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November 4, 2015 at 5:16 am #993202Up::0
Hi guys,
Does anyone have any advice on who I should host my WordPress website with? I expect it to eventually get quite a bit of traffic because I have a discussion forum component.
I’ve done some research and read a few positive articles about Flywheel – main selling point is they specialise in WordPress sites. Has anyone had any experience hosting with them? Any issues? Any better hosts out there?
Thanks,
WeiNovember 4, 2015 at 6:05 am #1190243Up::0i am not really sure that you need any WP specific hosting. I would suggest that a business plan with someone like VentraIP, NetVirtue or Panthur would suffice.
November 4, 2015 at 6:45 am #1190244Up::0For a start most hosting will be fine, when it takes off you could migrate to a better solution like VPS or dedicated servers
November 4, 2015 at 6:57 am #1190245Up::0To add to the mix, I’d just say to not overstretch yourself Wei. Many people overdo the server side of things so they have a lot of headroom, pay for expensive clustering, cloud services that can be scaled up and down and all sorts. Most waste their money.
1. Most projects don’t get traction all that quick and you have plenty of time to shift (so check for flexible contracts).
2. Most providers can shift you up a product (make sure it’s there when you need it)
3. I know of a multimillionaire tech entrepreneur that cautions against overstretching – he said he was happy for his site to not be able to cope with peak demand every now and then rather than having unused headroom or expensive flexible solutions.Most hosts can install WordPress or have it sitting there in the cPanel. Many are 1-click installs.
You can ask about redundancy, how many people are sharing on a shared server, etc., but few servers these days would struggle with the early days of a forum. If you’ve got schedulers firing off all over the place, well, that can add some strain.
November 4, 2015 at 8:25 am #1190246Up::0Also to add to Pauls comment, with WordPress it is pretty easy to move to another server with little downtime
November 4, 2015 at 8:53 am #1190247Up::0I use liquid web. It’s in the US but their support is amazing. Flexible Managed VPS that you can start from a minimum of 50USD per month for their smallest offering. You obviously have to deal with currency conversions but in most cases it’s cheaper than what you’ll find in AU.
I don’t believe that offer managed wordpress.
While I agree with the points above I would say that if you’re hosting on crappy shared hosting such as hostgator you should expect your website to randomly go offline and it will likely go through peaks of outages. You can also find the latency of these services can greatly increase your load time. I would not recommend if you want to take your business seriously.
November 4, 2015 at 9:48 am #1190248Up::0Hmm, well I thought that Byron, and maybe they’re not good, but I decided to give Bluehost a go in the US. One purchase means you can host any number of WP sites. It sounded impressive but you soon realise everyone else also has that offer.
Anyway, I’ve been impressed. I thought they’d be cramming people on the shared hosting but I grilled them very hard on how they manage sudden demands on other sites on the same server and they have some pretty nifty solutions.
The site was a little slow but it was US and I got a bit happy with some new skills and a new theme and I had 3 banner images in rotation, each with text moving down from the top and animated fades and all sorts. So that’s pretty demanding.
November 4, 2015 at 9:51 am #1190249Up::0I’ve heard good things about Bluehost Paul. I was considering changing to them at one stage based on everything I’d heard. My experience relates to hostgator in particular and I’m probably a little burnt.
You’re right though still get great results from shared hosting, SEO and performance, but for me it was about peace of mind for load times and up time. I have panic attacks when I was regularly receiving website offline emails but like you say if you do your research you can certainly find a good provider.
November 4, 2015 at 11:01 am #1190250Up::0Sure, you were specifically meaning Hostgator Byron. I’ve hosted on one of my WordPress sites with a very good UK host on a dedicated server (because my platform is there so it’s on a subdomain). I used to get lots of notifications from Jetpack that it’s gone down. I took it up with them and it was in the early days when there was very little traffic. I don’t know the technical details but they said that would stop as traffic increased. Something like a hard drive sleeping, I guess. Not clever, but I wonder if that’s what happens to other people (not necessarily yours but thought I would share). It improved over time like they said and it never seems to go down now.
November 4, 2015 at 12:41 pm #1190251November 12, 2015 at 1:30 am #1190252Up::0Hi Weiz,
I have had quite a lot of experience in this area, based on a business owner NOT an IT person. I do manage my own VPS and Managed Hosting plans, but not my dedicated servers.
SUPPORT is the most important as well as up time and site speed. Below is a list of people I have used or currently use.
Digital Pacific (currently have Prestashop Hosting) – I have a single store hosted with them, great support, AU based, site is a little slow – it’s a shared hosting environment.
VentraIP (used in past)- a great bunch of people, solid hosting
Hostgator (current) – I have 3 dedicated servers with them, good up time, but I would avoid for shared hosting as they overload which causes downtime. USA based, so sites a little slower, average support, chat support only unless you want to call USA. I have IT people who look after these for me so the support is a huge deal for me.
BlueHost – some friends use them, good solid hosting, sites a little slower on the shared hosting, USA based and no AU phone. Their data centre is in Provo Utah.
A2 Hosting (current) – great provider, US based, but you can pick your server datacentre closer to AU. They have a fantastic Managed Hosting for WP which is run on fast SSD drives and they look after all backups etc and they have an Aussie phone number your can call. They also have developed a WP plugin to help with speed and security, which comes free with your hosting, I have just starting installing it.
InMotion (current – but moving off) – I have a VPS with them, the sites and management system run a bit slow and support is good but chat only. I upgraded to VPS on SSD drives which was meant to be faster, but alas no joy, so I am moving.
You can go through a million reviews on line and still be unsure, as majority of the reviews are paid or affiliate reviews, so that’s why I thought I would give me experiences. There are plenty more I can name, that friends and family use, but I think you will be overloaded, so I gave you feedback on the main ones.
Avoid GoDaddy for hosting as they overload their servers too much, use them to buy and manage domain names only.
NOTE: when you are looking and they say SSD drives, make sure it not just for storage, you need to ask them if the database and application runs on the SSD drives, this is a common trick they use.
Good luck and happy hunting
November 12, 2015 at 3:17 am #1190253Up::0I second Panthur, having switched to them from Uber (not the taxi company).
Performance is much better than Uber, platform is very well built and their prices are great. They have WordPress available on the cPanel like most providers. Like others have said, start low capacity and change when needed, its not hard.
November 12, 2015 at 6:57 am #1190254Up::0Hello Wei
As I scan through the replies everyone has addressed Hosting because that is what you asked about.
However, I’d suggest you should be looking for a Hosting + Security Update maintenance package these days if your site is going to attract a lot of Traffic.
November 13, 2015 at 6:59 pm #1190255Up::0I’d recommend using a managed service unless you’re prepared for a pretty steep learning curve and putting in time doing maintenance.
One other option not mentioned so far is AWS (Amazon Web Services)-Their servers are located in Sydney and are unbelievably fast (for local users).
I was never a believer that local servers made much difference to load times but AWS has proved me wrong, especially on mobile focused sites where load speed on crap local networks is critical-Not sure about WP, but I have a very “JavaScript heavy” site that generally fully loads in under 2 seconds on an ok mobile connection (cut about 1.5 seconds off US Cloud hosting).
I avoided them because their pricing was so difficult to get your head around but (especially with the devaluation of Aus dollar) I now have a couple of sites running there, and find them competitive with a cheapish VPS without the hassle and maintenance. If your site does get traffic they automagically manage any load balancing requirements. Another benefit is, you get a S3 “bucket” storage repository, so static resources like images can be loaded from a separate cookieless domain (Google page speed/usability test loves this).
November 16, 2015 at 3:40 am #1190256Up::0I’ll throw another name in to the mix – Web24. I’ve used VPS’s from them for about 3 years and have only ever had 2 outages. Great support and hosting is in Melbourne so my websites are super fast.
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