Paul Wood insisted on the new hostgator account - would not let us assume his - he had a shared hosting account - we were assigned a separate shared hosting account. I did negotiate with hostgator that our shared hosting account be on the same server as Paul's to avoid downtime.
So, to be clear. There was never a dedicated server. I did not transfer the site to a shared server. Paul and hostgator handled that part. Dyebat and I supplied contact and payment and ID for the new account. That is all.
I am happy to post all the correspondence with Paul, Dyebat, Dani, Kalua, and PT on this issue, if requested.
