I'm hoping to start a bit of a blog showing a lot of my favourite photos, but not a lot of writing, so I've been looking at web hosts
US hosts seem to be a lot cheaper than here, but what has the support/backup been like ? Has WP been easy to set up with them ? Does you site load up quickly .
Are there any good Australian hosts under $10-00 p/m
and a million other questions
cheers Keith
I've used GoDaddy and honestly I couldn't fault them. I had issues with *cough* a certain ISP blocking the IP of my shared server and GoDaddy were nothing but helpful. Their support services are 24/7 and based out of the US so no problems with non-English speaking customer service reps trying to solve your issues! They seem to genuinely want to help you and are super friendly most of the time (usually they're keen to chat about Australia! Haha! I've had the odd person who just wanted to solve my problem and not chat, but often its as much chatting with you about where you're from/travel in Australia as it is about helping with your problem!). I ended up having to change hosting packages to solve the issues I was having (which weren't GoDaddy's fault, but this was the only way around it) and they were SO accomodating and helpful with the whole process. Yep, they get a bad rap online, but I have no idea why. A mate of mine used them YEARS ago and I had a site on a subdomain on his server back then and never had problems, which is the main reason I went for them now. Overall I'd rate them as a value-for-money host. You DO get what you pay for, but when you're just starting out they're good. I don't get enough site traffic to have bandwidth etc. issues with them at this stage on the base-level package, but am happy knowing I can pay more to increase all of that if necessary. They have servers in the US, Asia, and Europe I think. They're also super affordable compared to others like BlueHost, etc. that I considered.
Even if you're considering a WordPress site, I'd consider NOT going for a dedicated WordPress hosting option on a shared server. That's what got me into strife in the first place. Dedicated sites are far easier - you login and are taken straight to your Wordpress dashboard to set everything up. But its not that much more difficult with a cPanel set up! Happy to chat via PM's about it more if you're interested. I'm by no means an expert but I know a little and I love keeping my little blog and have a lot of fun with it.