hosting
Hosting requirements for WordPress
The main advantage of using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) is the ability to make your own website edits. Gone are the days of finding a typo on your site and not being able to do anything about it. However a website powered by a CMS isn’t the same as a static website. In fact a site that is powered by a CMS is called dynamic, not static.
When making changes to a static site, you’re web developer modifies the code of each HTML page. Changes on a WordPress site are done by modifying the content which is stored in a database. The WordPress templates, coded using PHP, then pulls the content dynamically from the database and displays the webpage.
Thus when planning your WordPress, you’ll need to make sure that your hosting provider offers the following:
- PHP version 4.3 or greater
- MySQL version 5 or greater
Any server that runs PHP and MySQL will do, but an Apache server is the most robust and has the most features for running a WordPress site. Some hosting provider will tell you that Microsoft based servers are perfectly fine, but please don’t listen to them. The set up is quite difficult and no fun at all.
Having installed hundreds of WordPress sites, I am happy to recommend the following hosting providers.
These hosting providers all have very good WordPress support and great customer service.
Once you’ve set up your hosting, you’ll need to provide your web developer with the following:
- Access to your hosting provider control panel - This is needed to set up the database
- FTP access – This is needed to install the files on your server
Setting up a WordPress site is a bit more complicated than a static one, but with WordPress’s popularity, more and more hosting providers and making the necessary changes to offer full WordPress support.
Domain name and web hosting, what’s the difference?
When setting up your first website it’s not uncommon to get confused between domain name registration and web hosting.
Your domain name is the name of your site or your url (www.mynewcompany.com) and can be purchased by going to a domain name registrar. Domain names usually range from about $10 to $50/year depending on the extension. (.ca are more expensive than .com.)
Looking for Canadian web hosting company? Look no further than Blacksun.
More often than not, web hosting is something that clients have already set up when they contact me. As a result I have to work with many hosting providers and learn how to navigate their admin panel and many quirkiness.
I ran in to a very bizarre WordPress error this morning following a brand new installation on one of Blacksun‘s server. Certain area of the web admin turned up blank pages. I did a quick search on Google and thought that this error may be due to a wrong php.ini setting.
Looking at Blacksun’s website, I found the contact number to their technical support really fast, called, and was greeted by a human voice in less than 2 minutes. I explained the situation, she looked at the error files and confirmed my initial thought. Instead of putting me on hold and leaving me to talk to her manager, she simply took my contact details and told me to call back. Have you ever had technical support call you back? I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
No more than 20 minutes later, a voicemail was delivered to my phone. The error was fixed and my site is now working perfectly. That’s the best customer service I’ve encountered in a long time.