Im getting sick of my old host and was wondering if anyone can recommend any solid hosting companies that have Wordpress and Joomla.
Ok, so you need a hosting provider that supports PHP and MySQL. Fortunately a lot of hosting providers support that right out the box. Understand that PHP 4 support has officialy ceased to exist (and most major - read: respectable - hosting providers are expected to drop PHP 4 hosting later this year if they haven't started doing so already), so you're going to want to make sure your Joomla/WordPress installation and plugins will support PHP 5. Now, rather than just pull a name out of my hat, I'm going to ask you some questions. How much disk space are you currently using? How much disk space did you use this time last year? How much (percentage wise) has that disk space increased over the past year? Using the answers to the previous three questions, calculate how much disk space you expect to use over the next 2-3 years. Do the hosting providers that have been recommended to you thus far have enough capacity (make sure there's no overselling involved) to handle the kind of disk space usage you've just predicted? How much bandwidth (in megabytes) per month are you currently using? How much bandwidth (in megabytes) did you normally use per month last year? Just like with the third question, check the rate of increase in megabytes (since 1,024 MB is equal to one GB) and use that to predict how much bandwidth you think you'll be using over the next 2-3 years. Do the hosting providers that have been recommended thus far have the capability to handle that kind of traffic? Now look at the information you've gathered. Ignoring things like CPU and GPU usage for now, how do the various hosting providers' "shared hosting" plans stack up? Do you think they can reasonably support your projected increases in disk space and bandwidth? If not, look at their reseller hosting (you don't have to use the reseller option if you don't want to, but it can help). If that's still not enough, I'd look into getting a dedicated server. If you need the resources of a dedicated server but can't afford one, then you'll want to look into getting a virtual private server instead. Next, look at the fine print in the Terms of Service of every hosting provider you're considering. If they limit you to rediculoulsy low CPU and GPU or database calls, run the hell away from them and don't look back. Such hosting providers are good for people running low-bandwidth static HTML/CSS sites only. If you try hosting with them, you'll quickly find yourself paying through nose in "overage fees" in short order and you don't want that. Another thing to do is check to see how many other domains are hosted on their servers. A reverse DNS lookup is usually sufficient to check for this, as many of them will flat out tell you how many domains are hosted on a server. If there's a LOT of domains, chances are VERY likely that they're over-selling and wouldn't be able to support you if your blog/CMS site becomes popular, gets Slashdotted, mentioned on the front page of a popular site such as SitePoint, Ars Technica, Technoratti, Digg, TechCrunch, and so forth. Avoid them like the plague as well. In the end, you should have a list of 2-3 hosting providers that meet these requirements that may meet your hosting needs. If you do, great. Start looking at independent hosting reviews of these providers. Be careful of sites that appear spammy or have only good things to say about a hosting provider - chances are they were probably bought off. Independent sites such as Web Hosting Talk will be far better in terms of quality anyway, so you'll want to look there when conducting your reviews. Also searching in two or more search engines will help as well. If nothing pans out, start the whole process over (save for the first part where you answered those questions) and begin your search anew.
I read that both siteground and hostgator are good hosts for joomla and wordpress sites. I've used hostgator in the past and have no problems.
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