There are a lot of hosts out there in the big internet city but all of them would not work with my website that would become a blog. It was important to make the right move.
The Internet City is Full of Hosts
When I decided to transfer my static site to a blogging platform I needed to have a discussion with the manager of my host. You see, my static site went up when I knew nothing about hosting. I met someone who said they could host my site. But during that time I learned a great deal from him because he is a technology trainer.
Eventually, I was able to glean sense from some of the techi talk. I am not going to lie, at first I felt like a zombie trying to follow the steps shared with me in navigating the control panel. Sometimes I fought it and only wanted him to do what ever needed to be done. I was more concerned with trying to update my pages.
But later, after I started blogging, I was familiar with the hosts for my blogs. My host had my site on a dedicated server. When I spoke to him about transferring my site to my one of the two shared server hosts. I knew I could have just had him point my url to my new host. But instead I decided to see if his host could accommodate my new blog platform.
I tried to bring over my items but kept running into major issues. The host could not accomodate wordpress.org. You see it is important that the host can handle the right version of the reqirued database as well as PHP version. So, after reviewing some things , you know, my hostmaster decided to change hosts! He actually explored the idea of blogging and liked it. Not only did it help me but also helped some of his projects.
Now, this is not always the case. So, be sure to check with your webmaster or whoever is hosting your site to see if they can still host your blog on the same host currently hosting your static website. I have included some information from the WordPress.org site on hosts that can handle this powerful open-source program. WordPress says:
We recommend Linux with either the Apache or NGINX web-servers as the most robust platforms for running WordPress, but any server that supports PHP and MySQL will do. If your host doesn’t support one of these platforms, and mod_rewrite, you will probably be better off switching to one of the many hosting providers that do offer those choices.
It is also essential that your host allows remote connections, for many of the WordPress features to work. If your host blocks outgoing HTTP connections, many parts of the WordPress will not function.
Recommended server setup:
* PHP version 5.2 or greater
* MySQL version 5.0 or greater
Some other Issues might apply, for Details, see my technical Installation Checklist.
Hosting providers
Hosting is a commodity these days and with a little digging it’s easy to find a host that supports the above. If you’re looking for hosting suggestions, please try:
* WordPress Recommended Hosts – these hosts support WordPress, in more ways than one.
The current hosts I use for all my blogs are listed on my Resource Page.