Many people see the value in setting up a blog with their own domain name. A lot of them just search for the cheapest hosting service.
I personally have used four hosting services. One of them I had problems with. The other two were fine, but I like Blue Host for the following reasons (most important item first):
1. Customer Service. Blue Host has terrific customer support. It is US-based and all of their servers are US based as well. They have happily answered my questions, even if they have been about WordPress. They also are available 24/7.
2. cPanel. When choosing a hosting service, make sure they use cPanel as a back office.
cPanel is a web-based control panel that allows you to manage your domain over the internet. This allows you to have full control over your website. You have the ability to manage all aspects of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, and etc. (Many web-hosting services do offer cPanel, but some don’t.)
3. Tutorials. Most web-hosting company offer tutorials and help files. Even if you think you know what you are doing, these can come in handy.
4. 1-Click WordPress installation. This is really important when setting up a WordPress blog. Very rarely will you get it the look and feel of your blog right the first time. 1-click installation means you can change the skins of WordPress from inside the program without having to leave it. It makes things really easy.
5. Automatic WordPress updates. I didn’t really realize how important this feature is until the scare that went around this week about a virus that was affecting blogs on older WordPress platforms. Having automatic WordPress updates means when I am inside WordPress it alerts me that there is an update available. All I do is click on that and BlueHost automatically updates my blog!
6. Good rating. You will find companies that rate hosting services all over the web. Make sure to read about who is doing the rating, because some of these are just really the hosting company’s own PR. BlueHost is rated at the top of the WordPress.org site as well as upperhost, which is an independent rating company that rates hosting companies.
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