I used artificial intelligence in troubleshooting migration issues with my website. Here’s how I did it with the help of two AI chatbots.
Table of Contents
Why I Decided to Have an Upgrade
I had been contemplating a long time on whether to have a dedicated server for my blog of 11 years—this blog. I finally decided right after Christmas day or the 26th of December 2023.
Migrating my website to another hosting provider would help it gain more speed and comply with PageSpeed Insights recommendations on performance, among others. The blog’s core web vitals have always shown “failed” and I keep on wondering how to improve on it. One of the recommendations is to upgrade the server—the reason for this migration.
I took the PageSpeed insights feedback as a challenge by finding the best configuration there is to enable the blog to comply with all of the recommendations. It seemed that I already maximized the optimizations possible for WordPress in a shared hosting account in Bluehost. It’s time to find a dedicated server to host the website and get all the juice it can get from a fast web hosting service.
After several searches, I finally settled on Hostinger, both for price and good reviews. I would have settled for a Bluehost account at a higher priced Virtual private server or VPS, a virtual machine that has a dedicated server space with a reserved number of resources. It offers greater control and customization than shared hosting.
But something fishy happened. I narrate briefly what transpired in the next section.
The Fishy New Website on My Bluehost Account
Something happened in Bluehost that changed my mind. While availing of support services for a problem I encountered on the website and telling the representative of my intended upgrade, my credit card didn’t work for some reason. Thus, I was not able to avail of the upgrade.
I checked my credit card balance if I didn’t have enough balance to pay for the upgrade. But there are funds still enough to cover the cost.
After reviewing my account in the cPanel once again in Bluehost, I noticed that a domain was created on my account! I noticed a new website sprung up out of nowhere, using my credit card details! I was charged $65 without my knowledge.
The incident is a blatant attempt to rob me off my funds. If I had not been alert and discerning enough to see the issue then it would have remained unnoticed. I was alarmed by the level of security applied by the company to avoid things like this from happening.
Anyhow, I complained to Bluehost about this when I got support for another technical issue. Long story short, I abandoned the idea of having my blog hosted in Bluehost because of the incident. The new guy I talked to remove the new website created using my credit card. A notification showed that my payment was reversed.
I suspect that the Bluehost representative who helped me with payment for the upgrade of the website had something to do with it. Perhaps that’s the reason why I can’t upgrade. If it’s not that guy, then Bluehost has a BIG problem with the security of their system.
I have nothing against Bluehost, but because of this incident, I dismissed the idea of upgrading my hosting account with them. I felt that my transactions online are not secure.
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Assistance in Setting Up the VPS Account
Now, back to the helpful artificial intelligence or AI chatbots that helped me migrate my website to a dedicated virtual private server.
The Costly Blunder
It must be a blunder on my part of not reading well the features of the VPS server I chose in Hostinger. It’s an UNMANAGED server! And I didn’t understand what it means until I asked the Hostinger representative to help me set up and migrate my website to the new hosting account.
The representative clarified that the hosting account I’ve chosen does not have free support and migration service. It is assumed that I chose it because I’m already knowledgeable of web servers and how they work.
Oh my.
Now, what I have in front of me is the Ubuntu Linux terminal. I have been using Linux for at least six years but intermittently in recent years because many of the apps I use require a windows operating system.
Now, what? I muttered to myself. I have to figure out how to install a WordPress website on a VPS account. I have no prior experience to help me out. I’m on my own. But I was in a hurry to bring my website back online. I had to do it quick.
So, what I did is to study the hPanel provided by Hostinger. The Ubuntu terminal available to me appears to be clunky because it is slow to respond and does not look good in my windows desktop computer.
I looked for other options to get to the terminal and see which operating system I can install on my VPS hosting account. I settled on Alma Linux with cPanel thinking I could do the installing in the cPanel just like what I do in Bluehost and GoDaddy, my first and second hosting providers.
Availing the Alma Linux with cPanel operating system comes at a cost, even higher than the VPS hosting itself. But I got a large discount for the first two years of VPS hosting so I proceeded.
I bit the bullet hoping to do things easier than just the plain terminal available to me on an Ubuntu server. It’s a relief that I was able to install cPanel with Alma Linux as my server’s operating system.
And there’s the imposing cPanel with all its features. I’m simply appalled by all those geeky terms I encountered. I thought it would look just like the cPanel of Bluehost or GoDaddy. But there’s a whole lot more.
Indeed, there’s a lot of opportunity for customization. But I’m lost. What should I do?
CoPilot with Bing Chat to the Rescue
Luckily, there’s CoPilot with Bing Chat available to help me out. Plus, I have that inner ability to understand things new to me by using plain common sense and making clear my objectives.
I posed questions in my mind on what to do next. And that next objective would be to be able to install a WordPress website. I’d better ignore the other menus in WHM cPanel for later use. Once I am able to create a WordPress website, then I can migrate my Updraft Plus backup.
I asked CoPilot with Bing chatbot about the steps on how to do it. And it did give me some tips to get started. But not before I familiarized myself first with virtually all of the menus in cPanel.
I eventually found WordPress Toolkit which initially did not work as I expected. But as I played with it for a while, I finally was able to understand how it works, i.e., with chatbot assistance.
Hostinger AI
Not all of my questions related to cPanel was answered by BingChat. However, I remembered that Hostinger has a chatbot, too that I thought would be handy.
I opened Hostinger’s AI assistant and sought help on what to do next after I have successfully installed WordPress using the WordPress Toolkit. It did answer my questions in a straightforward manner.
Hostinger’s AI “knows” more of the technical solutions than CoPilot with Bing Chat. Of course, it’s expected because the AI is designed to answer queries about Hostinger products.
Hitches During WordPress Migration
DNS Propagation
It would have been easy to migrate my website, but the Domain Name Servers or DNS propagation took time. It took roughly 48 to 72 hours for my website’s DNS to propagate. And I have lost web traffic in the process.
I didn’t expect this to happen because I created a staging site using WordPress Toolkit. But I had blunders here and there that kept my blog from displaying as it should.
htaccess Issue
One of the most exasperating things I did which caused “Origin Unreachable” notice to return is my failure to add a period before htaccess. There’s a big difference between plain “htaccess” and “.htaccess” with a period. It took me a while to figure it out.
The period from December 26 to January 1 had been a bit traumatic and crucial. I almost gave up midway. I always see the “Origin Unreachable” notice because of that simple mistake on the htaccess file.
But I have to persist because I already spent money for greater possibilities offered by an unmanaged website. I have to do optimizations on my own.
Multiple Hosting Provider
I have to deal with a more complicated matter than just simple migration because my blog’s domain name is registered and hosted in GoDaddy, all the files I’ve accumulated in my blog are in Bluehost. And now I’m transferring everything to Hostinger. I’m dealing with three hosting providers plus Ezoic, the ad server.
These are the things I did to document the migration process:
- Changed the nameservers in Bluehost to point to my Hostinger account,
- Changed the DNS name in GoDaddy to course my site through Ezoic that serves ads in my blog’s pages,
- Changed the DNS Zone values in Ezoic to match the DNS values in Hostinger,
- Whitelist Internet Protocol (IP) addresses provided by Ezoic in Hostinger,
- Attempted to run Nginx as proxy to Apache to enhance further the speed of the website but it persistently refused to work properly. I gave up.
With constant interaction between me and Hostinger’s AI, I finally fixed everything by January 1st. It’s just in time to start a newly migrated blog in a dedicated VPS hosting account.
It’s amazing how AI chatbots have helped me who knows very little about low level coding. With the right questions, the solution is just right there. Otherwise, it took me more time to figure out what needs to be done.
Thus, AI chatbots are a time-saving resource that we must put to good use. Artificial intelligence is meant to serve human needs and should be harnessed to improve productivity.
