SiteGround best for photography WordPress site?
 

Hi,

I'm currently looking for a new host, and scouted the internet.

One host that has a lot of good press (don't know if real or fake) is Siteground. I could call them, and talk to a real person.

My problems with it are: 1. They don't seem to own their servers 2. Their customer service dpt seems to be in Bulgaria.

So, was I misled?

What do I need?

1. A photographer's website with Wordpress blog (Headway template)

2. Planned: a film blog on wordpress (also with headway template)

I use Namecheap as my registrar, and experienced response times of 2 weeks. I read your comments about their great equipment, but... is their hosting response as bad as their registrar response?

I'd like to have a host I can ask technical questions like "which folder do I install my wordpress in" or "which rerouting do I have to do so www.mysite.com and mysite.com counts as 1, seo-wise".

I hope this wasn't too long a note - I'd love to hear about Siteground and your recommendations.

best wishes,

Robert

(Webhostingtalk member since 2006)

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Well, we know of many good options out there, so let's try to get you matched with one. :congrats:

Depending on where the "good press" came from, yes, it was potentially fake. Unless you're seeing actual "press" (newspapers, authoritative websites, etc) leaving the comments, and in long form, then all you're reading is hogwash from people trying to make a quick buck from you. There sham affiliate sites want to use you, not help you. And there's many, many fake "review" sites out there.

Also realize that one-sentence/one-paragraph "reviews" are useless, and honestly not reviews at all.

That all said, SiteGround is not a bad host.

Where did you read/hear that they do not operate their own servers? That sounds false. You can't be a large hosting company and throw away tons of money by renting servers.

They probably do not own their own datacenters, but almost no host does. Datacenters and servers are completely different. It would be like owning the building where a restaurant is located -- and that rarely happens. Being a good restaurant has nothing to do with who owns the building.

Somebody (a novice) has likely confused this information. Be careful what you read online!

We now live in a worldwide economy. Trying to find all-USA (or all-Canada, all-Europe, etc) operations will never happen anymore. Don't be one of those clueless xenophobes that considers "other places" to be backward.

Bulgaria is an EU country near Greece and Turkey with a modern economy and modern science/tech sector -- more modern than the USA in many ways!

SiteGround has support in Bulgaria, corporate HQ in Panama, and some offices in USA (likely including sales).

Standard shared hosting would work fine. I can see several options here for you:
- Site5
- Arvixe
- Veerotech
- Stablehost
- WebhostingBuzz
- Glowhost
- Namecheap

I've never experienced a response time that horrible, and would report it to management if it ever happened. Domains and hosting has two separate support staffs. Domains have always been answer same-day, usually in an hour or two. The worst ticket time for hosting was 2-3 hours, at the height of their staffing issue last year. Before that, and since that, response times are generally under 1 hour. That's good.

Those are honestly "newbie" type questions. I find Site5, Stablehost and MDD Hosting to be best for extreme novice questions. Some support desks are not so enthusiastic to help you, and simply tell you to read the knowledge base (KB).

Nope, you're asking the right questions.

In fact, I may have another hosting option for you, since you're looking to launch 2 WordPress sites, and have questions. Contact me about a managed WordPress solution. PM me here, or use the Contact Us form.

I'm also a photographer, and have some insight into those types of sites. ;)

Hope that helps. :2cents:

Hi,

I just signed up for digitalfaq.

I'm actually not running Wordpress as my main website. My main website is an HTML site.

I will actually go back to one of your recommended hosts.

A2 hosting seems to be a bad host.

For some reason my Wordpress blog doesn't work (error in database connection) and cPanel's awstats don't work.

I have sent a ticket 16 hours ago, and all I got was a reply with a link to the A2 forum and the knowledgebase.

Looks like I have to cancel there and go to another host.

I just left Squarespace, and I hope this second change of a host in a few days will not mark my site as bad in SEO terms with Google.

I've sent you a PM with one option that we have available for you.

For A2 to take 16 hours to reply to a tech support tiocket is inexcusable. Better hosts never do that. I'd mentioned several in my last post. EuroVPS and Stablehost, for example, never take more than 30 minutes to reply.

Sadly, it's probably something really easy that would take a tech less than 5 minutes to fix. If even that.

Squarespace is one of those terrible "website builder" sites that traps you. Another is Wix. Those are horrible messes to get involves with. They're money pits, and you don't realize this until it's too late.

There's no reason for you to have the issues. Just reply to the PM when you get a chance. If that's not an option, then look into one of the others hosts listed in my last post.

Thanks, KP Media

For now, I didn't move my site from A2. The good thing about them is that the site is really fast, being on an SSD server.

But other problems popped up, e.g. email accounts related to my a2 account have this weird habit of creating time-outs on Apple Mail, so you have to close Apple Mail and reopen it in order to send.

Customer service on A2 stays abysmal, with usually 16 to 24 hours response time. And when they feel I'm asking for too much (e.g. creating a filter that wouldn't count my own visits in cpanel, or creating a redirect - both easy to do for someone who knows how in the htaccess file - they are downright rude. I will stay for the rest of the term and then see which of your recommended hosts offers SSD hosting, and switch over to them.

thanks for your help!

I'd be surprised if SSD made any difference. I doubt i/o is the bottleneck.
It sounds like support is the problem.

Let me look at your site. What's the URL? (Feel free to PM it to me if you don't want it made public).