Creating a network of blogs or sites is one good strategy to earn dependable online income. However, managing multiple sites naturally demand far greater resources than when running just one site or blog. It’s also not as simple as launching several simple HTML info/hobby sites back then in the earlier days of the Internet.
You’d also meet plenty of competition from established, well-funded blog networks (such as online spin-offs of print newspapers). As a matter of fact, you’ll be competing with all the millions of sites out there. There are over 1 billion websites on the world wide web today. This milestone was first reached in September of 2014.
If you’re a website owner, or just planning to become one, you’d want to have the edge, or at the very least, ensure that your well-designed sites are running optimally (or running at all!).
The good news is that there are plenty of easy-to-use sophisticated content management solutions (CMS) that will allow you to create and manage a lot of sites from one powerful administrator dashboard.
Use WordPress
Worth trying if you haven’t yet is WordPress 3.0 (multi-site), which absorbed the abilities of the old WordPress MU (multi-user). It lets you install and manage many sites once from one location instead of you separately installing each site on your server.
WordPress has matured from a blogging platform into a very powerful yet easy to use publishing platform, which is why it is highly recommended for running a network of sites or blogs. WordPress is a very robust system that runs on PHP and MySQL, two most popular web programming and database systems today.
You can’t go wrong with WordPress. Since it is an Open Source project, hundreds of programming experts around the globe continually improve its code, helping ensure that even a novice user can learn to use it in just a matter of few minutes. You don’t even have to learn how to install WordPress because your web host will be more than happy to get it up and running for you immediately.
Recommended Hosts
Some companies that offer reliable WordPress hosting are the following:
1. Inmotion Hosting is a popular hosting company for hosting WordPress sites. They offer free site transfer, 90 day guarantee, US based support, ability to use any WordPress plugins. Click here to check out their WordPress hosting offer.
2. Dreamhost is one of the best web hosting companies that offer compatible WordPress hosting. Its popular features include: unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email, and unlimited domain hosting. Dreamhost offers tremendous value for a low monthly price. It is a perfect solution for many small businesses that are just beginning or updating their existing content management system solution.
3. Myhosting is an affordable WordPress hosting solution for multiple domains. They are one of the few hosts that proudly offer a 100% up-time guarantee to their customers. Myhosting is an easy to use solution and includes tools to successfully self-install content management systems without error. The inclusion of unlimited email, free domain name, unlimited storage space, and unlimited bandwidth make handling the most demanding WordPress multi-site management easier.
4. Justhost is a fantastic provider of hosting for multiple sites. A standard package includes a free domain for life and instant setup. Unlimited SQL databases are a good option for WordPress hosting decisions. The reliability and simplicity of Justhost allow easy transitions when creating new websites. A free site builder can help you create your new website fast and easy. Additional features includes add on scripts and shopping cart solutions.
5. HostGator is one of the most popular web hosts available. The easy and affordable packages make hosting a website seem effortless. In addition to many unlimited features, they are one of the few hosts to also provide reseller hosting, VPN hosting, and dedicated hosting. The reseller hosting is perfect for website designers who offer hosting to their clients. HostGator makes it easy for WordPress hosting, business class hosting, or simple website creation.
6. Bluehost is one of the largest hosting providers out there.
7. A2Hosting is smaller compared to some of the above mentioned providers but they do offer a very good WordPress hosting solution.
8. WP Engine provides managed WordPress hosting for mission critical sites. Their plans are a little expensive when compared with the other available options but they do offer a good optimized WordPress hosting solution. Click here to check out their hosting offer.
Few Things to Consider
When shopping for the best deals, aside from looking at the cost, consider the support, storage, bandwidth, PHP memory requirements of your site network with an eye on the long term benefits:
1) Storage
A fully functional website is composed of many files that work together, and the bigger the site, the larger the storage space requirement. Multiply this by the number of sites you have, and you’ve got several hundreds of megabytes of web pages, images, video and audio, scripts, and executable files all taking up space in your web server.
It would be wise to figure out early in your planning how much storage space you’d need, and allow for any future expansion. It would be less expensive, for instance, to select one that grows with your needs rather than mass-migrate a hundred sites to a more powerful server once your sites outgrow their old servers.
2) Bandwidth
When a user visits a website, information is retrieved from the web server and sent to the user’s computer. The space occupied by the data transfer is known as bandwidth (to understand this concept better, it may help to imagine cars on a busy interstate highway).
If you have or expect a lot of visitors who use applications, stream videos, or interact with other visitors, then it is wise to purchase greater bandwidth to avoid costly server errors and missed business opportunities. If your current shared hosting plan can’t keep up with your sites, then it may be time to switch to cheap dedicated hosting that can support multiple sites very well.
3) PHP RAM Memory Limit
Sometimes the hosting company will offer unlimited storage but a very low PHP memory limit. This can significantly impact the page load time of your site if you want to use a few plugins (to run an e-commerce site for example). I would recommend aiming for at least 128MB PHP RAM memory.
4) Support
Support is always very important. You want to use a service where knowledgeable people reply back to your support question. Dealing with outsourced support can be very frustrating sometimes.
Creating and running your own network of sites is not easy, but not impossible, thanks to numerous options available. Make the right long-term decisions at the very beginning to help make your dream of a solid revenue-generating content network become a reality. Choosing the right WordPress hosting at the start will also save you a lot of hassle down the path.
WordPress Hosting for Small Businesses
We also have an article on WordPress hosting for small businesses that explains what considerations you should make when getting a WP hosting for your small business.
Disclaimer
If you click on any affiliate link and sign up for an account, we make some money. This helps with our free WordPress plugin development.
Hostgator literally stinks, have blockages not allow multiple sites above, you tease and above do not return the money when they have a guarantee of 45 days, stinks !!!
I use host gator and have several wordpress sites with no problem!! It works guys.
In Motion hosting has my vote. I have a VPS there and they run great. They also have 24 hr customer service through phone chat and email. Thumbs up!
Nice article but bluehost should of definitely been included in the top 5, Very Good
Just came across this today – going to try multiple blogs on both GoDaddy and Bluehost. Haven’t really had any trouble with either to this point.
WordPress truly is a godsend for people with very little programming knowledge who wish to publish articles on their own website. It offers many services which are easy to learn. And yes, switching to dedicated servers or even cloud hosting is a natural progression for sites that are becoming too popular.
Great blog, Excellent post.Thanks, will be back to check more
In choosing for the right hosting for you, you have to check if their services met your needs and the right bandwidth of your site and traffic. Check also the rate if you can afford it or if the price is reasonable. I suggest to check some past reviews to know if they don’t have frequent problem with server loading.
I also have several WordPress sites and usually hosting WP sites is not a big problem. I’ve heard from friends that HostGator is reliable and easy to use, I’ve been with this small business web hosting provider and didn’t face any problems yet. No server breakdowns or any other turndowns so far.
Hi,
I’m using Host Gator, great service and hosting.. But have had some problems lately. Getting 500 server errors. Talked with their support and they said it was because of PHP processes running. There is a limit of 25 processes running, meaning that you can’t have to many blogs and users logged in at the same time.. Does anyone know a fix for this?
Best,
I find it surprising that space & bandwidth is still an issue when there are companies like bluehost that offer unlimited space & bandwidth. I run my website DofollowPro on their servers and out of 2 years I’ve only ever seen it go down once for roughly 15 minutes (I have it monitored and reported via email). Nice article but bluehost should of definitely been included in the top 5 🙂
Host Gator is my favorite.I have been using them for past three years for two of my websites without any problem.
tanks for the tips 🙂
Good tips to consider. I used to only shop based on price but storage and bandwidth are so important that I had to change.
I am currently using BlueHost, JustHost, 1&1 and GoDaddy. I have been a huge fan of BlueHost but as of late they are starting to drop the ball. Lately they seem to be up and down like a Yo-Yo. They do offer exceptional US-based telephone support but I just wish I didn’t need to use it so much. I find JustHost is okay, no real downtime and they answer email questions usually within an hour. I find 1&1 technically sound, but they outsource their customer support to non-native English speaking people — frustrating. No problems at all with GoDaddy other than I find their constant upsell, upsell, upsell very annoying.
James
I can vouch that Just Host is a good server other then the fact my IP would get blacklisted regularly. It was DOS protection so I can’t blame them. I was refreshing too much while making css file edits.
Great info in your article btw
Thanks, Lee
I am using hostgator and I almost had no problems for several months now. Before that I tried bluehost and it was terrible. It was always down and loading very very slow. Maybe I was just on a bad server, I do not know but I canceled everything and refunded my money. Then I moved to hostgator I now it is OK :).
Also I want to say that there are no unlimited hostings. It is important for people to know that. Everything is actually limited.
Regards.
I like InMotion Hosting for dedicated servers.
Good tips on choosing a good web hosting for WordPress blog. I like all the 4 web hosts you are recommending there. Good stuff. 🙂
Very informative review! Personally, I have 3 websites hosted with Dreamhost, and I have had no problems. Sure, I am not monitoring their uptime very closely but things seem to hum along. What I especially like about them is their laid-back attitude. Really Californian.
pretty basic but very useful reminder when choosing a web host. thanks also for the recommendations on available web hosts and solutions