Wordpress website hosting used to mean signing up for hosting and then doing everything manually. Yes, that means actually uploading all the WordPress files and installing it manually.
But things have come a long way since then, thanks the the overwhelming popularity of WordPress as a content management system. While the numbers vary depending on the source, it’s not in dispute that WordPress is by far the number one content management system around.
It’s used by millions of web sites around the world, including some of the biggest brands out there. Some that use WordPress include The Official Star Wars blog, Sony Music, the Play Station blog, Tech Crunch, The New Yorker, Variety and many more.
Nowadays, with this kind of popularity, it’s hard to find a web host that doesn’t at least have the user-friendly basics. These include things like a one click install option for WordPress. If a web host doesn’t offer that, there’s no point in exploring it as an option.
Probably even more important than the one click install option is the backup option. A good WordPress website hosting company will have an easy to use site back up system in place. This should automatically back up your entire WordPress site at specific intervals that you select (such as once per day, or once per week).
There are numerous hosting options, such as shared, dedicated, VPS (virtual private server) and more. For most bloggers and small business owners, a shared hosting option will be more than enough. However, make sure that upgrading to another level of hosting is an option.
Your business and WordPress site may outgrow the resources available with shared hosting, causing your site to slow down and possibly not even load for visitors.
The next level for WordPress website hosting is VPS, which is simply a virtual private server. This means that while you ‘share’ the same server with other customers, those customers can’t affect things like your site load time, data usage, etc.
With a shared server option, the resources available to you are ‘shared’ with other sites. So if another site is gobbling up bandwidth, it can have a negative impact on your site’s performance, which isn’t necessarily something you want.
With VPS hosting, you have complete control over your site’s resources, which can be a very big deal. The last thing you want with your WordPress site is for another site to affect your site’s performance at a crucial time.
Another great option, if you think you need it, is managed WordPress hosting. With managed WordPress website hosting, you can only have WordPress sites. This has come about because of the popularity of WordPress as a content management system.
With managed WordPress hosting, you don’t have to worry about anything. The web hosting company takes care of everything for you in terms of your site’s performance. They optimize your site for things like loading time, take care of security, maintain back ups and everything else you can think of to keep your site running optimally.
Of course, like with most things, you get what you pay for so managed WordPress hosting is a lot more expensive than getting a shared hosting plan and using the WordPress platform for your site.
If you do want to consider managed WordPress website hosting, be sure and check out WP Engine.
As far as the other options discussed, WordPress has become so popular that almost all good web hosts, such as Blue Host (officially recommended by WordPress), Dream Host and Host Gator give you the options you’ll need for confidently running a WordPress site.