Choosing a VPS/VDS for a WordPress Website

Is your WordPress website slow and cranky, despite applying various caching and throttling plugins? Do you suffer from regular downtime that your web hosts attribute to different reasons on each occasion?

Sounds like it is time for a new web hosting solution!

Most WordPress blogs start out on cheap shared hosting, possibly playing $5-10 a month. This is often a good deal to start with as few blogs last long enough to make any real impact.

However, if your blog is one that does raise eyebrows and generate discussion, it could be time for a move to the next step in the web hosting ladder, a virtual private server.

Making the right choice in your quest for a VPS solution for your WordPress blog is a case of weighing up the benefits (such as speed, bandwidth, storage space and any included support) with any detriments, such as an unnecessarily high monthly fee.

Moving to a VPS should offer you an improvement on all of the above:

Speed – You should be looking for a package offering at least 1 GHz of dedicated processing.

Memory – Go no lower than 512 MB.

Bandwidth – Unmetered options are available; choose a package that offers more than you were previously using.

Storage – Your website/blog is going to keep on growing, so select a storage option to allow comfortable expansion.

Support – There are hosts out there that will expect you to understand Linux and connect to the server via SSH to set it up and offer support for doing this. Avoid these unless you have a competent expert that you can call on.

You should also be looking for a specific server type. For the best results, you will need a LAMP-based server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), as you may find that some WordPress plugins don’t run too well on a Windows servers.

You will have no trouble finding an affordable solution – the problem is, will the solution be suitable? There is no point paying $15 a month for an apparently super-fast hosting solution for your WordPress blog when the host doesn’t offer support, just as there is no point in paying $40 a month for a slower solution.

Striking the right balance is the key here, and to help, you can Google the name of a potential web host to find any reviews of the server and see what other users think of them.

Look out in particular for mentions of speed and support, and how long it takes them to respond to issues.

When you find your solution, you should ideally be looking for something in the $50 a month category to comfortably migrate from shared hosting and allow your website space to breathe and grow in its new virtual dedicated hosting.

Author's own experience.

Logo captured from personal copy of WordPress.