Some Thoughts on Wordpress Hosting
Every now and then I get a request for a 1.5 version of a plugin. And most of the time, I have to pass. And I wonder:
Skills and time aside, wouldn’t you enjoy
- Having the latest Wordpress? Always? Up-to-date?
- Using any plugin, the latest version of it, anything you want?
- Having the permalinks *you* want, not what your hosting can offer you?
I know many of you are relying on installation scripts provided by your hosting company. It’s easy. But when a wordpress update comes along you have to wait for your hosting company. And most of them are slow adapters. What was that new vulnerability found in WP 2.1 again?
Sooner or later you won’t come around hosting wordpress yourself. If you want
to maximize your blogging success there are some plugins you just have to use. And every new Wordpress version brings truck-loads of new features and eliminates pain and risk. Just imagine the tags that will come with 2.3.
Do-it-yourself hosting of your blog is inexpensive, and everyone can do it. I’ve been using GoDaddy for years (Update: Not anymore, please see below). I can completely move any site from any provider to godaddy within 24h, including DNS and everything. They have the cheapest reliable hosting I’ve ever seen without compromises. Yes, you should invest a few bucks per month in a dedicated IP. Their economy plan, their cheapest hosting, has everything you’ll ever need for your wordpress blog. You can cancel anytime and switch to somewhere else or upgrade your package if your traffic requires it.
There are other hosters in the world, and you’re free to choose. Ask other bloggers what they’re using.
But you’re lacking the skill to setup your blog?
I know just the guy for you who can setup your blog on any host. Just ask for it.
Update: GoDaddy recently gave me a hard time with my dedicated server. It was offline a couple of days and nobody even cared to tell me the reason. I removed all affiliate links to GoDaddy from this post since I can’t recommend them any longer (though I never had problems on ordinary hosting plans).
I’m now hosted with hostingrails.com since I’m experimenting with ruby on rails every now and then, and they have a very nice uptime guarantee which was just what I need. I might write more about it when I see fit.
Tags: diy, do-it-yourself, hosting, setup, wordpress
October 12th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Thanks for recommending my WordPress Install Service.
Very much appreciated!
Jeff Houdyschell
WordPressMax.com
October 31st, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Well… I’m quite happy to update once or twice a year, but the rate at which WP releases updates is really annoying for “regular” people like me (read: people who have other things to do besides fight with their computers).
No, really. Updating WP can take ages. It’s not just a matter of downloading, backing up, and installing. There’s the various fights with your plugins because some of them decide they don’t want to work with the new version, plus all the various other glitches that come with updating.
Last time I updated (to 2.1) my blog went completely blank. Even the login screen was gone. The whole site was completely hosed and it took about two days to get it working. Much of that time was spend on the WP support forums, and boy was that an eye opener. No sir, I was DEFINITELY not the only person experiencing problem. (In my case it turned out to be some kind of incompatibility with the version of MySQL that my host uses… which is the most up-to-date version.)
While I recognize that this kind of tinkering is fun for some people, I just want to get on with my life, my job, my blog posting, making dinner, and all the other things that occupy my days. I do NOT want to spend hours and hours hunched over my computer trying to figure out what kind of voodoo I need to come up with to make the latest upgrade work.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Blork - I could not have said it better. One of the things I really like about AIOSEO is the top notch support offered by uberdose. Many plugin and theme authors go on to other things and leave users hanging.
I am about to try the wp-automatic backup plugin. I know some have trouble with it, but I know a few that love it. I’ll post back o how it goes on my GoDaddy shared hosting.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:52 am
@Blork: Yes, updating can be a pain, but in most cases it’s just worth it no matter what the pain. A major Wordpress update is always full of features, just think of tagging in 2.3.
@Will: About a month after publishing this article GoDaddy left my dedicated server offline for about 4 to 5 days. They never even told me what the reason was. Of course I immediately switched with uberdose.com, though I’m leaving many shared hosting blogs hosted by GoDaddy. To this day I never had problems with one of their hosting plans, but I will never rent a dedicated server again from them.
November 18th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Just because you upgrade to the latest version doesn’t mean you have to do it IMMEDIATELY either. I usually give things a little while to settle down, but stay relatively current.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Just a report as promised above. I turned out to be one of the ones for whom the auto backup and upgrade plugin does not work. I think it is because I have WP installed in its own directory and the plugin can’t handle that.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
@Will: That would be a strange reason since WP gets installed in its own directory all the time. Have you set the permissions correctly on wp-content/plugins? In most installs a chmod 777 is required, meaning “world read- and writable”.
December 8th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Hi! Thanks for the suggestion. It has been a while but I thought the problem was possibly related to my WP install not being in the root directory. The plugin installed OK, but then: After starting the plugin in manual mode it tells me it has backed up the db successfully. But when I click to download the file, it can’t find it. Error message:“Nothing found for wpau-backup Wpau-db-backupAHFsdca.zip” The file was there, just not in the spot the plugin thought it had put it. I did use ftp to download it manually. Eventually I did try to have the plugin complete the upgrade process, but there were immediate errors relating to files not being where the plugin thought they should be. I then did the upgrade the frustrating, time consuming, manual way. - You know, the way that makes many users skip over several WP versions before submitting themselves to the torture of upgrading the WP Codex way!
Whatever the error message was, it was a known problem. Others had the same thing, others still almost the exact error messages depending on their specific WP install. The author of the plugin had been trying to troubleshoot it. Below is a link to one of his threads where he asked for help tracking down the issues.
The thing is something seems to have happened to the author. He has not been in any of his threads on the plugin for 3 months or so. I believe any further progress on it is unlikely as it seems not to be supported any longer. (Just another example of how we get spoiled by your support, uberdose!)
The upgrade plugin does work well for 80 or 90% of users, I was just in the unlucky minority.
I had someone with good tech abilities that used the plugin himself helping me try to get it working and it was still a no go.
http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/an-open-request-to-make-wpau-100-compatible.html
December 8th, 2007 at 7:30 am
@Will: So you’re using this WPAU on your GoDaddy shared hosting and its backup doesn’t work? What plan are you using? Have you installed WP on a subdomain or in a subfolder or in your root directory?
December 8th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Yes it is on GoDaddy shared hosting. WP is in a subdirectory off of my root directory. The backup process itself technically worked. The backup was created and saved. Then when the WPAU went looking for it, it returned a path error. I think it was looking for the file here: root/wpau-backup/Wpau-db-backupAHFsdca.zip when the file was actually here: root/wordpress/wpau-backup/Wpau-db-backupAHFsdca.zip.
I just ftp’d the file down. Later when running the actual upgrade, I got all kinds of errors, some that also related to the path discrepancies. I had changed the permissions to 777 from 705 so that was not it. That reminds me, I never changed them back. Is it a problem to leave that plugins directory at 777?
I don’t know if WPAU is open source or not. If so it’s possible someone might pick up supporting it. Plugins and WordPress sometimes have this trouble when the original developer moves on to other things. It also happened with the wp-Numly plugin that I use. Many of us users and the developer of Numly have looked for someone with php programming knowledge to fix a few bugs and update it for WP2.3, but no takers yet.
Now just a slightly off topic rant:
WPAU is frustrating because it is necessary to make WP available to more of the masses who are not inclined to go through the manual upgrade process. In the WP support forums you can see that the volunteers assume a fairly high level of technical expertise if you use WP on your own site. This is the WP core mentality in support and development, (even though they are in denial about it), and I think it the number one thing that prevents WP self hosted blogs from completely dominating blogging.
Just recently Google made a change to commenting on Blogger blogs that has caused uproar and some users to defect to WP, especially WP.com. When the majority that are sticking with Blogger or go to WP com are asked why they don’t try WP on their own domain, they relate stories they have been told by bloggers they know who use WP. Stories about the complicated upgrade procedure, the widget system that slows down sites, the sql timeout problem that affects lots of WP installs and the complicated installation of some plugins. For the worst example of the last, (as opposed to AIOSEO, which is easy), just look at wp-super cache. That plugin is unbelievable in its difficulty of install. I tried and gave up. I asked for advice from an acquaintance who is a tech person and has been doing this stuff for 10 years, AND was successful installing it on his own site. He politely declined saying: There was absolutely no way the average user could do it. It took him all day to get it working correctly and it was the most difficult install of anything WP related he had even done.
December 9th, 2007 at 8:40 am
@Will: Just tested WPAU on a spare Godaddy domain (economy hosting on Linux). I choose the “manual” path. There were some strange DB errors (mysql connection lost) in steps that shouldn’t do this, but in the end the upgrade was successful. I was able to download all the backup files (database + files) in the process.
So it seems the behaviour is even different on the same hosting.
December 9th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Is that WP install in a directory off root called wordpress? I remember the author of the plugin had asked for access to a few accounts to test because of just what you said…. WPAU would work on one install just fine, then on another seemingly duplicate type of install, not work. Unfortunately, as I said, the WPAU author seems to be done with the plugin. I always wonder when someone abandons a project with no word. It could just be that they moved on to other things or it could be that something terrible happened in their life. Kind of disconcerting to think about in an anonymous sort of way.
By the way, the mysl database has gone away or similar messages is probably not related to WPAU itself. It is a known WP thing that seems to happen on certain hosts, (GoDaddy is one), or with certain other plugins etc. installed. There is a fix to it that I could dig up if you or anyone else runs into it on a regular basis.
-Will
February 14th, 2008 at 5:24 am
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May 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 am
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