Beer and Blog Portland

That’s what we’re doing this Friday. Partially because we’re doing the End Bloglessness workshop this Saturday. And, because hosting is like religion and everyone’s path is different. All bloggers need to check-in with their hosting needs and make sure they are still on the right path.

For those looking to End their Bloglessness this weekend

Coming this Friday is a good way to be ready for Saturday’s workshop because you’ll need your own hosting to follow along with the install process. You can get some help buying your hosting account on Friday, which will make your Saturday smoother. Workshop attendees without hosting will have to take notes and repeat at home later or buy hosting on the spot (which can be stressful when you want to take time to select a domain name).

This will also be a good way to meet some of the folks you’ll be blogging with. They’ll be many happy faces excited to tell you about your upcoming adventures. You may learn that the hosting account you want is different from the one I’ll be sharing about at the workshop.

For the Beer and Blog Regulars

I know I’ve learned a lot about hosting the painful way over the years. Just recently I learned a bit about the unique hosting requirements for WPMU. I still don’t have a hosting company that I love for every project. It would be good to talk about hosting again and see if someone knows the magic hosting package. Think hosting doesn’t matter, I bet you’ll learn something about hosting you didn’t know.

RSVP on Upcoming and Calagator

Hosting packages

When you’re starting out, your hosting needs are pretty simple. Since we’ll be working with WordPress, you’ll need PHP and MySQL, which is fairly common. I recommend staying away from Windows based hosting because it’s usually not set up well for open source applications, like WordPress. Here are a few of the characteristics to look out for:

• Shared Server – This means you share your server with other websites. Sharing the hardwarre allows hosting companies to offer the accounts for cheaper. Sites with less than 100K visitors per month won’t appreciate the difference between a shared or dedicated server, so save your money.
• Unlimited features – Hosting has become an inexpensive commodity. Most hosting companies will offer you unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage space, and more. The reason is that they know few accounts actually user their hosting features anywhere near the limits. Steer clear of hosting accounts that impose limits like 1 GB of bandwidth a month because there are enough
• cPanel, ideally with Fantastico – cPanel is a nicely done graphic interface for managing your server. Having it means you don’t need to use a terminal or Unix commands to do tasks like create an email account or create a database. Fantastico is a sweet feature available for cPanel that is an installer for things like WordPress. So to install a WordPress blog using Fantastico makes it a one-click process. Very handy for the new blogger.
• 24/7 domestic phone tech support – I know several big name hosting companies that offer 24/7 domestic phone support, so don’t put up with anything less.
• $10 or less per month – Starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than this or you’re getting hosed.

The further you go in blogging, your needs may become more complex. You might need more bandwidth, more servers, or more privileges. System Administrators and Programmers may want things like shell access or co-location, but these are not concerns for the starting blogger.

Here a few hosting companies that offer the above amenities:

• Bluehost
• Media Temple
• PowWeb

There are some hosting companies that I don’t recommend, such as Go Daddy. They are in the business of upselling, so it’s confusing to work with them because you have to constantly turn down sales pitches.