is what I learned from Hurricane Milton. When a big storm hits in Florida, want to be in a building that was built (or like in my case manufactured) after 2004 because the codes were upgraded that year because of Hurricane Andrew. Also, you want to spend your money on 1 time cost for things like hurricane shutters, doors, windows, fireproofing, and you do not under any circumstances want to live near a body of water. Humans are drawn to water they love to live on or near water. It is well known that living near water is very expensive, and causes some pretty big problems. I just do not know why anyone does that. I read a book once by Joel Salitan and in ot he talked about his dream home. That dream home was super awesome! He talked about it being built into a mountain because mountains help with temperature control and all kinds of practical things. His dream home became my dream home pretty quick. I really like Joel a lot. I watch him and read his stuff all the time.
Which web hosting provider is the best?
- Namecheap.com
- Bluehost.com
- Hostgator.com
I have and and have had accounts at various hosting providers and through my own personal experience with the various hosting providers, I have found the best hosting provider to be www.namecheap.com. I have an associate degree in network engineering, passed and held multiple Microsoft and Cisco certifications and have had many technical positions throughout my life and right now I am in my mid 40’s. I have scoured the internet and have had hosting packages with various companies to host various websites and this is what I have found. Around 6/20/2024 my hosting package at Bluehost was going to expire. I purchased and built this website on my Host Gator account using their baby package. When that account was about to expire, I spoke with a member of their tech team via chat and was told that I could not transfer this domain to another Host Gator account. I though this to be odd because I purchased this domain on their platform and have it there right now. They explained to me it was not possible. I wanted to keep this domain so I searched around for another provider. I checked on YouTube and I kept seeing videos that “Bluehost” was the best. I contacted a member of their support team via chat and was told in fact they do support .blog domains on their platform. So after some thinking about it, I transferred this domain to Bluehost (Host Gator and Bluehost are under the same ownership) and I stayed with them for a couple of years. Recently, my hosting package with them was going to expire, and I have an account with Namecheap now, I really like them a lot.
Transfer into Namecheap
I asked a member of the Namecheap support team if they support the transfer in and hosting of .blog domains, and they said that they do. I really like the folks at Name Cheap too. Since 04/09/2024 I have been without any income. Earlier this year, one of my other Bluehost domains
came due and when I renewed it via name cheap it was like $10.66 or something. So I renewed it with them. Then when this domain name became due, I though it was going to be the same price through Namecheap, I checked with them, and they told me it was going to cost me
over $24.00 to renew because it was a .blog extension. So I was like fine, and I paid for the renewal. I renewed the domain at name cheap but the DNS, Email, Content, and blog posts
were still hosted at Bluehost. Then on 06/17/2024, Bluehost detected that the domain had expired and the site went down. I had like 5 email addresses on the Bluehost domain and they too went down. So I recreated the emails on NameCheap through their cPanel and asked their support staff through chat what I needed to do to transfer that content into Namecheap. So they advised me that their domain concierge team could assist with that transfer. So I asked them if there was a charge for that, as with pretty much everything, and they advised there was no charge for their help. So I chatted with them and they told me I had to get a full backup from the cPanel of my old hosting provider and then upload to Namecheap. It takes forever to get it from my old host (It needs to be generated) to my computer and then to upload that file to NameCheap and then they would do the restore. I did that but when I got the file (it was a 7.2 GB tar file package), I amended the domain name to it for clarification. I then uploaded it to name cheap. They created a ticket and continued to email me status updates as they progressed.
Failed to Restore
I went to sleep and I woke up the next day and they told me in an email that the restore failed. They told me that they tried several things with the file I uploaded them but it had failed each time. They encouraged me to try again but this time DO NOT change the file name in any way. So I did exactly as they instructed. I generated a new tar file pulled it down to my PC and then pushed it up to Namecheap. I went to sleep again. Before I was able to sleep, I just kept thinking of what I was going to have to do to rebuild this site. I knew what I was going to have to do but it was going to be a P.I.T.A.
Transfer success
I woke up the next day, and before I even checked my email, I went to this domain on my cell phone, and it came right up, exactly how it was before. I was elated. Then I checked my email and I saw that the restore was a success! So I logged in to my Bluehost account and did the exact same thing with www.justawesomeshots.com and it also was a success. Namecheap is awesome, their support is also awesome and there is never a charge for anything, pretty much. The names of their staff seem to be of Middle Eastern descent but I do not care, they are always very responsive, and super knowledgeable too. Their spelling is always very good too and their is a chat button on every page and there is an audible alert right before their response and you only get that alert from a human response, unlike Blue Host who spams you to death with their Audible alerts from their bots. I need to speak with a human, not a bot. Anyway, Namecheap is awesome for numerous reasons. They give free domain privacy to all the users on their platform, which is awesome because without that service you will get spammed to death when you purchase a domain without privacy, Bluehost and Host gator charge for that service, and they may discount their hosting packages but they never ever discount the domain privacy fee. Namecheap also gives you a free SSL certificate for the first year for free, which is very much needed. Needless to say, I am staying with Namecheap.
In conclusion:
Namecheap is the absolute best hosting provider I have ever had. Their staff is always friendly and knowledgeable and sometimes they have to deliver bad news. I appreciate that to, because I have learned that just because I don’t like the information that is delivered to me that does not make it incorrect. Namecheap is always very prompt with either type of news and the Namecheap provides the absolute best hosting service that have ever had the pleasure of being with. They provide tremendous value always. I am not sure where they get their support staff from but they are there around the clock and offer the best help that I have ever seen.