I see lots of questions on hosting and they seem to fall into the following:
1 - I want to host with but they auto update classic press to wordpress and I cant stop them
2 - I am not a techie and need hosting … help.
Considering CP is designed to keep WP in a format originally designed to allow Jo(e) average to manage their own blogs without tech skills - wouldn’t i make sense to set up bespoke hosting, especially for CP? the sort of thing someone like SiteGround does, but geared to CP.
One upside to this is it would possibly be a revenue source to bridge the 500k gap between $needed and $ raised for the dev of CP.
This hosting would be fully managed ( updates, speed, security, firewall, disk management etc) but would avoid DNS / email to start with - just simply hosts CP.
Great idea. I hope someone decides to do this. Actually, it needs to be a team. Twice I’ve lost content because a tech let me down.
One lost a year (and it would be the one year I published every day) and then just flaked - ghosted me completely. I tried to manually restore the content but never did get it all back up.
No problems with the next tech, but he quit managing sites to run his friend’s business when the friend was incapacitated.
Moved my site to a person who is a WordPress expert. Told him I really needed great backups because I’d lost an entire year’s worth of content once and didn’t want to deal with that again.
He managed to not have a single good backup for THREE YEARS worth of content. Instead of dealing with that head-on, he ghosted me. Fortunately, I knew another tech who was friends with him and he gave him access or I wouldn’t have anything except the 3 year old backup I originally sent him.
Current tech’s dad had a heart attack. Then he had a heart attack. Very precarious having only one tech managing your site. You need a team.
I’ve already run into issues because I turned on one plugin, later my site locked, and then the hosting company deleted multiple plugins to fix it when someone familiar with CP might have known which one caused the issue.
I would say for low traffic personal sites some level of support can be provided by the community now.
Someone able to offer a reliable service for CP users could be a niche to fill, but without speaking out of turn I do not think it something the CP community could provide at this time.
I can say I have self hosted for many years now and would like to think many people do not give themselves enough credit when considering that route. For high traffic sites, or those with ecommerce, professional hosting is probably best, but it seems to me even a lot of managed sites are not being hosted by the personal managing the site, they have the client use a hosting service they recommend?
I guess one tip regarding backups would be that they are important enough to where even if you believe the entity responsible for your site is doing something, if you cannot manipulate that process yourself and have tested that it does work and backups do exist, I would install a plugin and save backups yourself, at least anytime you make major changes and on a weekly schedule.
The hosting company shouldn’t have been guessing. There’s a pretty standard procedure for troubleshooting plugins in both CP and WP, so it also shouldn’t have made any difference that you were running CP.
I recommend Lightningbase for hosting - I’ve been using them for years and have an affiliate link somewhere - and Updraft Plus as the best plugin for backups. You don’t need anyone else to configure it; it’s easy enough to do yourself. You just need to check whether the place you want to hold the backups requires a paid Updraft addon - but they are cheap ($10 per year for OneDrive , for example). Certainly much cheaper than hiring someone.
That’s a lot of battle scars you’ve mentioned in your post. Some parts I was nodding (been there, done that).
Back to topic:
Most of my shared hosting experience has been with providers who use Softculous, so I am quite limited in my understanding of the complexities/ technicalities of Hosted/ Managed ClassicPress. At the risk of sounding naiive, is the thought process along the lines of InstaWP (who were on ProductHunt recently)
Thank you for your tips. I honestly didn’t think I’d lose three years of content because the tech should have been qualified vastly more than necessary to ensure good backups.
Updraft Plus as the best plugin for backups. You don’t need anyone else to configure it; it’s easy enough to do yourself.
Agree on the usefulness of Updraft Plus. I backup / export to google drive, save the $ 10 too (would prefer to Pay Updraft Plus for the pain it saves me)
Manage and even sometimes hosting can be broadly defined generic terms. On one level a managed site would be a situation where everything other than adding content to your site would be handled for you. What is actually being done may be very different from what your expectations might be though.
In what would also be a best case scenario, a hosting service that provides support should be able to essentially ‘manage’ your site, especially one of the specialized services that advertise simple WordPress setup, however I would still be sure to have my own backups.
Often some level of automation does whatever management you might be expecting, and the ‘tech’ you contact when you have an issue may be more of a customer service rep using a dashboard or similar to solve common problems, rather than a highly trained tech.
I do not think there is really a one size fits all approach in many cases. People’s needs and expectations are going to be different and while members here including myself can probably help with a wide range of issues, offering support and/or services would probably be more of a one-off thing; at least I have provided assistance ranging from suggestions or consultation up to managed sites over the years.