digitalFAQ.com Forum

digitalFAQ.com Forum (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/)
-   Web Hosting (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-hosting/)
-   -   Shared vs. Semi-Dedicated Hosting for WordPress site? (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-hosting/5939-shared-vs-semi.html)

Leah 06-08-2014 02:09 AM

Shared vs. Semi-Dedicated Hosting for WordPress site?
 
Newbie here. I’ve researched hosting for 1 week getting nowhere, but finally stumbled onto this gem of a forum! I’ve read most of the posts here but still not sure if I should start with Shared or Semi-Dedicated?

I am creating my first website likely with Wordpress. My website will start with 500+ images, totaling 14 MB or more - no video, no audio, no downloads, no ecommerce. I will add new images daily. I want to prepare for 1000s daily visitors. I’m located in the U.S.

Questions

1 - Where am I on the spectrum of Shared hosting? Am I in the middle or borderline using up all the resources?
2 – In my case, what type of hosting do you suggest? And which companies?
3 - If my site keeps growing in storage and traffic, do you foresee me needing Dedicated Hosting?
4 - Is it best to pick a company that you can upgrade with? Is it that difficult to migrate between different hosts?
5 - Because my site will have lots of images, should I pick a host that offers “unlimited” hosting?
6 - How much RAM and CPU do you suggest?

kpmedia 06-08-2014 04:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leah (Post 32144)
Newbie here. I’ve researched hosting for 1 week getting nowhere, but finally stumbled onto this gem of a forum! I’ve read most of the posts here but still not sure if I should start with Shared or Semi-Dedicated?

Thanks! Let's see if we can help you decide... [x2x]

Quote:

I am creating my first website likely with Wordpress. My website will start with 500+ images, totaling 14 MB or more - no video, no audio, no downloads, no ecommerce. I will add new images daily. I want to prepare for 1000s daily visitors. I’m located in the U.S.
Replying as I read... So far, this says "shared".

Semi-dedicated is for "more power" (like VPS), means RAM and CPU resources.

Images use neither. (Unless the site is really badly coded. For example: PHP parsing of many large images on a single page with something like timthumb. O images stored as MySQL blobs.) Images are often loaded directly by the webserver, not the PHP engine. So the only resource used is bandwidth. Not RAM, CPU, MySQL ... not in any measurable way, that is.

Quote:

Questions
1 - Where am I on the spectrum of Shared hosting? Am I in the middle or borderline using up all the resources?
1,000 per day, depending on the site coding (plugins, scripts used by themes, etc), and how well it been optimized (a good WordPress cache), it's on the smaller medium side. I would start to look at semi-dedicated when the traffic doubles (2k daily), or when you need more resources because of special code needs.

Never use the W3TC cache or Super Cache. Those are terrible and make resource use go up. Ironic, considering the goal of those is to lower resources! They're just crappy caches. Popular, yes. Good, no. Use Hyper Cache Extended + DB-Cache Reload Fix instead (yes, togother).

Quote:

2 – In my case, what type of hosting do you suggest? And which companies?
For 1k daily, you definitely want to avoid overallocated/overstuffed/"oversold" servers. Your use is on the larger side of shared, but not large enough to really justify semi-dedicated (or VPS). Use a small host. Or at least a host known for excellent servers.

We have a 1k daily type site hosted on a Site5 shared plan, and have never had issues. At worst, they have monthly maintenance for about 20 minutes. But I'm not bothered by that. Maintenance is good! It means they watching after everything. It's always been fast. So I highly suggest them for this. It's also a WordPress site, and has lots of images.

My next choices would be Veerotech, Stablehost and Stream101 for this. Each of those works well with this kind of site.

Quote:

3 - If my site keeps growing in storage and traffic, do you foresee me needing Dedicated Hosting?
No. Given current information, semi-dedicated or VPS would be your ultimate needs. These days, dedicated servers are massive (and massively expensive!), so only get those when you have several large sites.

Quote:

4 - Is it best to pick a company that you can upgrade with? Is it that difficult to migrate between different hosts?
Of the suggestions,
- Veerotech: excellent managed KVM VPS, dedicated servers
- Stablehost takes second place here: excellent semi-dedicated plans, good OpenVZ vswap VPS
- Stream101 does not have upgrades currently beyond shared/reseller.
- Site5 has excellent upgrades: semi-dedicated (their cloud shared hosting), Xen managed no-root VPS (essentually a semi-dedicatedreseller account), Xen unmanaged VPS

Note that "reseller" = shared hosting. Same thing.

Quote:

5 - Because my site will have lots of images, should I pick a host that offers “unlimited” hosting?
No. Most hosts give at least 5gb plans, and you can get more by upgrading the plan. Based on current information, you won't be anywhere near that mcuh use.

Quote:

6 - How much RAM and CPU do you suggest?
It only matters for a VPS. In which case, you also have to take into account the control panel (if any) being used. For cPanel, the ideal setup is 2gb to not have problems. There's lots of variables here, so it really just depends.

Be sure to read this editorial: The Myth of VPS Hosting: Reasons to Avoid It! Part 1. Based on the current information, you're not ready for a VPS, or even in meed of one. It will be a nightmare for you.

So, at this point, you really have 3 choices: Site5.com, Veerotech.net and Stablehost.com.

And I still think shared.

Note: We also have a managed WordPress hosting option that you may be interested in. PM me if you want to here more. We've been hosting our own dev clients since 2005, and have opened up our hosting service to the public in limited capacity this year. We specialize in highly secured WordPress hosting, using a standard cPanel. It's all word-of-mouth right now, and I only mention it to people that may be perfect candidates for our services.

Leah 06-08-2014 04:37 PM

I’ve searched high and low for info like this! Thorough replies, no BS, straight to the point…can it get any better?? And thanks for your offer for Managed Wordpress hosting, I may consider it, but if I decide to go for Site5 etc, I’ll definitely make sure to use your links.

I am unclear about a few things, can you help?

1 - My homepage will have a grid layout, with 6 images per pageview, with infinite scroll, so if you keep scrolling you could end up with hundreds of images on the homepage. Does this affect any of your answers above? aka Does infinite scroll (instead of pagination) increase the amount of RAM, CPU, Bandwidth, etc needed?


2 - For tons of images and 1000s of daily visitors, are there other services I need besides Registrar, Hosting, and those 2 cache plugins? I read something about CDN, do I need one? Do those 2 cache plugins replace a CDN?


3 - In another thread, you mentioned: “CloudFlare usually slow down sites, unless the host is just really crappy, legacy Godaddy, etc. Beyond that, it only helps with static content (image), not the page loads. Try to remove CloudFlare from the equation.”

Regarding “It only helps with static content (image)” – does this apply to me? I will have 500+ images.

It seems that Cloudflare offers CDN, security, helps save on bandwidth, and “always online because of caching” despite server going down. Would you suggest Cloudflare in my case?


4 - Regarding security, if I avoid Cloudflare and crappy security plugins, what are my options? For Shared and Semi-dedicated, what do I need security for – Wordpress? The server?


5 - I did read your Avoid VPS article, and glad I did, I dodged a bullet! I was going for VPS before finding this forum. Phew! But does that article apply to PROACTIVELY Managed VPS? Does Proactively Managed VPS require a server admin or does the company do EVERYTHING for you?

kpmedia 06-10-2014 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leah (Post 32151)
I’ve searched high and low for info like this! Thorough replies, no BS, straight to the point…can it get any better?? And thanks for your offer for Managed Wordpress hosting, I may consider it, but if I decide to go for Site5 etc, I’ll definitely make sure to use your links.

Thanks. :)

Quote:

I am unclear about a few things, can you help?
Sure...

Quote:

1 - My homepage will have a grid layout, with 6 images per pageview, with infinite scroll, so if you keep scrolling you could end up with hundreds of images on the homepage. Does this affect any of your answers above? aka Does infinite scroll (instead of pagination) increase the amount of RAM, CPU, Bandwidth, etc needed?
It's not a good idea to have a site like this -- and for multiple reasons.
1. You'll have issues coding it.
2. Those are not really stable sites for end users. Imgur is an example of this. It has way too many bugs.
3. Users will simply not scroll that much. You need to paginate if you want good UX (user experience).
4. It's terrible for SEO. No pages = nothing to rank.

And yes, it may have resource issues. It depends on how it's coded. It probably will if the single page creates the thumbnails via PHP.

Quote:

2 - For tons of images and 1000s of daily visitors, are there other services I need besides Registrar, Hosting, and those 2 cache plugins? I read something about CDN, do I need one? Do those 2 cache plugins replace a CDN?
3 - In another thread, you mentioned: “CloudFlare usually slow down sites, unless the host is just really crappy, legacy Godaddy, etc. Beyond that, it only helps with static content (image), not the page loads. Try to remove CloudFlare from the equation.”
Regarding “It only helps with static content (image)” – does this apply to me? I will have 500+ images.
It seems that Cloudflare offers CDN, security, helps save on bandwidth, and “always online because of caching” despite server going down. Would you suggest Cloudflare in my case?
In your case, yes, a CDN will help.

Why, you ask? The usefulness of a CDN heavily depends on where your primary demographic is, and where you're hosted. In your case, you have several diverse geographies. (Just note that you need a CDN with servers in those locations! A CDN with only USA servers, for example, would be useless.) With a CDN, you also do not have to host the site in a certain area, and can go where you want. The CDN would serve Russia and Asia, but you could use a host in USA.

Understand that CloudFlare is a crappy CDN, especially the free one. CloudFlare also does not offer any kind of security -- that's a misdirect on their part.

Quote:

4 - Regarding security, if I avoid Cloudflare and crappy security plugins, what are my options? For Shared and Semi-dedicated, what do I need security for – Wordpress? The server?
Use a good CDN like MaxCDN. Use the good plugins. And secure WordPress as best as possible. Then sit back, and watch the site grow. If you use the right vendors for a site, and pay attention to the health of WordPress (updates, new exploits, etc), it's really not all that hard.

Quote:

5 - I did read your Avoid VPS article, and glad I did, I dodged a bullet! I was going for VPS before finding this forum. Phew! But does that article apply to PROACTIVELY Managed VPS? Does Proactively Managed VPS require a server admin or does the company do EVERYTHING for you?
Here's a tip: Most "proactive management" is not proactive. It's not even management in my book. UIt's bare ass essentials only, and they mostly just enable cPanel automatic updates. So you really need to be careful if you use VPS. To be honest, you need server management knowledge, managed or not, to successfully have a VPS. Otherwise you'll find yourself spending time just making it work, rather than using it.

There's very few truly proactive managed VPS hosts. Site5 is one. Their "managed VPS" is technically a VPS, but you don't get root access. That's because they manage it like one of their own shared servers. When you have one, you'll get security advisories and maintenance notices the same as you would if you were a shared client. It's essentially a reseller account on steroids (shared with ability to make new shared accounts), but also on it's own virtual dedicated hardware. It costs more -- but if you need more resources, and don't know how to manage it (or want to bother with it), then it's worth it.

However, again, given the info so far, I think it would be overkill for you.

Leah 06-10-2014 09:44 PM

KPmedia, thanks for clearing that up for me. I'm trying to decide between Site5, StableHost, and Veerotech.Could you tell me if my logic is flawed below?

Avoid Virtuozzo and OpenVZ ...thus avoid StableHost because they use OpenVZ
True? False?

Veerotech does not offer Semi-Dedicated hosting, but does offer Reseller which is equivalent to Semi-Dedicated
True? False?

kpmedia 07-20-2014 06:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leah (Post 32178)
Avoid Virtuozzo and OpenVZ ...thus avoid StableHost because they use OpenVZ
True? False?

It was true -- but not anymore! Stablehost uses KVM now. Excellent plans from an excellent host.

Quote:

Veerotech does not offer Semi-Dedicated hosting, but does offer Reseller which is equivalent to Semi-Dedicated
True? False?
False. Reseller accounts are not semi-dedicated alternatives.

Leah 07-21-2014 01:11 AM

Thanks for replying. Such perfect timing! I was planning to get back on DigitalFAQ to explore my hosting options again. I was away for a while to learn more about PHP and Wordpress and will need to sign up for hosting soon, so yay.


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 10:31 AM

Site design, images and content © 2002-2024 The Digital FAQ, www.digitalFAQ.com
Forum Software by vBulletin · Copyright © 2024 Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.