General Webhosts Vs WordPress Specific Webhosts
WordPress, perhaps one of the most popular blogging platforms to date, isn’t exactly the first priority of every webhost around. Many webhosts are too general to provide optimal support for a specific product like WordPress. But if you value your blog, and are serious with its development and growth, looking for a webhost with WordPress-specific options would be in your best interest.
Features To Look Out For In WordPress Hosting
Before a blogger can get any work done, he or she needs to install WordPress. But doing that can be tough for those of us who aren’t exactly technically gifted. In that case, many webhosts, even the generalized ones, offer auto-installers that do the dirty work for us. So far, general webhosts and WordPress specific webhosts are neck and neck.
When it comes to security, bloggers prefer WordPress-specific webhosts. This is mainly due to the fact that when important security releases are circulated, normal webhosts aren’t always the first to get their auto-installers updated with the new information. WordPress-specific webhosts are much more “on the ball” in this sense, as they are always kept updated on new releases.
Where general webhosts tend to fail bloggers is in the upgrade category. Auto-installers such as Fantastico (packaged with cPanel) offer easy ways to upgrade, but the configurations, themes, plugins, and other content will be lost in the upgrade as files are overwritten. Clearly, WordPress specific hosts get the win here, since they take previously configured files into account when upgrading.
Anyone WordPress user that has been on the front page of websites such as Digg.com know that with excessive demand comes downtime. This is because WordPress is database driven- meaning that if a lot of people are on your blog at the same time, it is bound to go down. WordPress-specific webhosts take this into effect and offer better performance and efficiency at the database level.
Added Benefit For Bloggers
Whenever it comes to the normal webhosts, there aren’t many extra features they can offer for WordPress users. But with the WordPress hosts, there are usually a myriad of extra features to enjoy. This can range from special plugins and themes to other WordPress-specific services.
The biggest benefit to webmasters in this case is the exclusivity of the themes that WordPress webhosts provide. Since the themes aren’t open to the general public, there will be very few blogs on the Internet that have the same theme as you do. This will help blog owners to brand their domain name and company identity with ease.
Custom designs for WordPress blogs can easily run hundreds of dollars. As compared to the low fees of a WordPress host, it’s no contest as to which route every WordPress user should take in regards to themes.
When we add the score up, it seems that the WordPress hosts come out on top. But be sure to get quotes from several sources before making your decision. After all, a website is only as good as its host!
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