WordPress is one of the most sought after, simplest and free software for creating and managing your website. Whether you want to make a personal blog, web portal, or a small or large business site, you can do it all with ease with WordPress. It is due to this reason that more and more websites are using WordPress as their CMS (content management system). And as a result, most of the popular web hosting providers today offer WordPress hosting.
Benefits of using WordPress
Apart from being an open source software, WordPress has many other benefits:
- You can install it through auto-install scripts like Fantastico, Softaculous, SimpleScripts, etc. You can have your site up and running in less than 30 minutes.
- You can set up and customize your site according to your preferences. You can add different themes, and install plugins and widgets.
- You get many topnotch features like allowing visitors to leave comments, protecting your site against spam, allowing several authors to collaboratively add content to your site, etc.
- WordPress offers best security against virus and security threats.
- You get to choose from many different hosting plans at a very affordable price.
Server requirements for installing WordPress
WordPress is a PHP based software that uses MySQL for backend database. If you intend to run WordPress, then you should ensure that your hosting company offers the following:
- PHP 5.2.4 or higher (for running WordPress 3.2)
- MySQL 5.0 or higher (for running WordPress 3.2)
- Apache or Nginx server is recommended but not compulsory.
- For better security, the web host should allow you to use your own username instead of the default username of the server that is common for all.
What to look for in WordPress hosting?
First and foremost, decide whether you require shared hosting, VPS hosting or dedicated hosting. Usually, beginners go for shared hosting, and later if needed, upgrade to VPS or dedicated hosting. You should consider the following points while buying a web hosting account for WordPress:
- It should support the required versions of PHP and MySQL, and meet other requirements for installing and running WordPress.
- It should have an easy to use web hosting control panel; cPanel is quite popular.
- Having an auto install script like Softaculous, Fantastico, SimpleScripts, etc. makes it easy to install WordPress.
- Look for other standard things like server uptime, file backups, security, customer support, etc.
