Archive for the ‘wordpress hosting’ Category

WordPress Hosting Special

Our WordPress hosting offer comes with Free recommended plugins and Free WordPress themes for your website. We have provided support for WordPress websites since WordPress was created in 2003. Let our experience in WordPress help you get your website started off right! Our plan has the following great features you will not find ANYWHERE:

• Auto Installed WP 3.0
• One-click install of our over 50 Recommended Plugins
• Free Domain Registration!
• Free WordPress Themes from Solarblu.net
• Free Beginner Support For WordPress

Our WordPress Web Hosting Service Starts at $4.95 a month. If you need further assistance throughout your webhosting experience we offer WordPress Videos that are targeted towards beginners. We offer WordPress Management for those who need ongoing support and maintenance for WordPress Hosting, E-commerce, SEO, Plugin Installation and configuration and more… Check with us today to find out more.

 

Why Mariehosting WordPress Hosting?

We have provided technical support for over 250,000 clients since 2003. Our experience in supporting clients in different industries from corporate, small business, manufacturing, clerical, music, photography, DJ, Special events, Television, Video Casting, hospitality,  insurance, stock market, financial planning, legal, health and E-Commerce is second to none. We have more experience than ANYONE, getting these services from multiple companies would cost you a lot. We are happy to offer our hosting and expertise at an affordable price to everyone. We  offer solutions to add to your WordPress web hosting package that are both beneficial and cost affective to help you do business on today’s internet.

Why Build my website with WordPress ?

The face of the internet changes everyday. We could tell you one of the biggest reasons to use WordPress is its ease of use, its ability to be customized by adding plugins, its easy-to-update software, or even its ability to help you get your business growing. But we won’t What we will tell you is that WordPress is one of the most popular Content management Systems on the internet. Even for building a 5 page website about your business. Its so Easy we have automated the installation process for you! We have included plugins that our experience with over 500 clients has given us. We have worked with our parent company to produce WordPress themes that give you the ability to make your website your own. You can also upload your own theme or find a free one from WordPress.

Unheard of WordPress Support

Here are questions you should ask any company that you want to host your WordPress website with:

• Can you help me back up my website ?
• Can you help me capture website leads ?
• Can you help me learn basic SEO ?
• Can you help me find the right tools to track visitors to my website ?
• Can you provide videos to help me learn WordPress ?
• Can you provide support in English from America ?
• Can you take care of installing WordPress for me ?
• Can you select a few plugins that will help me get started ?
• Can you provide some really cool, unique themes that yoru company has developed for clients ?
• Can you tell me what a permalink is ? Can you update my permalink to be SEO friendly like Mariehosting.com Does ?
• Do you know how to reset the admin password for WordPress ? In less than 10 minutes ?

WE DO ALL OF THE ABOVE!

Go ahead try to find another hosting company As we grow your list of WordPress Web Hosting features is going to grow. We listen to our WordPress Webhosting Clients and give them what they are really looking for.

Additional Services Only Offered by Mariehosting.com WordPress WebHosting

• PSD TO HTML TO WordPress Developement through our parent company Solarblu.net
• Migration of WordPress Webhosting to a new Webhosting company
• WordPress management, yes for a small fee we can help you with any questions and issues you have with wordpress. We even provide this to people who do not host with us
• Help finding new plugins to help you out with your website
• WordPress Blog with new WordPress tips and tricks
• Did I tell you about our new videos ?

 

 

 

 

Here at Mariehosting.com spring is in full affect. We have updated our WordPress hosting offers, prices, plugins and themes. We hope you like. Feel free to contact us with any questions about our WordPress hosting! These plugins are included with all of our WordPress hosting packages.

Plugins Foundation – Documentation

These Plugins are broken down for you by difficulty and usefulness. If you need help using any of them please let us know, we will be glad to help you out.

 

Core Basic Plugins (Easy to Configure)

Advanced Permalinks By John Godley

Allows multiple permalink structures, migration of permalinks without redirections, permalinks for posts in specific categories, and categories without a base

Hotfix By Mark Jaquith

Provides “hotfixes” for selected WordPress bugs, so you don’t have to wait for the next WordPress core release. Keep the plugin updated!

MCE Table Buttons By Jake Goldman

Add buttons for table editing to the WordPress WYSIWYG editor with this light weight plug-in.

Override Post Title with First Content Heading By Weston Ruter

By default, the_title() in The Loop returns post_title; if, however, this needs to be overridden so that a custom heading is displayed (i.e. for SEO), then either an h1 or h2 element may be supplied at the beginning of the post_content and this will replace the post_title in the content.

Post-views By Suny Tse

Record how many times the post have been views and show it.

ShowID for Post/Page/Category/Tag/Comment By Fumito Mizuno

This plugin shows post/page/category/tag/comment/media/user IDs on admin’s edit post/page/category/tag/commentmedia/user pages. You can see the IDs when you visit an edit post/page/category/tag/comment/media/user page.

Yoast Breadcrumbs By Joost de Valk

Outputs a fully customizable breadcrumb path.

Duplicate Post By Enrico Battocchi

Clone posts and pages.

Page Links To By Mark Jaquith

Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.

Image Management and Galleries (Some Difficulty)

Enable Media Replace By Måns Jonasson

Enable replacing media files by uploading a new file in the “Edit Media” section of the WordPress Media Library.

Flexible Lightbox By Alain Gonzalez

Integrate Lightbox into your blogs. Open Images and Native Galleries on the popup overlay window without touching the html code. On the image setting panel you can select if you want to ‘Open using Lightbox’.

NextGEN Gallery By Alex Rabe

A NextGENeration Photo Gallery for WordPress

vSlider By Mr.Vibe

Implementing a featured image gallery into your WordPress theme has never been easier! Showcase your portfolio, animate your header or manage your banners with vSlider.Create unlimited image sliders, the best wordpress image slider plugin vSlider.

Social Media, Ratings, Testimonials, Advertising (Some Difficulty)

(( WP Twitter ))By Fabrix DoRoMo

Is a plugin that creates a integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account, including a BookMarklet.

GD Star Rating By Milan Petrovic

GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up advanced rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog using single, multi and thumbs ratings.

ShareThis By ShareThis, Manu Mukerji

Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.

Simple Facebook Connect and “STC -” plugins By Otto

Makes it easy for your site to use Facebook Connect, in a wholly modular way.

Simple Twitter Connect – Base By Otto

Makes it easy for your site to use Twitter, in a wholly modular way.

Social Media Widget By Brian Freytag

Adds links to all of your social media and sharing site profiles. Tons of icons come in 3 sizes, 4 icon styles, and 4 animations.

WP125 By Matt Harzewski

Easily manage 125×125 ads within your WordPress Dashboard.

TB Testimonials By Travis Ballard

Testimonials managed by Custom Post Types. Supports a testimonial.php template file for single testimonial pages. Testimonial Shortcode to insert testimonials in any post. Scrolling Sidebar Widget

Contact/Lead Management and Tracking (Some Difficulty)

Google Analytics Tracking For Forms By Peter Shilling

This plugin allows you to obtain data from the Google Analytics tracking cookie (__utmz) and send it though any HTML form that you have in your WordPress site. Plugin works with form plugins like Gravity forms as well as hand coded HTML forms.

Gravity Forms By Rocketgenius Inc

Easily create web forms and manage form entries within the WordPress admin.

Registration (Easy to Configure)

Register Plus By Skullbit

Enhance your Registration Page. Add Custom Logo, Password Field, Invitation Codes, Disclaimer, Captcha Validation, Email Validation, User Moderation, Profile Fields and more.

 

Spam Prevention (Easy to Configure)

Really Simple CAPTCHA By Takayuki Miyoshi

Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins.

Akismet By Automattic

Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam.

E-Commerce (Advanced Configuration)

WP e-Commerce By Instinct Entertainment

A plugin that provides a WordPress Shopping Cart.

­

Gold Cart for WP e-Commerce By GetShopped.org

Gold Cart extends your WP e-Commerce store by enabling additional features and functionality, including views, galleries, store search and payment gateways.

 

SEO Search Engine Optimization (Some Difficulty)

Automatic SEO Links By Emilio

Allow PHP in posts and pages allows you to add php functionality to WordPress Posts and Pages whilst still retaining HTML tags

WordPress SEO By Joost de Valk

The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and much more.

Google XML Sitemaps By Arne Brachhold

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

 

Advanced Features (Advanced User)

Allow PHP in posts and pages By Hit Reach

Allow PHP in posts and pages allows you to add php functionality to WordPress Posts and Pages whilst still retaining HTML tags

DirtySuds – Embed PDF By Dirty Suds

Embed a PDF using Google Docs Viewer

Query Posts By Justin Tadlock

A widget that allows you to show posts (or any post type) in any way you’d like on your site.

Wp-cache By Ricardo Galli Granada

Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”.

WP-DBManager By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan

Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of database.

WP-Filebase By Fabian Schlieper

Adds a powerful downloads manager supporting file categories, download counter, widgets, sorted file lists and more to your WordPress blog.

 

Video management

Video Thumbnails By Sutherland Boswell

Automatically retrieve video thumbnails for your posts and display them in your theme. Currently supports YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Justin.tv, Dailymotion and Metacafe.

Who we are

We are a very diverse group that has many years in the web hosting industry. We believe that everyone should get great customer service. We believe you should be able get help managing your website. over the years we have taken hundreds of thousands of technical support calls. A lot of customers have asked us “who can help me with my site?” We believe that there should be no line drawn between your webhosting company and your website designer. We offer managed web hosting for customers who need updates, and help with their hosting account. Need a link updated on your site? Need help setting up a new email account ? Our managed service is what you need when you need help and want to spend time running your business.

Why us

Our prices are competitive. We offer basic webhosting as well as managed web hosting. Need technical support for an hour ? Need help installing or updating wordpress ? Need to understand technical terms ? We have you covered. When it comes to FTP, wordpress, PHP, mysql, bandwidth, phishing, spam complaints, domain registration. Don’t worry about not having all the answers, we are here to help you out.

Our Story

Marie was the name of our relative who was killed in a domestic violence altercation in October of 2006. Her name was Danielle Marie. A percentage of all our sales go towards helping charities. We believe that even $1 can help someone else in need. We will donate 5% or more of our profits to charities that help many causes.

Our Support Guarantee

We want to make sure that no matter what happens you get personal and processional service.  We monitor our services and are very passionate about providing a great quality of service to our customers. Unlike other hosting companies we are proactive not reactive. We have an easy to use support system at http://billing.solarblu.net/client/ this will allow you to pay your bills, submit tickets and upgrade your account features.  We may be a new company but we are not new to the web hosting industry, contact us if you would like more information by emailing sales@mariehosting.com

Recent issues at your current wordpress hosting company have you down ? Mariehosting.com will help you migrate your shared hosting wordpress website to mariehosting.com free of charge. Sign up for an account and then submit an email to tech support and we will be more than happy to help you migrate your website. We are experts in wordpress hosting, wordpress web design and more. We are unable to transfer email accounts directly we recommend that you use pop3(instad of Imap) and download all your existing email, If you like to use Imap you can resetup your email box as imap and resynchronize email to the new server. Let us know when you would like us to migrate the site, as it can take up to 48 hours for the new DNS to resolve, we want to make sure the process goes smoothly with no stale data, or downtime.

Here are the steps we take to migrate your existing wordpress website.
1. Export data in phpmyadmin. In order to do this we will need any hosting account information you have access to; control panel login, ftp logins, and mysql information, if you would like us to attempt to transfer your email accounts you will need to provide email addresses and passwords, or we can reset this information for you.
2. Compress wordpress and website files.
3. Import wordpress files to new server.
4. Import database to new server.
5. Configure wordpress site using temporary cpanel user address.
6. Verify installation using temporary cpanel user address.
7. Recommend client updates dns, nameservers to the new hosting account. Let the client know the database, email, mysql database migration process is completed. (checklist with items completed to the client.)

*After updating the dns it can take up to 48 hours for the new nameservers and DNS to propagate the internet. At this time email, and mysql information may become “stale” or out of date.

If you have cpanel hosting currently, we have resources to migrate the account easier then the above steps. We will need your cpanel login information for the current hosting provider in order to migrate your account from one cpanel server to another.

If you are changing hosting companies and need help migrating to a hosting provider that is not mariehositng.com please contact solarblu.net and they will help you migrate your hosting account to a new provider for a small fee.

So you’ve spent countless hours trying to find the best system to use for your new site. Maybe you were lucky and a friend turned you on to WordPress. Now comes the even bigger problem of figuring out where to host the site. While you need to be careful in making your decision, I hope this guide makes it easier for you.

Server requirements for WordPress
WordPress has very basic requirements. All you need is a server with at least PHP 4.3 and MySQL 4.0. WordPress recommends, and I agree with, that you have PHP 5.2, MySQL 4.1 or higher and Apache 2.2 or IIS 7. In the next release, MySQL 4.1.2 or higher will be required.

Support for the Apache web server is much better.

PHP4 development has been stopped, so at this point it is considered insecure. If you notice your server running PHP4 you will want to contact your host and ask about their plans to upgrade. In upcoming versions of WordPress they will be removing support for PHP4 as well, to introduce better functions to help the software run faster.

You will also want to be sure you’re on a server with Apache 2.2. Both PHP and Apache agree that both run best when running PHP5 and Apache 2.2.

Who can cover these requirements?
The majority of hosts will cover the server software requirements. The software, however, is but a very small portion of what needs to be covered. Any host should be using enterprise-grade hardware on it’s servers. This includes at least 2 CPUs with 4 cores each (8 cores total), hard drives in RAID10 configuration and 8 GB of RAM. RAID10 hard drives offer not only the fastest speeds but the greatest redundancy in the case of hardware failure.

Many hosts who run this type of hardware still do a disservice to your site but overselling their servers. This causes your site to be slower than it should be. You can get around this by finding a host with a no overselling guarantee. Finding a host with a no overselling guarantee can greatly increase the probability that your site will run as quickly as it should.

Is your server as fast as it should be
If you are interested in finding out if your site is as fast as it could be, you can add this small bit of code to your site’s footer.php file.

<!–

This code will show the number of MySQL queries made on each page, as well as how long it took the server to generate your HTML code. To make it more difficult for your visitors to see this data, you will not be able to see it by simply looking at your site. You will need to right click on your site and go to View Page Source, then find the output. If you are unsure how to edit files on your site you can view a flash tutorial on

The number you want to see is .3-.5 seconds for most sites.

To get the most of your experience you will want to look for a hosting company that has experience with WordPress, so if you run into an issue you can ask them for help instead of hoping someone on a forum somewhere can help.

Some hosts now even have large knowledgebases and flash tutorial libraries that cover most WordPress topics. If you’re a visual learner, flash tutorials provide walk-throughs of the exact steps needed to do what you need to do.

The single biggest people most people don’t consider when looking at hosts is the backups. But in the world of web hosting, it’s not a question of if you’ll need to use backups, it’s a question of when. This setup often includes just leaving backups on a second drive in the server. Doing backups this way is a ticking timebomb and is asking for trouble. That, and restoring a single file on your site is a huge headache you don’t need. You should be looking for a host that not only stores backups in a separate datacenter, but is using what’s known as continuous data protection (CDP) backups. Using CDP backups you can restore your entire site, or a single file from several different restore points. When you mess up your templates index.php file you don’t want to have to download a week-old cPanel backup, extract it, find your file and upload it. Using CDP there is a web-based interface where all you need to do is click a few buttons and your files are restored.

Is there a host that has all of these items?
The vast majority of hosts will touch at least a few of the points. If you’re a WordPress expert, extended support won’t be as important to you. Two of the harder items to find will be the no overselling guarantee and the CDP backups, but, in my opinion, those are two of the more important things.
hosting for several years. They run the high-powered servers, have the no-overselling guarantee, the WordPress expertise with the knowledgebase and flash tutorials and the continuous data protection backups.

Looking for best affordable web hosting plans including Blog/Wordpress? First take a look at some important features which must be considered when choosing your web hosting company:

Reliability and uptime: Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. It is very important your service be uptime (functioning and available for use). It means you can access your account whenever you want to update your web pages, and users can enter your website whenever they refer to your site address. If your hosting service is not uptime it can be catastrophic!

Disk space: Web hosting space is the amount of room that the web host provides to store your HTML, graphic, video/audio and other files. This figure is most commonly stated in gigabytes. If you don’t know how much space you need for your website, you can choose a web host with unlimited disk space, which allows you to build as many web pages as you want.

Bandwidth: Bandwidth (or data transfer) refers to the amount of data that is accessed by your visitors. Web hosts define bandwidth as the total amount of data access from your server over a month’s time. This figure is most commonly expressed in gigabytes. If you don’t know how much bandwidth you need for your website, you can pick a web host with unlimited data transfer, which allows you to support as many visitors as you want.

Ease of Control Panel: It is important that the control panel is easy to use and all information can be accessed easily.

If you are a beginner it is generally hard to you to pick the right web hosting service. There are many websites which display a couple of web hosting companies as the best and leave people confused without being helpful. To make things even more confusing, some hosting companies are cheating and lying to their customers!

*********************************************************************

All Web Hosts Presented On ThreeHosts.com Include Blog/Wordpress:

is a reliable website to help you make the best choice. Their experts have been evaluating web hosting service providers for years, and now they provide you with the most reliable results. They present the information in an easy to understand format that helps the consumer make the best choice within just a few minutes. This is their purpose, to help you make the right choice the first time.

There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the web hosting industry. They are all easy-to-use and affordable.

Looking for best cheap web hosting plans including Blog/Wordpress? First take a look at some important features which must be considered when choosing your web hosting company:

Reliability and uptime: Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. It is very important your service be uptime (functioning and available for use). It means you can access your account whenever you want to update your web pages, and users can enter your website whenever they refer to your site address. If your hosting service is not uptime it can be catastrophic!

Disk space: Web hosting space is the amount of room that the web host provides to store your HTML, graphic, video/audio and other files. This figure is most commonly stated in gigabytes. If you don’t know how much space you need for your website, you can choose a web host with unlimited disk space, which allows you to build as many web pages as you want.

Bandwidth: Bandwidth (or data transfer) refers to the amount of data that is accessed by your visitors. Web hosts define bandwidth as the total amount of data access from your server over a month’s time. This figure is most commonly expressed in gigabytes. If you don’t know how much bandwidth you need for your website, you can pick a web host with unlimited data transfer, which allows you to support as many visitors as you want.

Ease of Control Panel: It is important that the control panel is easy to use and all information can be accessed easily.

If you are a beginner it is generally hard to you to pick the right web hosting service. There are many websites which display a couple of web hosting companies as the best and leave people confused without being helpful. To make things even more confusing, some hosting companies are cheating and lying to their customers!

*********************************************************************

All Web Hosts Presented On ThreeHosts.com Include Blog/Wordpress:

This is a reliable website to help you make the best choice. Their experts have been evaluating web hosting service providers for years, and now they provide you with the most reliable results. They present the information in an easy to understand format that helps the consumer make the best choice within just a few minutes. This is their purpose, to help you make the right choice the first time.

There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the web hosting industry. They are all easy-to-use and affordable.

WordPress is a wonderful and popular weblog site, also called a blog site. They provide a content management system (CMS) for hosting blogs on their subdomain. The CMS includes themes, layouts, and other interesting design elements to cater to every blog subject. Here is an insight into the process of WordPress hosting.

After one has decided on a blog theme, one needs to provide the name for the blog, and one gets a new WordPress blog site ready to use. This site offers over three gigabytes of file storage space and several other premium features.

WordPress hosting offers several predesigned themes, and one can chose one of them to get started. These come with good layout, pictures, sidebars, widgets, and offers option to upload custom photos as well. Some changes in the layout and the fonts can also be made. All these are offered for free, but the size and flexibility is limited.

WordPress hosting also offers translation into 50 different languages. There are several great privacy options one can chose from, like a private blog, or a public blog, or a discussion forum, and many more. One can ensure spam-free, secure hosting, which also allows for the users to make customizations to give the blog site a personal touch.

They have high rankings with search engines, and hosting on WordPress makes a blog automatically accessible on search engine listing. One can become a paid member and host a blog site on WordPress where many other premium features are available. Some of these premium features are customization of a name for the website that does not contain wordpress.com in the name, unlimited user accounts, extra storage space, and custom cascading style sheets.

WordPress hosting content management is popular due to the flexibility and variety of options that are available to the user. One can not only make use of the terrific and tightly designed blog layout, navigation, and user account management system but also its excellent and secure storage for content, be it videos, pictures, articles, designs, or any other form of data. This CMS allows a user to have multiple users and have customized pages for different users. From the initial step of deciding to create a blog to and all-ready blog, it takes less than a few hours. One does not have to worry about starting from scratch and programming the blog site or designing the layout; everything is pre-built on with WordPress hosting, which allows customization.

WordPress hosting also offers special services, like VIP hosting for high-traffic commercial blogs, and offers enhanced support for such sites. One can access site statistics to analyze the traffic and accessibility. The post or comments on a blog are published in real time with standard jabber instant messaging clients.

Apart from a terrific web hosting service, WordPress offers several additional features, like discussion forums for enhancing a blog, 24/7 support, and online surveys with the aim of improving the usability and customizability of the blog sites.

Choose mariehosting for the best wordpress hosting for your small business website today

Starting a blog is a fun and exciting time. Never are your creative energies so high as when the inspiration hits you to blog about something which you can feel passionate about. Many blogs die out shortly after they start, however, and this is too bad. Think of all the great ideas and personal expression that could be shared with the world if only bloggers had the right amount of “stick-to-it-iveness.” What is it that causes a blogger to give up so easily? Unfortunately, many are creatively driven above all else, and thus the prospect of publishing from a technical standpoint intimidates them into giving up on a new skill set before they have time to learn it. See, you can string sentences together all day long, but if you are ineffectual at making those thoughts available, then no one will ever be able to glean any information from your efforts. Worst of all, publishing platforms such as WordPress make learning how to upkeep a blog and add photos and videos much easier, yet these creative types are far too discouraged to tackle the task of publishing.

No more worries. Here are the four things you need to remember for how to find the best WordPress hosting to host your blogging website:

WordPress blog script: WordPress makes publishing your own blog easy. However, it is all fruitless if the hosting service you choose does not run WordPress blog scripts. The word “script” here is not meant in reference to some play which is meant to be performed, though, similarly, scripts for a website must be if the automated effects of that site are to run properly. You don’t have to understand what they are to derive the benefits of using them, but it is because of these scripts that so little background information on the look and feel of your blog is required in order to manage it.

WordPress plugin installation: Plugins are invaluable when it comes to running flash, videos, and widgets to enhance the attractiveness and functionality of your blogging website. Make sure before you sign on to a plan that it is fully up-to-date on what it is capable of handling on the technical end.

WordPress support and security: Even the best hosting services make the occasional mistake. Research reputations on the front end to stave off frustrations down the road. If your provider is prepared with round-the-clock support and the latest advancements in virus protection, then any issues you encounter will likely be easy fixes. But not every plan provider out there is on the cutting edge of safety and support. Choose wisely because your money, your reputation, and your audience are on the line.

Ease of functionality: Maybe it goes without asking, but is ease of functionality important to you? Are control panels prominently labeled so that you can add content and update your blogging website with zero headaches? These days, they should be. Cut through the red tape by choosing a hosting service that will walk you through the basics in a manner that has you publishing in no time.

There are many choices for WordPress hosting to host your blogging website, but not all of them are good. Use your head and your tools, and you will be building your audience before you know it!

For those who don’t know, WordPress is a blogging platform. I allows you to create your own blogs, and put your own information up on the web using a WordPress host.

There are two types of WordPress blog though. One is a free blog that you can host at WordPress.com. This is great if you just want to share some information with friends and family. However it is limiting in many respects.

If you are serious about communicating with a blog, then you will want to create your own blog on your on domain. To do this, you will need the software (which is free too) and a WordPress host. Here are three tips to choosing your WordPress host.

1. Installing WordPress is easy, especially if you have chosen your WordPress host wisely. A good host will allow you access to something called Fantastico via your control panel, or cpanel. Fantastico allows you to easily install software that might otherwise be problematical to install. If your host does not offer you either of these things, then stay clear of them.

2. A standard WordPress installation will take up around 5-6 Mb of disk space. That does not seem a great deal in this day and age, and if a host does not even offer you this much disk space then you are seriously wasting your time.

However, you will need a bit more than that.

If you are going to host images for example, or video or even music files, then you will probably need a lot more. As you get to know WordPress you will discover ways to improve and enhance it, as well as write lots of great content. Either way, you should be looking at a minimum of 100Mb to allow you room for manoeuvre.

3. If your blog becomes busy and people start visiting, your bandwidth will start creeping up. Hosts work on the basis of a monthly allowance of bandwidth, and you shouldn’t be having any problems to start with. Email, video and audio are also bandwidth hogs. I work on the basis of 10 times the disk space for a bandwidth allowance. Any less than that and you could be in trouble and finding your blog shut down for periods waiting for your new month’s allowance.

To summarise, make sure that you have adequate coverage from day 1 and you will have a long and successful career as a blog owner with your WordPress host.