By Tammy
Moving a WordPress website sounds simple when somebody explains it in a sales page.
First, the new host copies the website. Then you check the copy. Finally, you point the domain to its new home.
Copy. Check. Point.
That was the plan.
The chicken had other ideas.
I was moving two WordPress websites to DreamHost: Rejuva Sole, my new supportive-footwear website, and my husband Steve’s business site. I wanted the old sites left safely online while the new copies were prepared and tested. Once everything looked right, we would change the DNS and send visitors to the new server.
It was cautious. It was sensible. It was almost suspiciously adult of me.
Five days later, I was still trying to discover whether my websites had moved, were moving, had failed to move, or had wandered into the digital wilderness with a chicken carrying a suitcase.
Day One: Optimism Enters the Building
I signed up feeling hopeful.
There was a lot I liked about DreamHost’s interface. It felt cleaner and friendlier than some hosting panels I had used. I submitted the migration information and expected the usual waiting period.
I knew a website migration would not happen in five minutes. I was prepared to be patient.
This is important because, by Day Five, my patience would require a memorial service.
Day Two: The Great Silence
Nothing was clearly finished, but nothing clearly explained what was happening either.
Website owners need more than a spinning symbol and positive thoughts. We need plain answers:
- Has the migration started?
- Did it fail?
- Is someone working on it?
- Is there something I need to do?
- Is my website safe where it is?
When those answers are missing, every hour feels longer. You begin clicking around the dashboard as if the correct page might suddenly wave and yell, “Tammy! Over here! Your website is fine!”
No page waved.
The chicken did, but he could not be trusted.
Day Three: BlogVault Sends Its Love
Then came the email:
“The migration for your site failed.”
That was essentially it.
No useful explanation. No friendly translation. No little map showing where the website had fallen off the truck.
The DreamHost migration instructions and the plugin screen did not seem to agree. I was supposed to enter a migration key, but the screen in front of me showed only an email-address field. You cannot enter a key into a box that does not exist—although after three days of website hosting, you may consider drawing one on the screen with a crayon.
Support asked me to send a screenshot showing that the migration-key field was missing.
I sent it.
Then I waited again.
Day Four: Still Waiting, Now With Screenshots
By this point, the technical problem was no longer the only problem.
The bigger issue was uncertainty.
I am building Rejuva Sole on a limited budget. I do not have a technical department. I do not have a server engineer hiding in a closet. Most of the time, it is just me, my phone, my AI partner Scout, and a growing collection of screenshots.
Every lost day matters. It is a day I cannot spend writing footwear reviews, improving accessibility, fixing page layouts, or building something that might eventually support the business.
I did not need magic. I needed one person to look at the account, explain exactly what had happened, and tell me the next safe step.
Instead, the migration remained somewhere between “in progress,” “failed,” and “perhaps the chicken knows.”
The chicken declined to comment.
Day Five: Polite Tammy Leaves the Chat
On the fifth day, both websites were still not fully migrated.
That was when I sent DreamHost a firm message. I told them this had gone on long enough. They needed to resolve the migration immediately or refund my money so I could return to my previous host.
I also told them the truth: I liked a lot about DreamHost, and I had genuinely hoped this move would have a positive ending. But the way a company treats a brand-new customer matters. If getting help with the initial migration took five days, what would happen later if my live website had a serious problem?
That is not an unreasonable question. Hosting is not just server space. It is trust.
When your business lives on a website, you need to know someone will answer when the website starts smoking—or when a chicken is seen running away with the DNS records.
Then Came the DNS
Eventually, the problem led us back to the domain settings at the old host.
DNS is the internet’s address book. Changing it tells visitors where a website now lives. The safe plan is normally to make sure the new copy is ready, inspect it carefully, and only then update that address.
You do not forward your mail to a new house before confirming the house exists.
But by Day Five, we were inside Hostinger, carefully working through the DNS change one step at a time. I was doing it from my phone, stopping after every screen to make sure I had not accidentally redirected Rejuva Sole to a chicken coop in Nebraska.
The change was finally submitted. Then came propagation—the special part of website ownership where you make an important change and the internet responds, “Thank you. I may acknowledge that sometime within the next 48 hours.”
So we waited again.
What This Mess Taught Me
I am not a web developer, but repeated website disasters have given me an education I never requested.
Here is what I learned from this one:
- Never cancel the old hosting account before the new website is working. The old live copy is your safety net.
- Keep a fresh backup. Hope is lovely, but hope is not a backup file.
- Take screenshots of every strange screen and every error. Support may ask for them, and your memory will blur after the third round of instructions.
- Ask whether the website has actually been copied—not merely whether a migration ticket exists. Those are very different things.
- Do not change DNS blindly. Confirm what has been migrated, where it lives, and what will happen when the domain points there.
- A clear answer is part of the service. Customers should not need to learn a new technical language just to discover whether their website moved.
- Keep your sense of humor nearby. It cannot repair a migration, but it can keep you from throwing your phone into the yard.
The Verdict—For Now
I am not writing this to say DreamHost is terrible. I am writing it because this was my real experience.
I still like parts of the DreamHost interface. I still hope the company turns this awful beginning into a good long-term relationship. One bad migration does not tell the whole story—but five days without a complete, clearly explained resolution is not a small hiccup either.
A migration is not successful because a request was submitted or a support ticket exists. It is successful when the website is copied, tested, secure, reachable, and the owner can finally breathe again.
At the time of writing, the DNS change has been made and I am waiting for the internet to finish passing the message around. I will update this story when I know whether Rejuva Sole has landed safely in its new home.
Until then, the chicken remains under investigation.
He knows what he did.
This post describes my personal experience. It is not sponsored, and no hosting company paid for or approved it.
