In order to improve the quality of your hosting services at Superb, we have begun to migrate older shared hosting accounts to our new GridIron Platform (GIP). For a more comprehensive overview of the benefits of GridIron, please read this article. A complete breakdown of the migration path and a detailed feature list comparison can be found here.
Due to the technological advancements we’ve built into GIP, there are some differences compared to our older shared hosting platforms. Some things are done differently, and some older technologies have been removed due to obsolescence. We have listed the changes and differences that you’re likely to encounter in this article. Please READ THIS ARTICLE FULLY before contacting support about any migration related issues, as the issue you’re experiencing is likely covered here already (if not, let us know so that we can add it!).
When will my account be migrated?
We will be performing migrations in batches to ensure that we can closely monitor the process. Unfortunately, we cannot give you a specific time as to when your site will be migrated during the day indicated in the migration announcement ticket/e-mail. The specific time that your site will be migrated is dependent on where within the batch you fall, how many accounts are queued before you, and how much data they have to be transferred. However, once your migration has completed, you will receive an update to your myCP ticket informing you that the migration has finished. Once you receive that notice, please check your website and account to make sure everything is running normally.
Why doesn’t my FTP Server work? What is my FTP Server?
GridIron uses a modern grid computing architecture, so some settings may not be the same as what you are traditionally used to. For example, you do not use www.yourdomain.com as the FTP server. For your FTP Server Name, as well as other server settings, please click on “View Account Details” in myCP.
Server Names
The server names you use to perform certain functions, such as FTP, SSH, or MySQL, will change when you are migrated to GIP. You will need to update any saved settings in any related clients you use with the new server names. You can find your new server names by clicking “View Account Details” in myCP.
There are NO changes to the shared e-mail platform associated with this move. Your e-mail service is completely separate from the web hosting migration and will be unaffected, so if you use a POP3/IMAP mail client you will not need to make any adjustments.
Form Creator/WebEasy
Contact forms created using Form Creator are unfortunately no longer supported after the GIP migration. If your website uses these types of forms, you will need to replace them with a new contact form script. One option is to use our “FormMail with CAPTCHA” form processor. To learn how to use “FormMail with CAPTCHA,” please read this article. If you use Form Creator forms, you can (and should) replace them in advance of the GIP migration.
FrontPage Extensions
FrontPage Extensions has been discontinued by Microsoft. Because of this, FrontPage Extensions will not be available on the GIP platform as Microsoft will not provide support or patch any security vulnerabilities that may arise. You can still use FrontPage (the program) to build and update your website, with some caveats. Please read this article for more information about FrontPage and FrontPage Extensions.
File Ownership and Permissions
All CGI scripts on the GIP platform, including PHP and Perl, must now run through suexec for security and stability reasons. This means that they will run under your user account, so it is no longer necessary to have files and directories with world-writeable (777 or 666) permissions, or to have them owned by the “www” user. All of your files should be accessible to these web scripts while using more secure permissions (755, 711, or 644).
The absolute file system paths will change when your account is migrated to the GIP platform. For example, on the SH platform, your user’s directory may have been located at “/home/shb2_999”. On GIP, this path would become “/home/1/s/sh/shb2_999” (yours will similarly change depending on your account’s username). Scripts will sometimes rely on these file system paths to be configured properly. We will attempt to automatically update any file system paths with the new path on all files during migration, but there may be some instances where we are not able to detect and update them. Please open a trouble ticket in myCP if you need assistance in updating the file paths once your migration is complete.
MySQL Server
If you use MySQL Server, the server name will change after migrating to the GIP platform. Although we will attempt to automatically update any files that have the old MySQL server name with the new server name during migration, we may not be able to catch all instances. You can find out what your new MySQL Server name is by clicking on “View Account Details” in myCP.
Reseller FTP
Reseller FTP is now available as Secondary FTP Users for GridPRO and GridMAX plans. Unfortunately, the Reseller FTP users could not be converted over automatically from the old hosting platform to GridIron, so you will need to recreate them. On the upside, the feature is included free with the plans now, instead of being an additional charge. Please read this article for instructions on how to create Secondary FTP Users.
Custom DNS Servers
If your domain hosting isn’t using our name servers (i.e. ns1.superb.net, ns2.superb.net, etc.), then you will need to manually change your DNS records to point to your new IP address. Unfortunately, we don’t know what your new IP address will be ahead of time. However, once the server move has been completed, you can find your new IP address by logging into myCP and clicking on “View Account Details”.
PHP Changes
- General Changes
On the GIP platform, PHP is now running as a FastCGI under suexec, instead of as an Apache module. This not only makes it faster, but it also improves the security (see “File Ownership and Permissions“)
- .htaccess and PHP custom configuration
You can still use “php_” configuration directives in .htaccess files on GIP. Please read this article for more information on how to make custom configuration changes to PHP.
- File System Paths
PHP applications often make use of absolute file system paths, which will change on GIP. See “File System Paths” for more information.
- PHP inside HTML files
Some customers may have previously used PHP inside HTML files by using something like the following in .htaccess:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html
Due to PHP running as FastCGI, you must do this in a different way now. Please read this article for instructions on how to execute PHP code inside HTML files.
