Learn How to Choose the Best Hosting Company for a Wordpress Based Website

Server
Wordpress continues to gain popularity, not only as a blogging platform, but as a content management system. While the necessary requirements can be met by most hosting companies, there are additional variables that can turn a good choice into a great choice.

Choosing the best hosting company for your Wordpress based website may not seem like an easy task, but it doesn't have to be difficult either. Once you understand what your hosting provider needs to be able to give you, creating a short-list of top companies becomes much easier. Since you already know that you want to use Wordpress, you first need to know what Wordpress needs to run smoothly, and also understand the basics of choosing a quality webhost.

Wordpress Prerequisites

Wordpress really doesn't need much in order to run smoothly. The two prerequisites that Wordpress needs are PHP 4.3+ and MySQL 4.1.2+. They also recommend that you have access to Apache or Nginx in order to take full advantage of everything that Wordpress has to offer. With so few requirements, almost every hosting provider can now support Wordpress, however that doesn't make choosing the right one any easier.

Linux or Windows?

It used to be recommended by many people that if you wanted to use Wordpress, then you needed to make sure that you were working on a Linux server. However, Windows recently added Wordpress to their Web App Gallery, which means that installation on a Windows server will take just a few minutes.

How Important Is Fantastico?

Fantastico has become an excellent asset for cPanel users. It allows you to install a number of open source applications in a matter of clicks. Additionally, Fantastico ensures that you will always install the latest version of Wordpress available. It is no question that using Fantastico to install these types of programs is the easiest and most efficient option.

While Fantastico is a great resource, it should not be the guiding light of your hosting provider search. Saving 10 minutes of time and frustration is great, but when you look at the big picture, it should not be a deal-breaker. Instead of searching for hosts that have cPanel/Fantastico, make a list of the best hosts available like you normally would. If you are down to two or three potential candidates that are all fairly equal, only then whether or not they offer Fantastico should be factored into the decision.

Additional Decision Factors

Since almost every host will meet the physical requirements of hosting your Wordpress website, and Fantastico should not be a key decision factor, then it is important to understand what else to look for. There are a number of different variables that you can look at when searching for the right webhost, and they tend to vary based upon who you ask. However, a number of factors tend to be on almost everyone’s list. This includes factors like: uptime guarantee, money back guarantee, age of company, scalability, and customer support.

Choosing a host that has the physical requirements needed for you to start your Wordpress website will be easy. However, ensuring that the hosting provider you choose is of a high quality can be a little more difficult. In order to do this, make sure to focus on the important issues.

Subscribe to WebmasterFormat RSS Feed Follow WebmasterFormat on Twitter
tomtom:

better than Wordpress.com

Choosing WP host is not much different than choosing host in general. Any host is better than Wordpress.com

joshi:

Choose Linux for WP

It is better to choose Linux for WP because there is much more advices on the Web regarding issues you'll have with WP on Linux than on Windows

Anonymous (not verified):

wp on windows

You can set up wp on windows with no problem. And it works great. Since IIS7 php works on Windows very smooth. Some even report better performance than with Linux + Apache.

Rachael (not verified):

WordPress hosting

WordPress hosting has gained a lot of popularity because is provides with one of the most feature rich platforms for blogging and creating a website. It is easy to learn and implement. The above mentioned information will help every WordPress user in terms of selecting the most efficient WordPress host. Moreover one should also consider if the WordPress host provides with round the clock technical assistance and server monitoring for getting the best of results.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2> <h3> <blockquote> <b> <center>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.