Getting WordPress To Work (My Hosting Gripes)

In the past week I have pondered the question: “How much time is too much time to spend getting something to work?” It seems like I have spent most of the week trying to get things to work, most of it time I will never get back. Often, when it is for me, I seek out an alternative, make something from scratch or postpone it indefinitely. When it is for a client I have to be more careful about when I draw the line. If it doesn’t work, how much time should I spend hacking it to work when doing so obviously “voids the warranty”. But that is a whole other subject.

This week I learned that not all hosting works with WordPress not matter what hosting companies sell you on.

I have a client who is hosted on Yahoo Small Business and he hadn’t noticed that his RSS feeds don’t work. Of course if you have a blog with no valid RSS feed, very few people will be able to pick you up. Yahoo promotes a plan at less than 9$ a month for hosting that support WordPress in one click.

This one click installs a crack version of WordPress 2.3.2 with permanently active plugins that promote Yahoo!’s services over others. I suspect this is killing the regular feed but I couldn’t find documentation about it.

Officially Yahoo! is NOT recommended by WordPress for hosting anymore but the articles promoting the fact that it used to be are still coming out first in Web searches.

I convinced my client to move to my own hosting service because of the shady plugin situation and also because Yahoo! Small Business hosting in painfully slow. It takes me 35 seconds to log into the dashboard! I have never had trouble running blogs off 1&1 and host all my beginner blogger friends and non-profits on my own developer account. I find it’s easy for my clients to find their way around the slick management interface (much easier than CPanel). One thing that is interesting with 1&1 is that the hosting is very generous with domain pointing, databases and even free domains included. The 1&1 Home package has 2 domains included with others being 6.99$ per year. You can build a blogging empire with an account costing as little as 40$ a year. Right now this plan is free for 3 months with no cost to setup.

I love having alternatives.

As an experiment I subscribed myself and one of my clients to A Small Orange. I had been a client before and never really used the account to its full potential. I like that company nonetheless. They offer quick competent support via e-mail with people who never make you fell like you are dumb for asking a question. I could not get WordPress installed because of a permission issue. Incorrect permissions prevent you from being able to edit your code or plugin files and don’t allow for SEO-friendly permalinks to be used. I tried installing WordPress every which way it could be done (manually, Fantastico, SSH, etc.) to no avail. I tried to fix the permissions manually after the install. I followed the clear and quick instructions I got from customer service to a tee and still failed to make WordPress work. I looked into the forum and tried implementing the tips I found there but failed miserably and informed the support that I reached my limit and would like a refund. I gave it a day of back and forth and that is a VERY long time by my standards. I figured if I found the solution I would put all my clients on ASO by default as the price cannot be beat.

I am used to installing and configuring WordPress in 15-30 minutes and that is why I charge very little for doing it for others. I’d rather spend my time fixing complicated problems or customizing WordPress than installing it.