WordPress Friendly Web Hosting Service Providers

There are many web hosting service providers available for you to choose from when you are looking for a new home for your website or blog. As mentioned in an earlier post, “Seven Criteria To Consider When Choosing A Web Hosting Service Provider”, the provider’s ability to support the applications that you plan to use is definitely a criteria that you take into account when choosing the right web hosting service for your website or blog.

WordPress is one application, which is very popular to use as a blog, either on its own or as part of a larger website. Worlds Best Online Business Resources is WordPress based, so I not only recommend its use, I use it as well. When I looked at the various options for WBOBR, I decided that the WordPress application would provide the ability to develop the site as envisioned.

WBOBR is currently hosted with Host Monster, a WordPress friendly blog hosting provider, but it wasn’t always that way. It started out hosted with a different web hosting service provider. That provider came about as part of a package deal I’d worked with earlier and I currently still use it for other web hosting, but when it came to working with WordPress, I wasn’t impressed.

Many find when they install WordPress, that the hosting company they are using is WordPress unfriendly. The way the servers and user permissions are set up leads to a problem when you try to edit files using the WordPress interface.

WBOBR started out in much the same way that many WordPress sites begin. I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like and went through the hours of searching for a theme that would give me the base look that I was after. Because I am the geeky type (although fairly unstudied when it comes to html and php), and actually enjoy being challenged with something new on the technical side of things, I only wanted a base theme from which to build.

The theme I choose was the Clean Copy Theme which is available at http://corymiller.com/clean-copy-2-and-3-column-free-wordpress-theme-released/ This theme provided the base I was looking for. From there, I followed the vision I had on how the site would look and had both intriguing and frustrating times shaping it.

Most of the frustration came quite quickly as I found that I was unable to edit using the WordPress interface without changing the file permissions to 777 on the server. I was very uncomfortable with these settings as 777 gives the files world writable permissions and leaves them vulnerable to being hacked. So in order to maintain my peace of mind, I would set them back to their original permission level once I’d done the editing for the day.

For those of you who are fairly new to this type of editing, you will recognize that it is a learning experience and thus tends to take significantly longer than it would for someone with a higher skill level. The addition of a need to constantly change and keep track of changes to file permissions wore thin in a hurry and after a rather short period of time, I decided that it was well worth stopping where I was at and moving WBOBR over to Host Monster where I knew this would not be an issue from working with another blog.

The process took a few hours. I began with backing up my WordPress theme directory by downloading it to my computer. No plugins were added at this point so the database wasn’t an issue. Someone with a WordPress site that is already well advanced would want a backup of the database as well as any additional directories the site makes use of. Many web hosting companies are willing to assist with this process, particularly for new clients. But, being a tech, I wanted to do it myself if at all possible.

Once my backups were done, I removed WordPress from the old provider and removed the domain using cPanel. The next step was to re-point the domain on GoDaddy to the name servers used by Host Monster. After leaving a bit of time so that the change in the name servers could take effect, I used the cPanel interface on Host Monster to add the wbobr.com domain and installed WordPress. From that point, all I needed to do was unload my backed up theme files and I was ready to get back to work.

I can not tell you how much easier it is to work with WordPress when you don’t have to continuously change file permissions for every little edit. The difference is like night and day. I do, however, want to drop a word of caution.

I was able to handle the move of wbobr.com to Host Monster fairly quickly and without assistance because it was very much in the early stages of development. Had it been further along, or already open, I would still have done my own backups, but I would probably have also requested assistance with the move.

For those of you that are working with blog hosting that is not WordPress friendly and therefore dealing with the issue of having to change file permissions to edit your blog, there is a great little tutorial available from Alex Sysosef of HowToSpotter.com on How To Make WordPress Files Writable. I notice that Alex recommends Host Gator as a WordPress friendly web hosting service for blog hosting and will be updating the Host Gator Web Hosting Review to reflect that recommendation.

Knowledge is power. However, sometimes no matter how thoroughly we try to investigate things ahead of time, we end up with something that is less than expected. This may be something you will run into or have already experienced with a web hosting service provider.

Fortunately, most do provide you with a 30-day guarantee. Be sure to read the entire agreement before signing up as some do restrict how soon you are allowed to move a domain if the domain was purchased through them. You don’t want to be in a position where you can not move your domain before the end of the period provided for in the money back guarantee. I personally avoid that particular issue in many cases by using the domain services provided by GoDaddy.

Top 3 WordPress Friendly Hosting Providers!

Update: Hostmonster becomes even more WordPress Friendly!

Update:With the release of WordPress 3.0, I have moved WBOBR.com and other blogs, to the Magazine Basics theme. The reason was to simplify maintenance by working with a single theme and to take advantage of the changes WordPress 3.0 brings to blogging.

Take a moment to leave a comment and let us know about your own experiences with web hosting service providers. I look forward to hearing from you.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com