Have More Fun With Your Blog - Use WordPress Friendly Hosting
WordPress, undoubtedly, is one of the most popular blogging platforms. And when installed on WordPress friendly hosting, it is relatively easy to use for even the most technically challenged individual.
WordPress is highly supported by both WordPress.org and by the Internet community as a whole. The WordPress platform itself is regularly updated for enhancements and security issues.
Throughout the Internet, there are a variety of both free and paid WordPress themes available to allow each individual to give their WordPress website its own unique presence. As well, there are hundreds, if not thousands of widgets and plugins freely available to give added functionality.
If WordPress friendly hosting is used, once a WordPress theme has been added, further customization of your blog is done through the WordPress dashboard. This eliminates the need to edit pages and posts on one’s own computer and then FTP the changes or additions as is often done when working with a more conventional website containing static pages.
If a script loader such as Fantastico is not used, FTP is only generally required to load the initial installation of WordPress. Most hosting environments provide Fantastico as a means to install WordPress quickly and easily. Almost all further customization can be done via the WordPress dashboard, including the uploading of plugins, widgets and different themes.
The Number One Complaint made by folks using WordPress in a non WordPress friendly hosting environment, is that they not able to use the dashboard to customize WordPress or edit files without first having to open FTP and modify the permissions of the files being worked on. In most cases where this happens, file permissions of 777 must be assigned.
If a file has permissions of 777 set, anyone who is able to access the file is also able to change the content of the file, rename the file or even delete the file. Files with permission levels of 777 are vulnerable to hackers.
In order to safe guard those files, they must keep track of the original permissions, and change the permissions back to their original state once they finish what was being done. If they don’t restore the original permission level of the file correctly, they may run into issues with the functionality of WordPress.
While this certainly can be done, the question arises as to why someone would not simply use a WordPress friendly hosting service to begin with. After all, there is enough work to be done on a blog without having to constantly keep track of file permission changes.
A WordPress Friendly Hosting service should meet the following minimum requirements:
- Properly set user and file permissions allowing
WordPress to work right out of the box. - Up to date WordPress installation files.
- Fantastico or its equivalent.
- FTP Access
- Apache or Litespeed server
- PHP version 4.3 or greater
- MySQL version 4.0 or greater
- mod_rewrite Apache module
In addition, if you plan on dealing with multiple domains and WordPress blogs, you may want to look for the following:
- 24/7 Customer Support
- Customer reviews
- Server Uptime Guarrantees
- Extensive FAQs & Help Files
- Unlimited Disk Space & Bandwidth
- The ability to use Unlimited Domains with a Single Hosting Account
As always, whenever you are looking at choosing a hosting provider, take the time to read their posted terms of service and policy pages.
The good news is that if you are using a non WordPress friendly hosting provider, it is generally a fairly easy process to transfer your domain and WordPress blog to a provider that is WordPress friendly. Most hosting providers are more than willing to help you with this process.
Learn more about WordPress Friendly Hosting providers.
Tags: Friendly Hosting, WordPress Friendly, WordPress Friendly Hosting