Top 10 Tips: How to Select Best Web Hosting for WordPress Blogs?

WordPress is the most popular blogging application on the market, a dynamic publishing platform that allows you to quickly get up and running with your own blog even if you have no experience with the PHP language it’s coded in. The advantages of WordPress are plentiful, as it is a program that focuses on “aesthetics, web standards, and usability“, as quoted from WordPress.org.

Even a novice to site building will easily be able to create a Website/blog using WordPress that is fully functional and easy on the eyes. Once you have created a plan for the site itself, you will need to figure out where your site will be hosted. Finding a good hosting plan for your WordPress blog/site can seem like a daunting task when you begin to look at all the options that are available. Since there are so many web hosting companies to choose from, you might think that they are all about the same. This is simply not the case. There are several things that you need to look for in good web hosting companies. So here’s a few things to look for when shopping for a plan to for your WordPress blog hosting.

What to look for in a WordPress web hosting plan?

1. Blog/site Uptime: You will want to find a hosting company that has a history of excellent customer service. Remember, every moment that your site or blog is offline, you are losing out on money and potential visitors, readers and customers. Research any hosting company that you are interested in and check out its user reviews before making the purchase.

2. Reliability: WordPress is very resource intensive, which means it uses a lot of server CPU and database bandwidth. The larger and more popular your site becomes, the more important it is for you to have reliable and inexpensive web hosting.

3. Compatibility: WordPress is constructed in PHP language and runs on a MySQL database. So your hosting account should support both PHP and MySQL. Most hosting accounts that use Linux hosting plans should meet the requirements for hosting a WordPress blog.

4. cPanel: Most of the people who are using WordPress are not so geek. Having a web hosting with cPanel will make your life easier. You can quickly add addon domains, create FTP account and many other things with cPanel GUI.

5. Intuitive user panel: WordPress installation is pretty straight forward, but some new users may not feel comfortable installing it by FTP or even from within cPanel. That’s where installers like Fantastico and SimpleScripts make the job much easier. You can install WordPress in your hosting account from an intuitive user panel rather than having to manually upload and extract files.

6. Live chat: WordPress sites are prone to hacking and issues like high CPU usage and many times website goes down due to any buggy script. If your hosting support live chat, you can quickly ping them and ask them to look into the issue. Phone support is usually offered by most of the hosting but with live chat support, your life would be easier.

7. Ability to update WordPress easily: It’s important to keep WordPress updated, as there are frequent security fixes and updates. A script installer like SimpleScripts or the built-in solutions used by iPage and FatCow notify you of WordPress updates, so all you need to do is click a button and your blog will be automatically updated with the freshest, most secure version.

8. Bandwidth and storage: The word “unlimited” is highly overrated and there is nothing as unlimited! But still it is possible to find a web hosting provider who offers unlimited resources, which is usually very high and good enough for any high traffic blog. Go for hosting, which offer your WordPress blog maximum resources in terms of storage and bandwidth.

9. Ability to handle Digg front page: Blogging and social media have created a new need for stable web hosting. If you’ve ever had a blog post hit the front page of Digg or another blog mashup service, you know that traffic can instantly spike to insane levels. That’s why buying a reliable hosting plan now should be your top priority even before you get your first visitor through your door.

10. Accessibility: As great as WordPress is, you can experience occasional issues with your site that can be the result of a poorly coded plugin or theme. It’s important to have good support with your hosting plan so you have somewhere to turn to if your site suddenly shuts down or you get the dreaded “white screen of death” or a 500 server error. Make sure you WordPress hosting company has multiple methods of contacting support included email, chat, support tickets and phone support.