Brand new server, brand new blog…
It has been just over a week and SuperTeacherTools has just about achieved normality..or as close as possible at any rate. There are still a few resources floating in from the old server, which should be complete in the next day or so.
In case you haven’t been following the Facebook and Twitter feeds, SuperTeacherTools moved to a dedicated server last week. Since the inception of the site, it has lived on one type of shared server or another, ranging from bottom of the barrel bargain hosting in the beginning to the most advanced grid hosting money could buy as the site became more widely used.
If you aren’t familiar with shared hosting, it essentially means that the computer that stores all of the resources on SuperTeacherTools is also responsible for storing potentially hundreds of other sites. So long as no one site is using a huge amount of resources or drawing huge numbers of hits at the same time, everything works fine and all sites live happily in their own unit of the server. With thousands of games and other tools being created and used every week on the site, it has now outgrown the ability of a shared server to properly accommodate the needs of the users. Think of it like an apartment building: fine for one person, a couple, or even a smallish family under normal circumstances, not really appropriate for a family of 50.
In that example, SuperTeacherTools was a family of about 5 million. As it turned out, there were just shy of 5 million files stored on the shared server, representing the collected games, teacher websites, ebooks, and other creations of users around the world. In order to get these resources from the old server to the new, they were all downloaded and transferred to the new server before the switch was made. All things considered, the move went remarkably well and only resulted in a few restless nights for me. 
Now that the site is operating on its own dedicated server, what can you expect to change as far as your experience on the site? Hopefully, very little initially. You might find faster load times (I hope) and quicker downloads for site resources. Most of the utility in moving to the new server is the comfort in knowing that the site will be more reliable for my users.
Thanks to everyone for their patience during the transition. I am proud of the tools on the site so far and look forward to bringing you more in the near future. Stay tuned!