So as you our faithful readers now know, we have finished migrating our operations to a Virtual Server hosted by the folks at RackForce. As much as I'd like to say this was a piece of cake, it should be apparent that moving The Lazy Admin was for from easy. (We were working hard on this while the posts volume was down!)

Our first challenge was migrating our post data out of the MySQL database. Our ISP was providing very limited access to the MySQL database. In the end we had to use a web based Excel export tools. This allowed us to pull most of the data, (categories, posts, comments etc) out of the database.

Our next Challenge was merging that data into our SQL 2005 server on our Virtual Server. This was accomplishes using DTS or Data Transformation Services in SQL Server. This Wizard is a phenomenal tool. It essentially provides a mechanism to import any kind of structured data into SQL. Our DBA imported the Excel data into a temporary SQL table, then was able to manipulate the data into the proper Community Server Tables.

For the look and feel we decided that the theme needed to be light and easy on the eyes. The current theme is designed to load fast, and really let the posts take center stage.

We also decided to use Feed Burner to push our RSS feed. Basically this means that we can ramp up to a much higher number of readers before needing to upgrade the server. RSS hits are a significant amount of our daily traffic, and this way we can offload that burden to Feed Burner. Feed Burner also supports additional features for specific RSS readers and reader Services. 

The last part of getting the site ship shape was adding an SSL cert for encrypting the login and accounts pages. If you click on the Sign In pages you will notice that you are redirected to an HTTPS section of the website. This allows users to login secure. We realize that we aren't guarding much personal data, but we felt since we were all about best practices why not secure our login pages.

The TLA team has had a tremendous amount of help from the fine people at RackForce. They offer dynamic hosting solutions, and they are worth checking out for all sorts of projects. You can also check out the TLA gadgets to get regaler TLA update and to search the TLA Tips Library right from your Desktop. TLA RSS Gadget TLA Search Gadget