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Finding a host for your WordPress blog is not hard. Because there are so many Web hosts available (it is a thoroughly saturated industry), there are a lot of options. A good Wordpress Host will not put too many hosting accounts on a single server and will also provide backups, 24-hour support, monitoring, security patching and, PHP 5. Features and Requirements of Web Hosts: First, it is important to look at the features and requirements of each potential Web host before making the decision to host your blog with them. The most generic requirements for WordPress are PHP 4.3 and MySQL 4.1. Regardless of which operating system is used, or which Web server is provided (most hosts are of some Linux variety and use Apache), all Web hosts must provide PHP 4.3 or MySQL 4.1. The better offerings provide PHP 5.2+ and MySQL 5+. Besides these requirements, it is also important to consider other factors that can play into your Web-hosting decision, such as: How much disk space your blog will need How much bandwidth your blog will need Whether you need a host that provides backup services Whether the host provides Secure Shell file transfers Disk space: Disk space is valuable these days and, in an typical world, shouldn't really affect your decision when choosing a host. However, keep in mind that if you plan on using a lot of images in your blog, you may want to err on the side of additional disk space. Images can take up a lot of room, especially if you do not do any file size optimization (resizing) before uploading them. Many hosting providers may tell you that they provide unlimited disk space. While this might be mostly true, disk space is a finite resource and there is practically no such thing as "unlimited" disk space. Hosts offering this kind of service make the assumption that the aggregate customers on that particular server will not utilize all of the space and so, the perception of unlimited disk space becomes the reality. Be aware, however, that most of the time, when disk space becomes an issue, a host will generally take action to remedy the situation. This can result in a temporary account suspension, which will cause heartache to your readers, you, and, if you provide advertising, your advertisers. It is a better policy, if possible, to find a host that specifies how much allotted disk space they provide and ensure that all images, video, and multimedia files you use are created in such a way as to limit the amount of disk space that is consumed. Bandwidth provision: Another option to consider, like disk space, is bandwidth. Bandwidth, unlike disk space, is a metric of data transferred to and from the server. Generally, bandwidth is more readily available than disk space, and all but the largest blogs probably do not need to be overly concerned with this. Like disk space, many shared hosting providers market their hosting plans with unlimited bandwidth and, as with unlimited disk space, this is a misnomer. Though these servers are generally capable of terabytes (1000GB) of data transfer, bandwidth is still a finite resource. Still, for a mid-tier site with75,000 page loads a month and each page weighing a moderate 500K in size, the bandwidth consumption is a mere 37,500MB per month - a fraction of the available bandwidth for a server. Backups Backups should never be trusted exclusively to a hosting provider; however, using a host that doesn't offer backups is dangerous. At any time, a blog can be hacked. Generally, this is not because of WordPress itself, but depending on if you are using an insecure version of WordPress, it is possible that a hack attempt can render a WordPress install unusable. Though hosts should provide their own backups if you are going to use them, you should also handle your own backups on a routine basis. These routines can get as basic or complex as you need. For example, you could write a script that archives your database and files and uses sync to transport the archive to an offsite server. You could take the same script and enhance it to back up all your sites.
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