Intro to Hosting Packages for WordPress

Regardless of hosting type, you’ll likely be asked to choose between Windows or Linux at some point when choosing a hosting package.

Which one should you choose?

Choose Windows hosting only if….

1. Your website 100% needs to run on ASP.net

2. You want to spend hours fiddling around with your WordPress site to get it working properly like those other millions of websites that are running very nicely on Linux, out-of-the-box, thank you very much matron, I’m off to drool in the corner.

• It’s free for mydomain.wordpress.com

• Lots of features

– Social media, statistics, 210+ themes, mobile compatible, fast and secure

• Premium upgrades

– Custom design editor (CSS only – no code)

– Domain mapping (mydomain.com)

– No adverts • Automattic may run “discreet” ads on your site

– Premium themes

• Great for starting out a blog

• Can’t take control of/make code changes to themes

• Can’t upload your own theme

• Can’t upload plugins

• Dodgy code in themes & plugins

• Easier to guarantee a known and tested environment

• Low cost option

• One physical machine

– 30 to 60 individual websites

• “Local Authority Housing Scheme”

– Build it cheap & ram them in

• Performance issues

• Increased risk of..

– IP ban (dodgy porno site on same server as you)

– Being compromised (60 possible incursion points)

• Infrastructure limitations

– HTTP Loopback disabled

– PHP memory restrictions

– Lowest priority in support queue

• Great to start out with if new to hosting

– No thinking, no doing, everything is managed for you

• If you or your client are on a very tight budget

• Software Server

– Can be made up of multiple physical machines

– Dedicated RAM and disk space

– Shared CPU

• Virtualisation software aims to deliver “close to” actual physical server specifications

– You control the hosting environment

• Configure PHP, Apache, MySQL

• Root access

• Costs more than shared hosting

• Gives you more control, therefore more time consuming to manage

• Greater environment flexibility

• Easy and quick to upgrade

– Adjust virtual settings (pay more) then restart for instant upgrade

– No need to change existing website code or location

• Same underlying tech

• Uses software to monitor demand

• Expands/upgrades your VPS to meet demand

e.g. your site gets mentioned on 7 News

– From 1000 visits per week to +1 million per hour

– Google “Click Frenzy Fail” for example of when cloud VPS should have been used

• You pay for what you use so be careful

• One physical box

• You get all the RAM, CPU and disks

• Technically the fastest option

• Configure it how you like

• Highest cost option

• Slow and costly to upgrade

– Box is switched off, components replaced then switched back on

– Can you afford downtime?

• In previous options, the physical box would be managed for you in the data centre

• Collocation – your box – your responsibility

– You have physical access to the server

– You must maintain the box

– Get to use the data centre facilities but maintenance is your own responsibility

– Data centre engineers see your box, shrug their shoulders and walk past, even if it’s on fire

• In previous options, the physical box would be managed for you in the data centre

• Collocation – your box – your responsibility

– You have physical access to the server

– You must maintain the box

– Get to use the data centre facilities but maintenance is your own responsibility

– Data centre engineers see your box, shrug their shoulders and walk past, even if it’s on fire

• Become your own ISP – white label

• Quickly set up hosting packages for clients

• Charge premium and make a % profit

• Repeat business

• Brand your hosting environment

• Ability to setup and create testing environments – essential for developers

• Usually get % off packages & domain name purchases

• Australia is insanely expensive for hosting

• You need a good support team behind you

• At some point you will need to…

– Speak to a real person

– Get something resolved yesterday

– Take your frustrations out on some engineer who is “just reading from a manual” and not solving your issue which is easy to do by-the-way and here’s how…