I am not going to tell you that there is only one “best” hosting service for WordPress blogs but I will tell you that some are considerably better than others especially with the release of WordPress 2.7

What are you looking for when you look for hosting for a WordPress blog?

For the most part the same things you will look for in any reliable hosting service:

• Lots of storage space
• Lots of bandwidth
• Fast reliable support
• Very little down time
• Low cost

This are the common factors you want to look for when you are looking for hosting for any site but when it comes to a WordPress blog there is one other feature you might want to look for, suPHP.

Right about now most of you are saying, “What the heck is suPHP?”

I can give you a very technical definition that I barely comprehend myself or I can tell you this. It is a php code that lets you run files and folders on your site with different permissions.

Permissions (CHMOD) are set to let the server, user or anyone modify a file on your site and are usually represented by numeric values such as 777 (let anyone in the world modify this file) sometime files need to have the permissions changed to a value that is not secure and invites hackers into the site, such as the 777 above.

Once you have suPHP installed the site will use different permissions to have the files modified without opening them up to every body in the world.

So why does this affect WordPress blogs?

With WordPress 2.7 new features were added that will let you automatically update your version of WordPress or automatically download and install plugins. If you have suPHP running on your server these features work very well without modification or the need to FTP into your site to change permissions.

If you don’t have suPHP on your site you will have to change the permissions of files and folders to make sure everything works correctly. With some hosting you might have to set the permissions at 777 and this could just be inviting hackers to your blog.

How do you know if your host is using suPHP?

The easiest way to find out is to ask them?

If you aren’t already hosting with them this would also be a good way to find out how well their support system works before you purchase.

Just go to the support section (make sure your request goes to technical support and not sales) and ask them if they are running suPHP. If it takes them a week to get back to you then you probably don’t want to use this service. If they get back to you in less than 4 hours it is a reasonable response anything under one hour is good.

One thing that might happen to you that will point out that your server has suPHP running on it is, if you ever change a file or folders permissions in a PHP script and you get an error, specifically a 500 internal server error that usually means you are running suPHP. To fix this error set all your folders at 755 and all your php files at 644 and it everything should work for you.

I am sure there are a lot of reliable hosting services that offer everything that has been mentioned here but one that I have worked with and have personal experience with their support and service is HostGator. For blogging purposes I haven’t found a better hosting service for Blogging Beginners.

If you know of any other services that have all the features listed above go ahead and leave a link as a comment to this post. But do not put in more than one or your post will go to moderation.