Anyway

The moving went relatively painlessly, although I should really have waited until the DNS move had taken effect before killing my DYNDNS account, since that meant the site was out of commission for a little longer than absolutely necessary. Mind you, that was probably all of two hours, so not a big deal. Everything should now work again as before.

The quick version of the steps I took to move Anyway:

1. copy all the WordPress files and relevant plugin files to the new ISP site
2. clean up the MySQL database as much as possible to cut down on size; mostly deleting SpamKarma logs and old comment spam
3. deactivate all the plugins except the spam fighter
4. export the MySQL database to SQL statements (I use phpmyadmin for this)
5. import the MySQL database to the MySQL database set up on the new ISP
6. make sure the config.php file has the right configuration settings
7. notify the domain registrar of the new DNS settings
8. delete the relevant part of the dyndns account (that could have been done later)
9. wait
10. once host laurenwood.org shows the new DNS has taken effect, run the WordPress upgrade script
11. turn on the other plugins
12. run xenu to check for any broken links

My web site does seem faster now, and my web surfing is no longer competing with the spam comments for bandwidth, so I’d say it’s a win all around.