WordPress Hosting Guide

As stated in WordPress official site, the minimal hosting requirement for WordPress are just a couple of things:

• PHP version 4.3 or greater
• MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater
• The mod_rewrite Apache module

Looks like finding a hosting solution for WordPress is a very easy task - the vast majority of web host out there meet above requirements. But how to find a rich hosting environment in which WordPress can works best? Below are some other additional factors you should consider.

OS

Although Apache, php, MySQL can run smoothly in Windows platform, Linux is still the best operation system for all those applications. Linux also beats Windows from cost perspective - it's open source and free.

So, you should choose Linux as your blog operation system whenever possible.

Hosting Type

There are various Web Hosting Types you can use for Blog, such as Shared hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated server, and more. Each of them comes with different feature and price, but what is right one for you?

A general guide is that if your daily traffic is below 300 unique IPs, a shared hosting plan should be good enough. If it exceeds that number, then you might need to consider VPS hosting. And only very few blogs need a dedicated server, unless you have gain thousands of traffic per day.

So, for a blog beginner, Shared hosting solution should be your best choice, and it's much much cheaper than the others. Once you gain quite a lot of traffic, you can start considering purchase a VPS hosting, and transfer your blog to your new environment.

Disk Space and Monthly Transfer

WordPress itself doesn't use a lot of space - 20MB should be good enough to install one. So, when calculating the disk space you need, the major factor you should consider is the content you plan to put in the blog.

Think about how many images&video (and their average size) you have for each post and then the number of post you can write per month. With which, you can calculate how many disk space it will grow per month and estimate your disk space needs.

For monthly transfer, you can estimate how many people will view your blog per day, and multiply it with your average post size. By this way, you will get a sense of your monthly transfer needs.

If you don't have a lot of video, a disk space with 10gb is usually big enough, and most of web hosting package should give you a space larger than this number.

Reliability

Reliability usually means better infrastructure, data center management, and technology. But it also means higher cost. For the business critical blog sites, you should choose a web host who has proven that they can consistently deliver high reliable system to their customers, such as Hostgator, but for some normal business blog, or personal blog, you can choose a lower price one, but still very good from reliability perspective, such as Bluehost, Justhost, etc.

Support

Customer support is one of the most important thing you should check for you web host. It's hard to image that when there are some problems with your blog hosting environment, and nobody is around to help you out.

Make sure your web host provides 24*7 phone support, or Live Chat support system. You have no need to use it all the time, but these 2 support channels will make sure you can get the help if there is anything serious happens.

Price

Price is always a matter, but you often get what you pay for :). So cheap blog hosting solution might save some at the beginning, but it might not be reliable enough, and customer support might be bad. VPS hosting is good, but it's expensive as well, for a beginner, a shared blog hosting should be good enough.

Personally, I would like to suggest choosing a reliable hosting solution with affordable price. $5/month should bring you a very good shared hosting. And before purchasing, make sure you have checked our latest and best Web Hosting Coupon, which could save you a lot.

Summary

For WordPress hosting, linux is usually your perfect choice. And make sure you understand the purpose of your blog and the traffic of your blog, with which you can choose the right web hosting types and features. Our awarded Best Wordpress Hosting has listed out the best player in the industry who can bring reliable solution to their customers with affordable price, in most case, you should be able to find an appripriate one from there for your WordPress blog.