On July 16, 2008, we moved the site to a new provider. We were at the upper limit of the database capabilities of the old provider, and I was getting quite concerned. It isn't a trivial exercise to move a database as large as this one, particularly one that has so much code (written by a very bad programmer). 

 Another concern was the cost. As I looked at sites that had the requirements I wanted, I became aware that the costs were an order of magnitude higher than I had been paying. Since I didn't want to have to go to the overt type of advertising that many sites have, this was a significant issue. 

Fortunately I found a provider that met my requirements, and the cost is very much in line with what I was previously paying. They have excellent technical support, and I am able to add in new features, like this blog engine, and start to address some of the things that Grandson Michael has been bugging me about for the past year. Embarassed

The switchover was largely painless; I got up at 3:00 and figured on 4 hours to convert it. It turned out that I was back in bed by 4:30! We only had one "gotcha". Marika found it and let me know and I was able to fix it pretty quickly. A lot of thanks goes to Grandson Michael who went above and beyond the call of duty testing the new site before it went live.

We are now in a position to support database growth for the next few years, and also enjoy some improvement in the overall performance, particularly for database searches.

So far I haven’t heard any complaints on the speed of the site. Anyone that wants to comment can do so below this post.

If anyone is interested in more information about the provider I chose, please let me know. Any referrals I can provide generates a bit of revenue that helps defray the cost of hosting this site.