Choosing a Host for a WordPress Blog

If you use WordPress for your site or blog, it is important to choose the right hosting package. WordPress comes with its own needs and requirements that are quite specific and in order to run WordPress smoothly, the right host needs to be chosen carefully.

WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging software with an approximate 202 million websites hosted by WordPress. WordPress is therefore very popular among web hosting companies, but there are variations in how well WordPress is hosted. As with all aspects of choosing a web hosting provider, it is best to apprach each provider with a list of questions pertaining to your individual needs. Whether the answers are on a company’s website or are given verbally or by email, the main point to note is that reticence to answer questions should put you off a host altogether.

WordPress runs best on Linux hosts that run Apache and MySQL. This minimizes the possibility of WordPress plug-ins being incompatible. Very few sites run a vanilla version of WordPress with no plug-ins and it is to be expected that any professional looking site will use lots of plug-ins to produce a unique user experience. The web hosting package should also support PHP, preferably version 4.3 or later. The version of MySQL should be later than 4.1.2 also.

The Apache server of your chosen host needs ideally to have mod_rewrite enabled by the server. You can find out more about mod_rewrite here.

Mod_rewrite allows the creation on the fly of search engine friendly (or indeed, more easily read and navigated by humans) URLs, typically of dynamically created web pages. In blogging terms, the URL http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/posts.php?Year=2010&Month=11&Day=23 can be changed by mod_rewrite to something like http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/2010/11/23/. Users can therefore, for instance, remove the trailing ‘23‘ to see all blog posts for November 2010, as if navigating up a directory structure.

While on the subject of Apache modules, your Apache host should also be running modules mod_gzip and mod_deflate. Although not absolutely necessary, these modules give any WordPress site an important speed hike, making browsing them a quicker and more enjoyable experience for your readers.

Some plugins for WordPress also require certain PHP functions such as fsockopen which may not be installed or running on all hosts. It is important therefore to check for compatibility before choosing a host, and find one who does not limit PHP function choice.

Finally, make sure the web host does not put limits on file permissions for scripts (such as 755, or rwxr-xr-x) as this will cause problems when installing and upgrading WordPress.

Links

• Best WordPress Hosting Providers – Detailed Comparison Grid