Wordpress hosting

[Compworld]

I currently host all my sites on a dedicated server. However, I am thinking it may be better to host with one of those WordPress speciality hosts. Sometimes, my Wordpress sites are slow, even though the database is optimized and the plugins are kept lean. Since I am used to Cpanel, and none of them offer Cpanel, it is a steep learning curve to transfer your site to these hosts.

Has anyone done the switch? From a regular or dedicated server to a WordPress specialized host? Was it worth the move?

[not2easy]

Generally, WP specialty hosts are good to start with for people who are not familiar with CP, site maintenance and such, but you can't get better performance on a shared server than you have on a dedicated server unless the dedicated server is quite old, not maintained or under-resourced for the load it has.

I would look into removing ETags and leveraging file caching to speed performance. Make sure your images are web optimized and watch out for plugin overhead. Some plugins require repeated requests for data/files on other servers.

Any host can host a WP site if your account is on a *nix server with apache/php/sql. Moving is not terribly difficult if you understand what you need to do and set up config.php to the new database settings. If you're moving to a new host, they'll usually move it for you.

Disclaimer - I have not used a specialty host for any WP site. I would try to look at what specifically is different. I'm pretty sure you'll find it to be a shared server where performance depends entirely on network traffic or how much load other sites put on the shared resources.

[jpch]

I switched from a dedicated server with Storm On Demand to Page.ly then to WP Engine. I'm not the most technical guy and while the support with Storm was excellent I was still in over my head...I didn't want to worry about any of the backend stuff. Page.ly is good if you don't require a lot of support but WP Engine has much better support IMO. I'm spending more now than ever on web host with WP Engine and my sites are doing great...no regrets.