WORDPRESS
Choosing a Hosting Company
I’ve often thought that bloggers fall into two distinct groups: those who use Wordpress and those who don’t. This is, perhaps unfairly, because I’ve yet to come across one of the don’ts who doesn’t use Google’s Blogger platform. And I now shut my ears to the pleas for help when things don’t quite work out on Blogger. Indeed, there are many Blogger-hosted blogs that I no longer follow simply because the way Blogger presents them makes them unreadable. And if you’re reading a Blogger blog, ad and cookie blockers mean that’s often all you will do. Forget commenting!
But I’m not here to compare Blogger and Wordpress; rather I want to develop things onward from the choice that many Wordpress bloggers will make to leave Wordpress.com (or rather not to leave it but to move their blog to a self-hosting arrangement.
The first and vital part of this process is choosing your hosting company. Uh, whaddayamean I hear you ask.
If your blog is hosted at Wordpress.com (you have a blog name like whatIcalledit.wordpress.com), then Wordpress is your hosting company – they maintain the servers on which your blog sits and from which it is delivered down the wires to the internet. When you choose to move from Wordpress.com you choose another company to do that job. It’s called “self-hosting”. I’m not going to write a book on the subject; rather I’m going to fire a few bullets in your general direction to get you thinking.
The nature of the web means that you can host your blog anywhere in the world and, to your eager visitors, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever (unless you choose a company in China or North Korea where you may encounter state censorship!) The choice of hosting company/location only affects YOU!
Hosting companies want to maximise revenue and minimise expenditure. That’s what business is about. So:
- If you’re in the UK and choose a USA company, their support team may be fully staffed during USA daytime but running on matchsticks when you’re awake.
- All systems will need occasional maintenance and things will go down from time to time. If your servers are in the USA, your host will aim to undertake maintenance when the USA is quiet. If your visitors are all in the UK, they may see things slowing down.
- You’ll need to register a domain name of your choice. It’s surprising how different the prices can be. Think about your domain name (particularly what comes after the final dot). It’s always a lot easier to register your domain through your web host (otherwise you usually have to learn about DNS, A records, @s, MX and other garbage). Often a .com domain will cost more to register through a UK-based hosting company whilst a .UK domain costs more to register through a USA-based one. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, though. Check what different companies will charge.
Also take time to delve into what’s on offer. Choosing between electricity and gas providers is actually simpler than choosing a web host! What will you get for your £ (or $)?:
- Will there be a limit on the volume of files you can store on the host’s servers. For most people this isn’t an issue but if you’re a madly active blogger, posting pictures and who knows what, it’s surprising how much you can accumulate.
- Will there be a limit on traffic (known as “bandwidth”). Traffic limits are rare these days but they are not unheard of. If your blog suddenly becomes popular (and you won’t have control over that), you don’t want a sudden bill! It’s always best to go for a “no limit” traffic contract.
- Is there an uptime guarantee? Some hosts guarantee 99% uptime (don’t ask for 100%), some don’t. An individual company will usually offer accounts with and without this guarantee. And what about backup? Does your host backup your files? If not, you’ll need to do this job REGULARLY! I back up all my website files three times a week. (An unlimited broadband contract with your own internet provider helps!) Remember that Wordpress often involves TWO backups – the data and the SQL database. You will need both, in synch, if the worst happens.
I’ve learned the hard way! I write my blog posts in Word on my local PC. Then I cut and paste into Wordpress (or my website editor if I’m building an HTML page). If I add photos I’ll save those with the Word file locally. So that just if something goes wrong I haven’t lost anything.
Often you will find that a company offers a simple blog hosting contract. Compare this with the company’s basic standard hosting contract. You may find that the latter works out cheaper than the former. This is because the hosting company has factored in the risk of blog hosting contract customers being numpties so having a higher support overhead. But Wordpress is so simple that if you stop and think, you’ll usually find that you don’t need to phone support every other hour!
Take your time.
But remember that you own your domain name and that’s the key to your blog (and your presence on the web). The domain name is portable. So if you do make a big mistake in your choice of hosting company, it’s not the end of the world; it will just cost you some ££ or $$.
Just make sure you get the process of shifting right. It’s little different (though can be just a bit more complicated if you have email and other things to shift) to moving from Wordpress.com hosting. I’ll cover a shifting checklist in another article.
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