Switching Hosts

I’m pretty much fed up with my host. A few weeks ago they changed my static IP address after two years of leaving it alone (and two years of fantastic service.) Now, I’m not a complete idiot; I know that changing the IP address has nothing to do with anything. I just find it interesting that this marks the very spot that the bad service started. Since that time, my site has been down at least once per day, usually as a result of server overload (sounds like they consolidated two servers.) Today, however, I noticed that MySQL was showing no database. That’s right: my site doesn’t even exist anymore. Thankfully, I backup every two or three days, so I thought this would be a piece of cake to resolve. I first tried to simply upload the backup, but got an error message about the tables being wrong or something. That’s when I tried to open phpMyAdmin to have a look at said tables. I got an error that the password was wrong. Then I went back to MySQL and tried to manually create a new database and upload my database information to the new one. That didn’t work either, as MySQL wouldn’t create a new database. I thought, “Hmm, sounds like MySQL is down.?? I hopped over to the server status page and found a green light beside MySQL (using cPanel; it’s kind of dummy-proof.) “All is not lost?? I tell myself, trying desperately to avoid depression. I decided to write my host a friendly little letter.

This is where I find myself. It’s like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I want my site to stay up for my readers, but the site isn’t up consistently with this host. So, I decide to switch hosts, but that puts it down temporarily, too. What do I do? Just now I noticed that MySQL actually recognizes my database again (magic!) But this is bound to happen again. I’m not switching hosts just because of a month of bad luck; I’m a more loyal customer than that. That was the purpose of the letter I wrote them. I thought I would give them a chance to respond before moving forward. However, I think I know where all this is leading, hence this post. What hosts are you guys using, which ones would you recommend I steer clear of, which ones are WordPress-friendly, etcetera?

Thanks! (And thanks for listening; I really had to get that off my chest.)
Jonathan

PS: For the newbies: backup everything at least once a week, in case you find yourself in my shoes!