My current host is a NIGHTMARE. I'm sure many of you can figure out who it is, but I'm planning on switching to HostGator after hearing rave reviews from most DP members. I plan on making the move before March and have a few questions for anyone using their service. First, is my main concern. I run a WordPress blog and average 750-1000 uniques per day, but it takes, on average, 4-5 seconds to just BEGIN loading a WP page. This is extremely frustrating for me and I'm sure the average reader will hate to sit through these load times. So, do you run a WP blog and if so, how well does it perform? Second, switching hosts. I have 5 domains and about 50 email addresses with my current host. Is it easy to make the transfer? Finally, I'm stuck deciding between their Baby and Swamp plans. Will I see any increase in performance over one or the other? As far as I can tell, the only difference is bandwidth and diskspace. Thanks. Also, please don't try and sell my your hosting plan. I'm not interested.
Well, the current version of WP, 2.1.1 is very much optimized in terms of mysql queries and code, so the traffic you posted shouldn't be a problem to handle if you use the current version and do not overuse plugins etc. Also, there's a plugin called WPCache2 which helps reduce the load...but its not 100% bug free though. In general, HG servers perform well in terms of speed. Also, the speed you receive at your end is also depenedent upon your ISP and data path taken. Should not be a problem...if you have cpanel on old host, ask your host to make a full backup of the accounts. Give them to HG and they'll restore everything. The baby plan is enough. The only difference between baby and swamp plan other than space/bw is the allowed resource usage limits. swamp allows higher cpu and resource usage. I'd also suggest you to go through HostGator Reviews and Coupons by DP users before ordering an account.
Thanks agnivo. With WordPress I have about 8 plugins installed, all are pretty much necessary, and my current host takes forever to load pages. I've spend the last few hours searching for BIG WP blogs hosted on HostGator and they all seemed to load relatively fast. Much faster than what I'm getting now. I don't have cpanel, so I'll have to manually backup and restore everything. Thanks for your help, I checked out the review site also.
Good advice there matey. I am just about to move away from HG and another host through to a dedicated server fully designed for optimal speed and security. It's costing me an arm and a leg but it's one step closer to hosting everything I have on my own servers. All on my own servers pretty much allows me unlimited power and capacity in the long run. Col
Since I don't currently have the resources, or the need for a dedicated server, I'm going to go with HG. I'm assuming you had pretty good experiences with them?
Yep it's a little akward when you move to a dedi all of a sudden then later it feels good. BTW, having many sites on a single dedi box generally does'nt give you different class C IPs though.
Thanks. I am aware of that. Not worried about that at all actually. 95% of my clients never even worry about it because all they see is a fair whack of link juice and a big spike in traffic. The feedback comments from my network posts are awesome. It can only get better. Col
So I made the switch last night, the DNS propagated, and everything is in perfect working order. Support was incredibly fast and HostGator kicks ass. Extremely pleased with the move.