Some big news hit recently about Automattic’s investment in WP Engine, a fully managed WordPress-specific hosting provider. So often, we’re caught up between just the blogging service WordPress.com or installing WordPress on any hosting provider, that it’s easy to forget that there are hosting providers like WP Engine and Page.ly which combine the best of both worlds.
This raises an interesting question for today. How do you host your WordPress blog? Do you use a straight blogging service like WordPress.com, a WordPress-specific managed hosting provider like WP Engine, did you install WordPress yourself on a general hosting provider, or do you manage your own server?
I host my 5 WordPress installs across two shared hosting accounts. Each takes just around 3,000-5,000 daily unique visits so my humble hosting account doesn’t really have a problem with it.
I’m using Eleven2 to host my WordPress installs. DB Cache Reloaded Fix + Quick Cache + CloudFlare (in some instances) are really helping out.
I have currently my websites on fatcow shared hosting and all website’s are on wordpress cms and also i’m use cloudflare (amazing service for better site performance) with W3 Cache plugin.
CloudFlare is cool. Remember they don’t cache your dynamic content, which is the slowest part of serving WordPress.
But your statics should go faster and the security stuff is nice.
The problem that I have with CloudFlare is that it very often shows “website offline” across some of my WordPress blogs, while for other installs it does great.
I’m experiencing the same problem with CloudFlare. They say it is possible that the hosting provider is blocking some of Cloudflare’s IP addresses and therefore showing the “website offline” message so often. A second cause of this could be the use of Ajax on the system. Still checking these things out.
I have multiple sites. I have my main one – ConventionScene.com at WP Engine. For the others, a general hosting provider has been sufficient.
WPEngine is way overpriced. If you take the time to understand how to set up the performance add-ons at any decent VPS (like MediaTemple DV) you’ll be fine and can install as many WP installations as you want under one account.
That is certainly true until you get a large load of traffic.
I used to run my blog on a $20/mo linode, and I definitely know what I’m doing (having invented the current architecture at WP Engine!).
I was fine until I got on HackerNews home page for a day, then it would always crash. I found some other folks who had the same problem, and they became our first few customers and never had the problem again.
But I agree that for lots of sites, especially if you won’t get a particularly large load of traffic, you certainly don’t need to spend $50/mo if you know some IT and can configure things well and don’t mind patching core as soon as the patches come out.
My “main” site is a static website, with 4 WP sites added on, so I went with a VPS with Linode. It’s interesting as I’m not a real server admin, but it does give unmatched flexibility.
I have a multi-domain account with my supplier which does for me. I can host as many installs (& SQL databases) as I can fit in, and it’s decently priced, which means I can charge my clients a bare minimum for the hosting; they buy their domain, I host it and charge for the work I do to actually build their (low-traffic) sites.
I did toy with moving to a MU install and migrating everything into it (would make my life a lot easier when it comes to updating!) but I never got the hang of it. Don’t think I’ll be the next page.ly or WP Engine on the block!
You know, I prefer to host my blog on real hosting, because on free hosting like wordpress.com you have a lot of restrictions.
Angela,
Can you elaborate on the restrictions at wordpress.com?
Full details on that can be found at http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
I installed WordPress myself on a general hosting provider. (Three installs, actually — two on a reseller account, one on a shared hosting account.)
I host seven WordPress websites on a VPS server at HostIcan. I can set up as many accounts, databases and WordPress installs as I need. I like using VPS for the flexibility and control
I have a dozen WP installs spread over two low-end shared hosting accounts. I was really excited when I heard the announcement of WP engine, but the single-install price is just ludicrous. Looks like I’ll be staying on my el-cheapo hosting for some time too come.
Several WordPress sites, all selfhosted on a server at home.
How do you get around breaking your EULA terms of service doing that? Cable internet providers your breaking your homes terms of service (EULA) risking your service terminated at any time. and you might be on FIOS too not real sure on that, although I do know you have more flexibility on FIOS accounts. how do you get around that?
besides even on a FIOS account, your lucky to get 20 mbps downstream, 500k to 1 mbps upstream, which isn’t hardly enough to host a site on without performance to users taking a major hit.
My adsl provider (xs4all) is one of the biggest in the Netherlands and allows people to run servers. It’s one of the few that doesn’t therefor block port 25 for example. I don’t think they’re too well known abroad except for their freedom of speech actions. When scientology shut down a site and sued the owner because they didn’t like what they were saying xs4all offered to host the site and then sent their team of lawyers to defend the site owner.
As for the performance, I haven’t had any complaints. 🙂
Its interesting this question was brought up, I’ve been having issues with hosting providers over the years, in an attempt to find one that is reliable. I tried the VPS scene, but they wanted $40+ a month, which I can’t do because I am a blind user, who just happens to be unemployed right now after the company I was working for went out of business, so I’ve been living on disability ever since, which believe me just barely pays the rent if that.
So I had to downgrade to shared hosting. I pay almost $10 a month with a shared plan, which is expensive but at the time I wanted something I knew was reliable, located here in the US and not in some way far off distant land. I’ve probably switched providers off and on 20 or more times in the last 5 years or so. There’s so many out there I’ve had bad experiences with its crazy, but most of them it was always a cost issue.
What I’ve always wondered is how website owners have any luck at all getting revenue from their websites? I have not made 1 penny off any website I’ve ever owned, and I won’t put up a bunch of intrusive banner ads that only add to the spyware problem in the world. How do you know which ones are honest who actually pay out but whos ads aren’t too intrusive to the users?
That’s a great question! Stay tuned tomorrow for a discussion post about exactly that. 🙂
My music blog gets around 150,000 pageviews a month and I use shared hosting via StableHost.com – no complaints so far! 🙂 I use CloudFlare as well (although only for a few days).
There are two things you’ll need to purchase to have web space for your blog. First of all, you’ll need a domain name, a name that uniquely identifies your site on the Web. Domain names end in .com, .net, .org, or other extensions; mine is paulryburn.com. Take some time to think about the domain name you want; think of alternates, because your first choice may already be taken. GoDaddy charges me about $10/year to register and manage my domain name.
I’ve hosted my 3 blog sites with shared hosting accounts.Usually I install WordPress by myself.
I host my blog hosted on a shared hosting plan over at nearlyfreespeech.net, they’re an awesome hosting provider and have a ‘pay-as-you-go’ billing terms as opposed to the regular x dollars/mo.
I’m also curious to try out Amazon Web Services, but one EC2 instance would cost upwards of $18/mo (without including bandwidth charges). Of course an EC2 instance has to be compared with dedicated hosting, since in all fairness you do get a dedicated machine, and one you can modify everything on (PHP.ini, Apache configurations..etc)
On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve heard nothing but good things about wordpress hosting such as page.ly has anyone tried them?
I am hosting on dedicated server where I have multiple installs very effectively running and I love wordpress.