Of all the blogging platform that I have tried, Somehow Wordpress is still the best. Having just moved my website with Wordpress to another web hosting, I decided to find out just what was its market share. It didn't take me long to find out.
The information was fairly new, published around mid of 2013. Information was compiled from Technorati top 100 blogs annual study. Looking at the pie chart, Wordpress has a whopping 52% usage as compared with other blogging platform be it self-hosted or from the Wordpress.com website.
Showing posts with label wordpress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wordpress. Show all posts
Moving my Wordpress Installation
I'm moving my Wordpress installation to another webhosting company once again! It's one of those things, sort of like shifting house for one reason or another. Migrating the entire website is no easy task. Especially if your website is as complicated as mine!
Though I still have another 5 months of hosting left, I decided to move it earlier as I foresee I will be busy with work and other matters for the next coming months. Even now, I can't seem to find the time to blog about my favourite things. Anyway, will just have to do a better job on time management.
My personal website has been on a stand alone budget web hosting. I decided to migrate it to my other shared web hosting and save some cost. There is perfectly nothing wrong with Cynet web hosting, it is really cheap and yet very stable. You could customized your hosting requirement based on how active is your website. If you needed more storage or more bandwidth, just upgrade to higher hosting solution. I have been using it for 3 to 4 years, but decided to consolidate my various websites (and save some cost too).
Though I still have another 5 months of hosting left, I decided to move it earlier as I foresee I will be busy with work and other matters for the next coming months. Even now, I can't seem to find the time to blog about my favourite things. Anyway, will just have to do a better job on time management.
My personal website has been on a stand alone budget web hosting. I decided to migrate it to my other shared web hosting and save some cost. There is perfectly nothing wrong with Cynet web hosting, it is really cheap and yet very stable. You could customized your hosting requirement based on how active is your website. If you needed more storage or more bandwidth, just upgrade to higher hosting solution. I have been using it for 3 to 4 years, but decided to consolidate my various websites (and save some cost too).
Messed up my Wordpress Blog and now lags, trying to find a solution
I think I really did it this time round and messed up my Wordpress blog big time! While playing around with StoryTlr, I noticed it was hogging up a lot of server space. Yeah sure, I'm using a very low cost hosting but figured it was good enough for my current needs. I decided to get rid of StoryTlr since I couldn't get the auto update to work anyway. However, after deleting it, much of my server space were still being hog. I said no way, how could it be?
So browsing around trying to find out where the culprit files were, I decided to delete many log files in the /home directory figuring it would be of no use. Finally I chance upon the main culprit error log file in Wordpress which was hogging about 70% of the limited server space. Zap! And that's it, deleted the offending large file.
So browsing around trying to find out where the culprit files were, I decided to delete many log files in the /home directory figuring it would be of no use. Finally I chance upon the main culprit error log file in Wordpress which was hogging about 70% of the limited server space. Zap! And that's it, deleted the offending large file.
Bluehost giving me the blues, looking for new web hosting
Eversince Bluehost gave me the heartbreak of telling me if my script cause a spike to their CPU for the third time, I will have to find a new web hosting company. I think that is rather stern and unfair, rather than chasing the customer away, they should try to help resolve what was wrong with my script installation. After looking around online, I found many negative reviews about Bluehost. And some place the power failure incident as a major negative point against Bluehost. Believe me, when all my web sites went down that day, I too had to wait it out for their servers to reboot. And they talked about world class backup generators and they weren't working that day with the excuse the power companies didn't allow them to use it.
Another down point is that Bluehost is one of the few web hosting companies that throttle your bandwidth, that means if a certain increase load to their servers due to higher website traffic, it would mean your web site will start to slow. Searching online, I found a review where a user who was a teacher, complained that her Wordpress website slowed to a crawl when many of her students were accessing her web site simultaneously. And I bet that the number isn't very high considering that a classroom full of student accessing her website requires throttling?
Another down point is that Bluehost is one of the few web hosting companies that throttle your bandwidth, that means if a certain increase load to their servers due to higher website traffic, it would mean your web site will start to slow. Searching online, I found a review where a user who was a teacher, complained that her Wordpress website slowed to a crawl when many of her students were accessing her web site simultaneously. And I bet that the number isn't very high considering that a classroom full of student accessing her website requires throttling?
My Wordpress website in Bluehost is down and out!
Oh, blow me down! It seems I got two script: Wordpress installation and Statusnet is causing Bluehost server to overload and they had to shut down my account which was a big blow since I have several website domains hosted on it. Whenever a script installation takes up too much server webserver resources it will impact on other users and thus the prudent thing to do is to suspend the culprit which this time looks like me!
For Statusnet, I was experimenting with it. Didn't know it was using up so much resources. This one was very easy for me to let go. I just deleted the Statusnet folder where it was installed and that was it. But that was not the end of it. My Wordpress too was also causing server overload, and this installation is very important to me as I am using it regularly to blog. It has 500 posts and does earn me some Adsense income though small it still something. Unfortunately I'm just as in the dark as to what is wrong with my Wordpress installation. And the only way to avoid getting shut down and getting my account terminated was to chuck out my Wordpress installation in Bluehost. Boo-hoo!
Bluehost was very strict with their TOS, and if I cause their server to overload the 3rd time, I will have to find myself a new webhosting company! Well, maybe there is a silver lining in this predicament. Because now I have decided to look for a new webhosting company, perhaps one which is nearer to my locality rather than half a world away.
This time round I decided not to host so many website in one hosting account. Hey it may be cost effective to host unlimited multiple domains but if any one of your website caused an issue then all your other website will be affected. And if the webhosting company decided to terminate your contract, you will be in a big lurch to find a new webhosting company plus shifting all the data and reconfiguring your SQL database etc etc. Now that would be indeed a big disaster!
Since I still got an whole year's worth of hosting with Bluehost (I signed up a 3 year hosting plan with Bluehost as I felt their hosting plan and services was rather good despite being not the cheapest one around) and decided to continue with it till it expires next year. However with the above experience I have decided to split up my websites to several webhosting companies. Actually I'm already using another one, it is a good one, but I would like to try other web hosting companies too.
Locally we have Exabytes which is offering the same unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, but having have several websites, I think it is not necessary to have this kind of requirement. In fact you pay more when you can save with less. After all, how many of us average webmaster will ever achieve resounding super heavy website traffic? If you do and you are earning good income from it most likely you will invest in an expensive dedicated web hosting in order to cope with the server load.
Since it is unlikely I will have such overly popular website, a shared webhosting will do just fine. Before shifting over to a new webhosting company, I checked the server logs and see just what amount of bandwidth and storage required. Then looked around for a suitable cost effective hosting.
For now, I will just be shifting my JanLeow.com website. When my hosting with Bluehost will be due next year I guess I will be moving out from Bluehost. Well it has been a good many years of usage with them, but in the end I have decided there are better offerings elsewhere and decided to give other webhosting companies a go.
Wot? My wordpress comment form is not working?
Strange. What happen to my wordpress comment form. One of my visitors pointed out that it gave a javascript and cookie not switched on error. Now i'm scratching my head and tring to figure just what is wrong. Could be a template issue or plugins. Don't know. Will figure out later. Got tons of work to do!
--- [update 27/6/2011]
Well I thought I fixed after re-installing Wordpress onto a new hosting server. And yet again the comment form was not working. This time I removed another plugin which seemed to solve it for now
Pivot Blog
One thing about script list in the webhosting software section, they have a list of interesting software for content management, blogs, forums, online calendars, and other interesting software. Some of which you never think about searching online for it. So I happen to bump into this Pivot blogging software that don't even use SQL database management! Intriguing. Will install it and have a look see. Of course my ultimate blogging script is still Wordpress, but there are a lot of CMS cum blogging script software out there to experiment with.
In case you choose something not so well known, do note that some project actually died! So don't choose a less well known project for your main or major blog website. Because when it loses support, you won't get the needed updates especially to clog up any vulnerabilities against pesky hackers attempting to break into your website and deface your contents!
In case you choose something not so well known, do note that some project actually died! So don't choose a less well known project for your main or major blog website. Because when it loses support, you won't get the needed updates especially to clog up any vulnerabilities against pesky hackers attempting to break into your website and deface your contents!
209.126.254.214 hacking attempt
209.126.254.214 is trying to hack into my Wordpress website. Well whoever it is, ain't getting in! I seem to be getting lots of these hacks lately. What do they hope to get from hacking in? Besides my website is not a very high ranking, heavily trafficked website. This abuser seems to be hacking a lot of site based on a quick search on that IP address. Also noted in a blacklist site, this IP was sending spam, phishing emails and virus emails. There is no website hosted on this IP 209.126.254.214, so may as well blacklist this IP
Wordpress installation
I wonder what my friend did to his wordpress installation that left it ended up with just a blank display. Can't do anything now as I'm away from my PC. I wonder what he did. Could be a faulty wordpress plugin. Unlikely to be htaccess file misconfiguration. With so many wordpress plugin this could be the fault too.
---
Finally found out why his Wordpress page disappeared. Nope it wasn't my fault! My Wordpress installation was fine. I found out that one of the plugins was causing havoc to Wordpress. It was just a simple matter of trial and error by activating and deactivating each plugin to find out who was the culprit. Turn out to be one of the three the Photoshelter plugins. Switching it off and the Wordpress homepage reappeared. No problemo. Just don't use that plugin, darling.
---
Finally found out why his Wordpress page disappeared. Nope it wasn't my fault! My Wordpress installation was fine. I found out that one of the plugins was causing havoc to Wordpress. It was just a simple matter of trial and error by activating and deactivating each plugin to find out who was the culprit. Turn out to be one of the three the Photoshelter plugins. Switching it off and the Wordpress homepage reappeared. No problemo. Just don't use that plugin, darling.
Wordpress installation
Wordpress installation is one of the easiest to do. But it can a little tedious sometimes. So what I usually do is to use the provided installed scripts by th webhosting company. For Bluehost they have Fantastico and Simple Scripts of which the latter is far more superior. For Exabytes which uses the same cPanel interface only provides Fantastico. While IPServerOne which is quite a nice budget webhosting provides the Installaron auto installs.
Of course when choosing a web hosting do try to find one which has auto install scripts. Those scripts sometimes provide interesting software that you would otherwise not be aware of. Like say a forum software instead of using the overly popular phpBB which by the way has a lot of security issues and poor spam buster you might discover other little gems like BBpress and PunBB.
Anyway I needed to reinstall a Wordpress installation for a friend and using the Installaron software provided by IPserverOne makes for a speedy Wordpress installation. Configuration took a little longer but that's a different issue altogether.
Wordpress Websites
Wordpress is one of the most popular software app. You can find many Wordpress websites just about anywhere. Even I myself am using Wordpress for my blogging and website creation. It is very versatile.
If you want to build a free website using Wordpress, you can get one at Wordpress.com and sign up for an account there. However using a free website in Wordpress.com may not be the best option. Ok, ok, I should be supporting Wordpress, after all they do provide free download of their software to be installed into your paid hosted website.
And for those who don't want to pay for anything and still like to use Wordpress as their blogging platform, they can build a free website by signing up with them.
But as your needs grow, you will find the free offering is not as versatile as say Google's Blogger/Blogspot in that you can't place any advertisement into your Wordpress blog account. However Wordpress do provide some premium offering to increase your requirement. It took me a while to finally find out the price. Wordpress did not display their premium pricing publicly and I only found out about the pricing after deciding to explore their free Wordpress blog by signing up.
The premium offering can be cost effective as you are just picking up what you want as your needs grow. However in the long run if you are adding up each premium offering, you may end up paying a lot more than just going straight into a paid hosting with a Wordpress installation.
All the offerings are on a per year basis. And if your needs is not a lot, perhaps you just need to add a domain and Custom CSS that comes to about $29.94 per year.
And that was just what my friend did. He got a domain from GoDaddy and pointed it to Wordpress.com and used the mapping functionality which cost $9.97 and bought the Custom CSS for $14.97 so that he could modify the them to include some Google Adsense in his Wordpress blog.
Unfortunately that was not to be. It didn't work. The Adsense wouldn't come out. Originally the free Wordpress.com will not allow you to paste any Adsense or any Javascript from any affiliate. And the addition of the Custom CSS still do not allow any Javascript to work either and I didn't see any offering in their upgrade that allow for adding any Adsense or other affiliate codes.
So he has just plunk in his money for nothing. Although there is a refund policy of 30 days, but I think he may have exceeded the days after trying it for some time.
So in the end, I advise him to get a paid web hosting. There are many cheap and good web hosting companies around to choose from. It is not always that you need a lot of bandwidth and storage space. So a simple and cheap web hosting account might be all that you need as you are starting out. You can always upgrade later if you need more space and bandwidth transfer.
There are always some pitfalls when trying to build a free website. But if your needs are simple, free is good. But if your website ambition is to blog to promote yourself and your work, it might be better to go for a paid hosting. The upgrade offering from Wordpress.com just didn't suit my friends requirement. And if you planning to go for free now, and then thought perhaps later you want to upgrade to expand your website functionality then you need to think carefully about what you want to do with your website.
If it will tie in with your work and business later. Then don't try to build a free website. Go straight to building one with a paid web hosting company.
And of course if you want to really succeed in building a website, try Sitesell Site Build It. They have the best tools for creating a successful website. And of course, it cost a mint, but it is worth every penny. Scrimping initially won't get you far in the long run. Better to jump headlong into it if you know the direction you are heading.
If you want to build a free website using Wordpress, you can get one at Wordpress.com and sign up for an account there. However using a free website in Wordpress.com may not be the best option. Ok, ok, I should be supporting Wordpress, after all they do provide free download of their software to be installed into your paid hosted website.
And for those who don't want to pay for anything and still like to use Wordpress as their blogging platform, they can build a free website by signing up with them.
But as your needs grow, you will find the free offering is not as versatile as say Google's Blogger/Blogspot in that you can't place any advertisement into your Wordpress blog account. However Wordpress do provide some premium offering to increase your requirement. It took me a while to finally find out the price. Wordpress did not display their premium pricing publicly and I only found out about the pricing after deciding to explore their free Wordpress blog by signing up.
The premium offering can be cost effective as you are just picking up what you want as your needs grow. However in the long run if you are adding up each premium offering, you may end up paying a lot more than just going straight into a paid hosting with a Wordpress installation.
All the offerings are on a per year basis. And if your needs is not a lot, perhaps you just need to add a domain and Custom CSS that comes to about $29.94 per year.
And that was just what my friend did. He got a domain from GoDaddy and pointed it to Wordpress.com and used the mapping functionality which cost $9.97 and bought the Custom CSS for $14.97 so that he could modify the them to include some Google Adsense in his Wordpress blog.
Unfortunately that was not to be. It didn't work. The Adsense wouldn't come out. Originally the free Wordpress.com will not allow you to paste any Adsense or any Javascript from any affiliate. And the addition of the Custom CSS still do not allow any Javascript to work either and I didn't see any offering in their upgrade that allow for adding any Adsense or other affiliate codes.
So he has just plunk in his money for nothing. Although there is a refund policy of 30 days, but I think he may have exceeded the days after trying it for some time.
So in the end, I advise him to get a paid web hosting. There are many cheap and good web hosting companies around to choose from. It is not always that you need a lot of bandwidth and storage space. So a simple and cheap web hosting account might be all that you need as you are starting out. You can always upgrade later if you need more space and bandwidth transfer.
There are always some pitfalls when trying to build a free website. But if your needs are simple, free is good. But if your website ambition is to blog to promote yourself and your work, it might be better to go for a paid hosting. The upgrade offering from Wordpress.com just didn't suit my friends requirement. And if you planning to go for free now, and then thought perhaps later you want to upgrade to expand your website functionality then you need to think carefully about what you want to do with your website.
If it will tie in with your work and business later. Then don't try to build a free website. Go straight to building one with a paid web hosting company.
And of course if you want to really succeed in building a website, try Sitesell Site Build It. They have the best tools for creating a successful website. And of course, it cost a mint, but it is worth every penny. Scrimping initially won't get you far in the long run. Better to jump headlong into it if you know the direction you are heading.
Wordpress vs Blogger
Which should you use? Wordpress vs Blogger. And when I say Wordpress as in self hosted Wordpress not the free hosted one at Wordpress.com. So maybe this comparison may not be so good, because Blogger/Blogspot is free hosted. So maybe the comparison should be self hosted blog vs free hosted blog.
Anyway, I am using both self hosted Wordpress and Google Blogger/Blogspot. Both has their pros and cons. Sometimes we don't want to rely 100% on the free offering because we may not be able to control what happens to the free hosted blog. However Google is a big and cash rich company so there is some assurance that Blogger/Blogspot will not have a major change in its structure anytime soon.
Wordpress as a free open source software has been improving over the years and it is getting better and better. With better user interface and ease of publishing as well as the many free template offering, one could easily set up on a web hosting company and start blogging or creating a website almost immediately.
However doing a self hosted blog like Wordpress do require some good maintenance. You must always make sure you have hardened it against malicious hackers. Just recently I receive some warning from my Wordpress security that some hacker from Ukraine tried to do SQL injection. They even attempted to guess what kind of plugin that I have and exploit those weaknesses found in those plugin that has not been properly programmed. And before that some Koren hacker also attempted to hack into my Wordpress installation.
I don't know why my Wordpress installation is now the target of malicious hacker nowadays. I never experience any on my other website Wordpress installation. Anyway one could never be careful. So If you are not the kind that like to update your installation and putting up various security to protect your installation, it might be best that you avoid installing Wordpress onto a self hosted web hosting company.
And the alternative? Build a free website using blogger/blogspot. Why didn't I suggest the free alternative at Wordpress.com? Well for one, you can't really customize the theme and if you want to place some banner ads like Google Adsense, you can't at all unless you sign up for their premium service. The idea here now is to build a free website blog.
And of course you want to plug in your domain name to personalize the website, you could only do so with Blogger but not at Wordpress.com
So when it comes to free hosted, Blogger is better than Wordpress. But for self hosted, there isn't any Blogger system around for you to install. So the best option is to use Wordpress but you must put in some effort to maintain it and secure it.
Anyway, I am using both self hosted Wordpress and Google Blogger/Blogspot. Both has their pros and cons. Sometimes we don't want to rely 100% on the free offering because we may not be able to control what happens to the free hosted blog. However Google is a big and cash rich company so there is some assurance that Blogger/Blogspot will not have a major change in its structure anytime soon.
Wordpress as a free open source software has been improving over the years and it is getting better and better. With better user interface and ease of publishing as well as the many free template offering, one could easily set up on a web hosting company and start blogging or creating a website almost immediately.
However doing a self hosted blog like Wordpress do require some good maintenance. You must always make sure you have hardened it against malicious hackers. Just recently I receive some warning from my Wordpress security that some hacker from Ukraine tried to do SQL injection. They even attempted to guess what kind of plugin that I have and exploit those weaknesses found in those plugin that has not been properly programmed. And before that some Koren hacker also attempted to hack into my Wordpress installation.
I don't know why my Wordpress installation is now the target of malicious hacker nowadays. I never experience any on my other website Wordpress installation. Anyway one could never be careful. So If you are not the kind that like to update your installation and putting up various security to protect your installation, it might be best that you avoid installing Wordpress onto a self hosted web hosting company.
And the alternative? Build a free website using blogger/blogspot. Why didn't I suggest the free alternative at Wordpress.com? Well for one, you can't really customize the theme and if you want to place some banner ads like Google Adsense, you can't at all unless you sign up for their premium service. The idea here now is to build a free website blog.
And of course you want to plug in your domain name to personalize the website, you could only do so with Blogger but not at Wordpress.com
So when it comes to free hosted, Blogger is better than Wordpress. But for self hosted, there isn't any Blogger system around for you to install. So the best option is to use Wordpress but you must put in some effort to maintain it and secure it.
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