Basic guide on choosing web hosting for successful WordPress blog

Before we start over with the first installation of WordPress we need a web space.

Now of course is a requirement that it should not be too expensive and server uptime is over 99% with a decent speed. You are just starting this blog project and it is not sure if it ever really end on a success. Therefore, there should be a good quality and expenditure balance. Also it does matter if the costs are minimal, but your website is painfully slow and every now and again not available. What is the problem of such web host? Google spider simply can not index your pages faster. Yes, speed of crawl is directly related to the speed and uptime of your web server. You can see the data from your Google webmaster tool crawl and downloaded graphs.

Of course there are many cheap providers, where you can save even one or two Dollars per month. But with mass host people complains in different blogs about their bad experiences. The performance deteriorates sooner or later, and just to move to from one server another is not so simple.

Server requirement for WordPress installation

There are a few requirements that have to meet the needs web server to easily run to WordPress:

• PHP
  As a minimum prerequisite, the current version is 5.3.6 but you should ideally have PHP 5.2 or higher enabled, for the upcoming version of WordPress 3.2 is supposedly need PHP 5+ You can always check which version of PHP is now in use from official PHP web portal.
• MySQL
  A similar situation arises when the database is needed. WordPress currently runs with MySQL version 4.1.2, but WordPress 3.2 is require at least version 5.0.15. Here is the official website of MySQL.
• mod_rewrite
  The Apache module “mod_rewrite” is responsible for ensuring that WordPress can be equipped with nice looking URLs. It should therefore be present. Here is the official website of Apache.
• Memory Limit
  First of all, the reason for having a memory limit is to prevent poorly written scripts for eating up all available memory on a server (from the PHP Manual). So the original idea of this setting is to set the memory limit in the servers configuration. That is normally the job of the administrator and an application should not deal with it on it is own. Otherwise there would be no need to have such a limit.

The conditions are so straightforward, but the above points should be fulfilled. If the host is not indicates these details on the order page, then just write an email and ask for it. This has the additional advantage that one can thus test the same time support.

PHP, MySQL, Apache and WordPress: all are open source (and free), unlike closed source (for example Microsoft Windows). You must understand that, for these open source platforms, today we can create a website: otherwise it would be very costly for us. Read more on Wikipedia on open source.

Server location

This is important. You can test our website from Webpagetest website; change the location from U.S. (where our server is located) to India (where I live and writing this!): you will see the difference. More the geographical distance from  the visitor’s location; the page load time will be more. It is simple logic and needs no explanation.

What is the importance of this information? If your target visitors are from India, obviously you should choose a server that is located in India. On the other hand, if your visitors are from U.S. , definitely you will choose a server located in U.S.

We previously wrote about page loading speed and its impact on SEO.

WordPress installation

The WordPress installation itself is done quickly and easily.

Option 1 :  Pre-installed by Hosting service provider

Some providers offer the option to install with a few clicks with several well-known open source software solutions.

Option 2 : Manual Installation

You need some FTP tool ( FileZilla is recommended) together with FTP access.

In addition, you must first create a new database in the web space and admin password which are then required for installation. WordPress itself has written five minutes very nicely.

Other information

If you need faster website, you have to think of dedicated server, cost will be definitely high. CDN (Content Delivery Network) is also needed along with a dedicated server for better performance. If you are thinking of dedicated server and CDN, it is better to consult with professional, because it will be a mess and only loss of money without fruitful result if the right combination is not chosen.

We prefer Linux server (over Windows server) which are cheaper and more reliable (above 98% servers uses Linux). Mac servers are said to be great with very low downtime, but the cost is very high.

We are using NameCheap hosting service’s Business plan; which as you can see, almost works as good as dedicated server at a lesser cost.