Hello,

Strange situation I find myself in. I contracted with a freelancer who began to set up a WP site for our business. I purchased a domain and set up an account with (mt) Media Temple. The guy showed me some progress, I paid him an agreed amount....now he has done a runner!
I attempted to contact the guy of a couple of months, but nothing. Meanwhile, I was racking up hosting costs. I closed that account down now.

I still want a WP site.....but I want to give it a go myself. I don't have any knowledge of this type of stuff (servers, email, Photo Shop, design....etc)

What hosting company can give me the best support and a resonable price? (mt) was a bit pricey, but it's what the guy wanted. I attempted to take a look, but freaked out a bit with all the techy options.

Any ideas or help? I can't afford to drop a huge amount for a designer, so I am going free style here.

Thanks for the help!
-Dave

As far as I know, You an have one through wordpress themselves?
http://wordpress.com/

And then update / change your template as needed...

The free services are the best for starter, I agree. Wordpress.com. or wordpress.org might definitely help you with all the things you need to know.

Originally Posted by wisedave

Hello,

Strange situation I find myself in. I contracted with a freelancer who began to set up a WP site for our business. I purchased a domain and set up an account with (mt) Media Temple. The guy showed me some progress, I paid him an agreed amount....now he has done a runner!
I attempted to contact the guy of a couple of months, but nothing. Meanwhile, I was racking up hosting costs. I closed that account down now.

I still want a WP site.....but I want to give it a go myself. I don't have any knowledge of this type of stuff (servers, email, Photo Shop, design....etc)

What hosting company can give me the best support and a resonable price? (mt) was a bit pricey, but it's what the guy wanted. I attempted to take a look, but freaked out a bit with all the techy options.

Any ideas or help? I can't afford to drop a huge amount for a designer, so I am going free style here.

Thanks for the help!
-Dave

the host I use, hostpapa.ca, use the cPanel system, like many other hosts, which includes a nice feature called Fantastico. This offers one click install procedures for most of the major open source CMS systems, including Wordpress. Really easy to use and the support will help you if you have any questions.

Then you simply need to learn how to install a template, which is pretty easy, we can take you through it if you need help.

I think you have posted somewhere else right. you're going to get a wordpress site running on hosting server. in that case just get a quality wordpress hosting and start blogging.

Originally Posted by webpark

I think you have posted somewhere else right. you're going to get a wordpress site running on hosting server. in that case just get a quality wordpress hosting and start blogging.

Hello,

Yes, I have posted is other relevant forums....I have received some good advice here and other places. I have also received some bad advice! That's why we ask thought....to get other's opinions and direction.

Thanks for the help on this.....I am still trying to figure out the control panel issue....cPanel and Plesk. Do ALL hosting options come with either one or the other? What is the benefit of this?

Cheersm

Dave

Thanks for the help on this.....I am still trying to figure out the control panel issue....cPanel and Plesk. Do ALL hosting options come with either one or the other? What is the benefit of this?

Nope, some hosting companies come with their own "inhouse" management panel (GoDaddy for example) some may be using the relative "newcomer" DirectAdmin.

The benefit of a control panel is that YOU can perform most tasks without having to wait for the support techs to do things.

create sub-domains or "add on" domains (aliases), set up mail boxes, change passwords, manage databases, etc, etc. Depending on what your account allows for.

Thanks Chris....so here is the thousand dollar question...which do you prefer and why? Maybe a better question to ask is which to stay away from and why?

Thanks for the assistance....


-Dave

I actually use both.


Plesk is on our Windows VPS, and WHM & cPanel on the CentOS dedi box.

All in all I would stay away from the "home brewed" panels. We run a third Unix box (mail, mySQL and DNS only) with a different supplier for stability which has a bespoke panel (no names mentioned to protect the guilty) and it really is a PITA to do anything.

Hi Dave.

I didn't see this thread or else I would have chimed in earlier.

I use iPage to host my Wordpress sites, and overall, I'm very happy with them.

It's currently $4.50 a month for unlimited domains, bandwidth, data transfer etc... But it is by no means a stripped down version of a webhosting account.

While you refer to yourself as an "uber noob," I refer to myself as "technically challenged," so I'm guessing we're probably on about the same page.


With regards to the interface, iPage uses neither cPanel or Plesk. It's called vDeck. I wish I had used some other control panels so I could compare, but I haven't. But I can say that I really like it a lot. It's easier for me to manage my hosting through iPage than it is my domains through Go daddy.

Everything is pretty much broken down into 5 categories

1.-Website-everything you need to manage your website is in this category. But I only use a few of them.

--The file manager is for managing your files and directories. The only thing I've ever used this for is to upload verification code so I can use Google Webmaster Tools.

--Visitor statistics-self explanatory

--Google Tools For Webmasters-This lets you access Google Webmaster tools, adsense, analytics, and adwords from your iPage interface.

--Simple Scripts-This is for a 1 click installation of different applications like Wordpress. From what I've read, it's like Fantastico in cPanel, it just has more scripts to choose from. I've gotta try some more of these out here pretty soon.

--E commerce-Never used this, but it is there. You can use Shop Site Starter for free for small online store.

--Lots of other crap I don't understand-Self explanatory!

2.-E-mail-I don't use this, but it looks pretty simple and there are several options.

3.-Domain manager-To manage your domains hosted through your account.

4.-Marketing services-Never used it. But it does have coupons for a bunch of free trials like adwords, facebook, Yahoo advertising, YP.com....

5.-Account manager-Manage your account details


My Opinion of the iPage Interface

It's very easy to use and very clean. You can access any function with one click by hovering over one of the 5 categories and selecting what you want in a dropdown. Or click and it will display everything laid out nicely with icons displayed beside the function.

Though I can't compare it to another hosting interface, It's easier than My Go Daddy, Adsense, and some similar ones when you consider all of the options involved.

Customer Support

You can call customer support 24 hrs a day and within 2 minutes you will be on with someone who speaks proper English. While I had 1 bad experience with an ignorant Customer service agent, I think this was an isolated incident. They will help you with anything. But they're online support is slow..so just call them.

What I Don't Like About iPage

Before you access your Google Services for Webmasters, they ask you to enter your website url's into their stupid sitemap generator. While the sitemap generator works fine, it automatically adds a www to your url even if you don't specify. So if you don't want your domain name to have a www, don't use it.

And you don't have a real user name. Your user name is the name of your primary domain. So for me this means that every time I call support, I have to spell out a very lengthy name that they never get right the first name.

So just think if you hosted porn domains, every time you call in for support ..."yes, my user name is Hot Milf Orgys.com"

Other Tips

Don't let them upsell you anything. I have 2 threads in this forum asking about services they tried to sell me. On a positive note, they don't spam your email or hit you with popups.

I've read great reviews about Hostgator as well, but this may be because they have the best affiliate program. And I think their cheapest account is about $10 a month.

They also send me a code once in awhile for a friend to sign up and lock in a rate of $2.99 an month for a year. But you can still cancel/get a refund/switch hosts. This is not an affiliate code. But it's usually only good for 5 days or so. When i get one I could post it here.


So there it is...my complete iPage review. I also posted this for anyone else who may be interested. And I'm not doing this bacause I have an affiliate ID somewhere. The iPage affiliate program sucks! How could you have a good affiliate program offering hosting a $2.99 to $4.50 a month.


And don't worry about Wordpress, you can make some pretty slick looking sites with free WP templates. And if you like, I'll get into that in another post, this one is already too long.

Good Luck.

Thanks as well Michael for replying to this or else, I wouldn't have seen this myself.

I have a free wordpress account mysite.wordpress.com
and a hosted wordpress. My hosted one can be accessed via cpanel and pretty much easy to navigate and manage. I am not an expert in html or anything like that but I am able to manage my site like a breeze. Like Michael, I consider myself technically challenged.

Originally Posted by mpw45233

And don't worry about Wordpress, you can make some pretty slick looking sites with free WP templates. And if you like, I'll get into that in another post, this one is already too long.

can you also help me out please?

Originally Posted by Shey

Thanks as well Michael for replying to this or else, I wouldn't have seen this myself.

I have a free wordpress account mysite.wordpress.com
and a hosted wordpress. My hosted one can be accessed via cpanel and pretty much easy to navigate and manage. I am not an expert in html or anything like that but I am able to manage my site like a breeze. Like Michael, I consider myself technically challenged.



can you also help me out please?

Hi Shey! I would love to try to help. But I am by no means an expert on Wordpress. If you look a couple of threads up you will notice a thread I posted asking how to add an rss feed.

What I was going to do in this circumstance is recommend a free WP theme that I use. It's called suffusion.

It's very versatile, you can have your sidebar on the right or left, or 2 on the right, 2 on the left. It has lots of seo related features. It also has several widget areas for you to put ads, or other stuff.

I have seen some very cool WP blogs made from this theme, they look custom made, but they're not, and what's cool is that you can make it look like a regular website instead of the "blog" look.

Here's the author's home page. http://aquoid.com/news/ In this example, the header and footer are "outside the wrapper," and the wrapper is transparent so you see the cool background he has. You can upload whatever background color or image you want, and have it displayed how you want.

You can have different colors displayed for the post background, I'm not sure about the sidebar widget backgrounds, but it is without a doubt the best free WP theme IMHO.

If you wanted to, you could have somebody design you a really cheap cool looking header. It also has hoc widgets so you can put things into the posts and pages that you wouldn't normally be able to do. Different menus, it supports child themes (please don't ask), shortcode for adsense etc...

And it's always updated and has great support on Sayontan's forum. I really can't believe it's free...although you really should buy him a coffee.

My sites really don't look that great, but that's my fault. I spend more time on SEO and the like.

And I don't know anything about HTML either, but I know with your creativity you could make something really cool.

Edit: But if you have any questions in particular, I'll try to help.

Edit #2: Have I mentioned I tend to ramble on about ****.

Edit #3

Originally Posted by mpw45233

I use iPage to host my Wordpress sites, and overall, I'm very happy with them.

Hello,

Thanks for the help and direction on this. That was a nice gesture to spend so much time with your review. I am starting to wrap my head around this a bit more....

Cheers,

Dave

Originally Posted by wisedave

Hello,

Thanks for the help and direction on this. That was a nice gesture to spend so much time with your review. I am starting to wrap my head around this a bit more....

Cheers,

Dave

Hi Dave, if you need any more help I would encourage you to post it here or even PM me. Not because I'm smart...but because I feel your pain. Helping people just makes me feel good about things...life in general...

Originally Posted by mpw45233

Hi Dave, if you need any more help I would encourage you to post it here or even PM me. Not because I'm smart...but because I feel your pain. Helping people just makes me feel good about things...life in general...

But trust me..it is a piece of cake.

If anyone's interested, iPage is having a sale for $2.95 a month hosting until this Sunday at midnight. Not sure but probably can be locked in for 1-2 years or more. No coupon code needed. Good deal. http://www.ipage.com/ipage/index.html

Apparently, they have this sale on a regular basis, so if you're interested, then keep looking. They seem to have it about once a week.

I'm not that fan of wordpress I find it hard to use. I prefer blogger for being userfriendly.

Originally Posted by Benmoore47

I'm not that fan of wordpress I find it hard to use. I prefer blogger for being userfriendly.

How is Wordpress hard to use Ben? Yes it is a bit harder than Blogger, but that's because it has a lot more options. My ctr on my Blogger pages are horrific, because you get one Adsense ad in the sidebar, and one between posts.

If you insert your ads (adsense or affiliate) in the body of the post, your clicks and conversions go way up...Way up!

Who knows? Maybe you can do this with a Blogspot blog...but I don't think so.

Originally Posted by lynxus

As far as I know, You an have one through wordpress themselves?
http://wordpress.com/

And then update / change your template as needed...

lol lynxus !! rightly said.......... this forum was not for noobs!!