Tips on searching for a good Blog Hosting

Although there’s no difference between blog hosting and web(site) hosting, i just want to put it here again but instead of talking about what to look for when choosing a webhosting like on my previous post, this time i'm going to give you some tips on what to look for in a good blog hosting company (although most of this are for wordpress blogging platform, but i’ll try to make it general .. with the exception, this is for linux based server not for windows based server)

Check their Terms of Service

Well before starting to get a new blog hosting company, first you must check their TOS. Especially if you’re going to create blog that talks about .. adult material, illegal thing, or something like that .. because if they didn't allow you to put / create site / blog like that, you’ll see your blog has been deleted by them with/without telling you first.

Server Uptime & Money Back Guarantee

This is the most important thing of all, because in order to get visitors for your site. Your blog must be accessible to everyone. And that means if you’re going to be serious about blogging, the first thing to do is search for a web hosting company that provides excellent uptime. But how do you check if their uptime is good ? because they’re not going to let you put something on their server without signing up first with them. That’s why i told you to check for their money back policy, if they’re really a good and trusted webhosting company. They’ll give you 30 days money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with their service. As a suggestion, try to get a linux server instead of windows server to make thing simpler for you.

Check your server capabilities

Some blog software out there required some module to be installed on your server, some sql database, etc. and because you’re using a Shared Server (server that’s being used by several other site), you must check your server capabilities first. And in order to do this, you can simply create one php file. Click here for more info about this

By the way , if you’re going to use Wordpress as your blogging platform, and going to use Permalink / Nice url (you can see it here on my site at the browser address bar). Your webhosting company must enabled the modrewrite. (if they’re using Apache Server, but don't worry about this because most linux based server are using Apache HTTP Server)

Also for maximum compatibility, you should get yourself a webhosting that’s using PHP4 (not PHP5) with MySQL 4.1 as the backend for the SQL Database.

If your webhosting use FastCGI

Well there’s some problem especially if you’re using Wordpress on server with FastCGI especially about HTTP Header issue (don't worry about this if you don't understand what that means), by the way if you’re going to use Godaddy webhosting as your server, please be note that they’re using FastCGI (well i always check everything when i use webhosting service from some company) .. because i’ve been there before but they’re doing really great at helping their customer :

Here’s one of the support email i received after asking about the HTTP Status Header issue from them (when i was using Godaddy as my webhosting few months ago)

Our support staff has responded to your request, details of which are described below:

Discussion Notes
Support Staff Response
Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for contacting customer support. Our admins determined the error was due to a fastcgi/apache conflict with wordpress. The isue was corrected by modifying functions.php in the wordpress directory as follows:

if (substr(php_sapi_name(), 0, 3) == 'cgi')
@header("HTTP/1.1 $header $text");
else
@header("Status: $header $text");

status code is now correct.

HTTP Request Header

Connect to 68.178.232.55 on port 80 ... ok

GET / HTTP/1.1[CRLF]
Host: reaper-x.com[CRLF]
Connection: close[CRLF]
Accept-Encoding: gzip[CRLF]
Accept: BLABLABLA[CRLF]
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5[CRLF]
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7[CRLF]
User-Agent: CENSORED[CRLF]
Referer: CENSORED[CRLF]
[CRLF]

HTTP Response Header
Name Value Delim
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Connection: Close CRLF
Pragma: no-cache CRLF
cache-control: no-cache CRLF
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 CRLF
Content (0.17 KiB)

Your functions.php has been backed up to functions.php-bak

Sincerely,
Brandon E
Advanced Hosting Support

As you can see it’s returning the correct HTTP Status header and that is a 200 (Correct) not 302 (Temporarily Moved) .. anyway forget about this part if you don't understand about it, and to make thing simpler, you can always use other server if you want the easy way.

If your webhosting use PHPSuExec

Sometime you’ll see some wordpress plugin require you to CHMOD some directory so those directory are world writeable (CHMOD 777) .. but in this case because your webhosting is using PHPSuExec that doesn't allow unsecure environment such as world writeable directory, you’ll get 500 Error Message, simply because PHPSuExec doesn’t allow it .. and the only solution is skip every instruction that tell you to CHMOD 777 to a directory

Well that’s all for now … because i already post about this a while ago, so it’d be best if you read my previous post about Tips on Getting a good webhosting and combine it with this post so you can start your own self hosted blog easily. (beside if i post the whole thing again it’ll be pointless because no one like to read long story) .. am i right ? :P