Small Website Hosting - Internet Marketing and web development » Wordpress

Choosing Web Hosting Provider for Your WordPress-powered Site: Myths Debunked

admin — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:26:13 +0000

If you want to build a website based on WordPress CMS, you need to decide probably the most important thing in website building: Choosing the Best Web Hosting for your WordPress-powered website.

First things first – let’s debunk some myths in hosting your WordPress-powered website:

Myth #1: Any web hosting settings will do

Facts: Not all web hosting are created the same; each web hosting provider comes with its own plus and minuses. When you are about to establish a WP-powered website, be sure you understand that WordPress is built using PHP programming language and stores information on mySQL database.

Those being said, you need to know that PHP/mySQL works best on Linux hosting. WordPress can actually run on Windows hosting, but there are some limitations that you don’t want to encounter, especially if you are a novice programmer on non-techie guy.

Even better, you need to look for the Best WordPress Hosting provider. Such web hosting provider is similar to other web hosting providers, except the fact that the web hosting provider is WordPress-savvy: Web servers that optimized for WordPress and Support team members who really understand WordPress inside-out.

Myth #2: Using cheap web hosting will do

Fact: Cheap web hosting is, well, cheap for some reasons. Even if the cheap hosting offers unlimited diskspace and bandwidth, you need to understand that the most expensive resource is actually your web hosting provider’s web server CPU.

Cheap means quantity, so expect your cheap web hosting provider to oversell web server spaces that will results in your WordPress-powered site to run slow, even got suspended for excessive CPU usage.

That being said, WordPress installations are resource-hogger, even when they are optimized or cached. WP-powered sites will run well on “regular” shared hosting, but when the hosting provider oversells, you will get yourself into trouble.

Also, please be aware that cheap web hosting usually comes at the expense of reliability. Cheap and reliable won’t really happen in real life, I suppose.

If you want more affordable web hosting, choose the reliable one offering attractive discounts instead of going for cheap – indeed, discount web hosting is way much better than cheap web hosting.

Myth #3: WordPress installation is a real hassle

Fact: No. Did you know that you can do a 1-click WordPress installation when you choose the right web hosting provider? Such capability is being offered by web hosting provider installing instant installation scripts, such as Fantastico De Luxe. All you need to do is just filling some details, and with one click of a button, WordPress will be installed in seconds.

Unfortunately, not all web hosting providers offer such luxury. Be sure to ask the customer service regarding the availability of such feature.

How Important is Hosting Your WordPress-powered Site with WordPress Hosting

admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:14:28 +0000

Yes – we spot them everywhere: “We are WordPress-friendly… we are WordPress-savvy… We are 100% compatible with WordPress.” How important is it anyway to host your WordPress-powered site on WordPress hosting?

My short answer would be: Very important. Why?

I run dozens of WordPress-powered sites, including blogs, and host them on some web hosting providers. I’m hosting them on green hosting, WordPress blog hosting, cloud hosting, and those that are somewhere in the middle.

Now, green hosting, cloud hosting and such are great in their own way. But in order to run your WordPress-powered sites, you need more than just fast, reliable and stable web hosting that seems to be offered by almost all web hosting providers; you need web hosting provider, which web servers’ environment is WordPress-friendly.

Some issues when hosting your site on “general” web hosting that doesn’t claim to be a WordPress hosting:

Memory allocation problems

This is a common error for a WordPress-powered site that uses lots of plugins. Some WP plugins developers are simply don’t care about efficient and effective coding, in such a way that they eat so much memory.

Some web hosting providers have a default memory limit of 32M. Some WordPress sites can’t run well for less than 64M, no matter how much optimization applied to the sites (such as using WP SuperCache, activate caching in wp-config.php, etc.) The remedies are not obscure, but this is a hassle, somehow.

White screen of death

Just like in Microsoft Windows products, iPods, MacOS, etc., WordPress also has this scary sign of something wrong happening to a blog or site: A blank, white screen called White Screen of Death (or popularly known as WSoD.)

The cause is probably plugins conflict, but did you know that host your WP-powered site on a wrong web hosting means your site is not run on a 100% WP compatible web hosting?

Non-WordPress-savvy support

The Live Chat and support email are great (especially those of HostGator – the best of all, IMO) but some are offering support based on their expertise on PHP/mySQL. Depending on the Support Staff, getting your WP-related issues across well to the staff is a challenge, simply because he/she is not WordPress-savvy.

WP WebHost is probably having the most WP-proficient web hosting servers and support team, but the drawback is their limited hosting space and bandwidth.

A conclusion: Host your WordPress-powered site with WordPress hosting provider

I want to emphasize that I strongly suggest you to host your WordPress-powered site with WordPress-savvy web hosting, especially if you don’t want to meddle with php.ini, .htaccess, wp-config.php or wp-settings.php, even reinstalling your WordPress script in order to get your WordPress site works normal.

The choice is yours, really. But if you asked me, my top choice is still HostGator – I’ve been with them since the beginning, and they have delivered a stellar all-around web hosting services – including those that WordPress-specific requirements – on regular basis.

Why Blog Commenting for SEO and Link Building Purposes Sucks

admin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:10:37 +0000

With all due respect to SEO Specialists out there, I think blog commenting sucks. Period.

I used to utilise this link and traffic building method, but not anymore. Why? Because I myself is being bombarded by individuals and SEO experts alike with comments that successfully avoid my Akismet spam scanning, but contains, umm, useless and, sometimes, tasteless comments (How “Here are some dating tips for geeks” comment in my articles about web hosting sounds?)

I know there is a hint of “geekiness” in each of us webmasters and web developers – But, c’mon…

To worsen things, I have dozen of blogs, receiving dozens of comments (statistically, about 50% of them are spams – both blatant and subtle.)

I conclude that all the blog commenting for SEO and link building purposes are done for two purpose: traffic building (by trying to be among the firsts to comment on an authoritative blog post) and link building (especially on dofollow blogs.)

Abusing CommentLuv and similar WP Plugins

Blog commenting on WordPress blogs, especially on those that use CommentLuv and similar plugins, is sucks, as well. It’s like slapping Andy Beard’s campaign of dofollowing blog comments. His campaign promotes quality commenting with genuine intention to offer opinions first, and link/traffic building second.

Abusing Top Commentator and similar WP Plugins

I used to utilise “Top Commentator” WordPress plugins on top blogs in order to get my links on the Top 5 position, sitewide – With dofollow attribute. I suck and those who do just that suck, too.

Luckily, the Top Commentator plugin developer updates it regularly, so that it gives blog owners a power to customise the listing of top commentators, including the addition of every website owner’s life-saver vs. “malicious” blog commenters : nofollow tagging.

Abusing RSS subscription to be the first to know when your “target” blogs are posting articles

RSS readers and alerts are cool, but some use them to be the first commentator on the blog posts (a spoiler: This works wonder for me – Free, residual traffic to your blog, even weeks after the post date.) But you are not supposedly to do this by posting spam or junk comments!

How for us to avoid “suckiness” from artificial blog commentators

Learning from my own experience, I stop doing blog commenting for the sake of SEO/link building. Today, I comment on blogs because I enjoy the blog posts and want to tell the world what I think of the blog post.

I do still think about traffic and link building, but those fall deep, deep down in my SEO campaign checklist. I want people to pay a visit and link to my website/blog from the useful comments I write on other blogs. It’s probably the whitest hat SEO ever, but I enjoy and feel right doing it (just like the blog owners who do carbon offsetting to support a greener, environmentally friendly blogging practice.)

What’s your view about blog commenting?

The Benefit of Using PHP Include Function in Optimizing Your WordPress Blog Theme

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:42:37 +0000

I’m always a fan of PHP’s Include function, especially in tweaing WordPress theme.

Aside from core WordPress theme functions and common use of Include in PHP-based programming, I found some use of it in term of safe-tweaking your WordPress blog theme’s codes.

Here’s an example. Suppose you want to have your Google AdSense code embedded into the top of your WordPress blog’s index.php. Sure, you can add the code right away into index.php – However, I enjoy using Include function to embed the AdSense code. No WordPress plugin necessary…

Here’s how:

I create, for example, adsense-code-top.php file containing your Google AdSense code.
I then include the file into index.php by putting in the place I desire, for example, below the header.

Here are some benefits of using your custom Include function in your WordPress blog.

If you happen to crash your WordPress blog due to coding errors, you can easily check what and where the errors are by looking into your custom PHP files, instead of your WordPress theme files.
You can edit your codes faster by looking at the right custom PHP files you create, instead of scanning hundreds lines of WordPress codes.
You increase your WordPress blog’s coding usability – If you have someone tweak your blog’s theme codes, you can make her life easier by having your add-on organized in custom files (of course, don’t use obscure file name for your custom files – e.g. adsense-code.php is way much better than custom169236.php.

If you have other tips, please share by commenting on this post

OIO Publisher Ad Spaces Management WordPress Plugin – Automate Your Advertising Management

admin — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:19:27 +0000

I’ve recently purchased a WordPress plugin that automates blog advertising management – OIO Publisher.

I genuinely think that this WordPress plugin is one of the must-have plugin if you are serious about making money online.

Why? Because ads management can be confusing, at times. You have to manage your advertising clients’ payment. Be thankful if your clients want to use auto-payment subscription. If your clients are not comfortable with payment subscription, contacting and renewing the client ads are really a hassle. Make that a headache if you have dozens of advertising clients and dozens of websites – even hundreds

The following are some of the main benefits of OIO Publisher you can’t deny

OIO Publisher eliminates the need for middlemen

Using advertising management service, such as BuySellAds.com, cost you a large chunk of percentage from your ad sales. Not good.

You might say that BuySellAds.com has a perk: A marketplace that exposes your ads sales more. If you think that as a perk, think again – OIO Publisher manages your ads without the need of any middlemen, plus you can list your website on OIO Publisher Marketplace.

OIO Publisher Ad Server allows you to manage many ads on many sites in one centralized location

If you run multiple websites or blogs, you will find this WordPress plugin very helpful and powerful – OIO Publisher can have your blog as an ad server, managing ad spaces on your network of sites and blogs on a single, centralized, place.

OIO Publisher can run on non-Wordpress powered websites

Yes, OIO Publisher can manage ads on non-Wordpress powered websites, through the embeddable Javascript. Of course, you need the Ad Server to be set up on your WordPress-powered site.

Not only on blogs, I have OIO manage ads on my PHPLD-powered and eSyndicat-powered web directories How’s that for flexibility?

How much OIO Publisher will cost me?

The plugin costs $47, and if you want to claim it now, you can have $10 discount using this OIO Publisher promo code: INDIGO-NOOB0509

In my opinion, $47 ($37 with the promo code) is a small investment that can return you exponentially in your resource management. Managing ads is time consuming, and hiring staff can drain your cash – Stop managing your ads manually, start managing your ads automatically with OIO Publisher.

Float ad wordpress plugin

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:47:15 +0000

This plugin is a floating ad plugin. You can place your ad at the top of your blog and it will stay there although you scroll the page. You can comment about the plugin here. See the demo here. Download the plugin here.

To install the plugin:

Upload the plugin files to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Place displayad(); ?> right after the tag on your theme file. You could probably find it at header.php.

To customise the look of the float ad, you can do so from your WordPress Admin Panel under the Settings Tab. To do even more customisation, you can do so from the CSS file inside the CSS Folder.

If you find our WordPress plugin useful, please consider donating…

Statistic wordpress plugin

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:09:26 +0000

Just created a simple statistic wordpress plugin. With this plugin you can see:

Today page view stat
Today referer stat

You can download it here.

If you have comment, critic, or suggestion please write it here.

If you find our WordPress plugin useful, please consider donating to us…

How to move your blog to subfolder

admin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:44:57 +0000

Often you need to move your blog from www.domain.com to www.domain.com/test. You might want to test something and does not want to interfere with your blog. A way to do this is by creating a clone of your blog in subfolder. So how do you do it? Assume that your blog is at www.domain.com, here’s how:

Download database backup plugin from http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup.
Activate the plugin
Backup your database using your plugin. Go to ‘Manage’ -> ‘Backup’ menu. Choose ‘All tables’ and download the backup file to your computer. You will get a zip file with .sql file in it.
Extract the .sql file
Backup the .sql file. You can just copy the .sql file to another folder
Open the .sql file using notepad.
Replace ‘http://domain.com’ with ‘http://domain.com/test’
Create a new wordpress blog at sub folder i.e. www.domain.com/test
Loggin into your phpmyadmin. You usually can find your phpmyadmin at cpanel.
Click databases, and select the database that you will be importing your data into.
Across the top of the screen will be a row of tabs. Click the Import tab.
On the next screen will be a Location of Text File box, and next to that a button named Browse.
Click Browse. Locate the .sql file stored on your computer which you have modified using notepad.
Make sure the SQL radio button is checked.
Click the Go button.
You should now have a new blog at http://domain.com/test.
Contact me if you have any problem.

Tips

If you have huge database, you might want to reduce the size so you can import small database. What makes the database that huge is usually your post. So in order to reduce the size, you need to delete some post in the .sql file. Open the .sql file and search ‘wp_posts’ word. Find something like : “INSERT INTO `wp_posts` (`ID`, `post_author`, `post_date`, `post_date_gmt`, `post_content`, `post_title`, `post_category`, `post_excerpt`, `post_status`, `comment_status`, `ping_status`, `post_password`, `post_name`, `to_ping`, `pinged`, `post_modified`, `post_modified_gmt`, `post_content_filtered`, `post_parent`, `guid`, `menu_order`, `post_type`, `post_mime_type`, `comment_count`) VALUES
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x),
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x),
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x)”.

This is the command to insert data to your database. So you need to remove the
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x). To see the difference download this zip file, and compare the two files. The old.sql will insert two data, while the new.sql will only insert one data.

Collapsable menu plugin for wordpress

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:58:36 +0000

I have just created a collapsable menu plugin. This plugin is very useful if you have child category. For example if you have finance category, stock and option subcategory. You would only create article and sign it to the subcategory. To understand what the plugin do, see the image below:

‘Uncategorized’ menu has no sub category, so when you click it it will go to the ‘Uncategorized’ category page.
‘Category 1′ menu has ‘Category 2′ and ‘Cat baru’ sub category. If you click on ‘Category 1′. I will show the show sub category, and if you click it again it will hide the sub category.

Download the plugin here. The plugin is also hosted at here.

If you find our WordPress plugin useful, please consider donating…

Optimize your blog ads

admin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:07:42 +0000

You must show related ads on your blog to make more sales. I have just tweak my ads at my money blog. I have joined two affiliate products: stock product and forex product. So the right way to display these ads is to display in its related page. SO what I did was displaying the stock product in the stock category page, and show the forex product in the forex category page.

What I did was do some coding in the category.php file of current theme:

– your ad code here

The code says that if current page is category 20, then display the ad. You can find out the ID of category by going to the “Manage Categories” page setting, where it will list all of your category for your blog. Hover your mouse above the “Category Name” you want to check, the status bar of your explorer will show the link to edit the category. The link will contain ‘cat_ID‘. This is your category ID.