Introduction: WordPress is renowned for its ease of use and abundance of free resources found on the internet. If you are new to creating websites, 99% of time you would be recommended to set up a WordPress powered website. The very first thing to consider when setting up a website is to choose the hosting provider. This post discusses two options: free WordPress hosting and paid hosting.
For quick and dirty FREE WordPress websites, WordPress.com is the way to go.
Go there, create an account, choose a subdomain (your URL would be in the form of subdomain.wordpress.com) and your website is up and running. No installation. No server administration. Best of all, it is FREE.
However, there are a number of drawbacks:
limited ability to change WordPress configurations, e.g. cannot add plugins, limited use of PHP scripts, etc.
WordPress.com may add advertisements into your blog posts
You can remove the above limitations by going Premium (US$99 per annual at the time of writing) which is quite expensive. You would definitely want to consider other WordPress hosting options as discussed below.
Free WordPress Web Hosting Option 2: Other Hosting Providers
There are a number WordPress hosting companies “claiming” to provide free WordPress hosting. However, these WordPress hosting providers may:
add banner ads to your website (but do not share the revenue with you)
limit the amount of space, traffic flow or technical capabilities
charge you for using your own domain
the paid upgrades are charged exceptional high
If you are tech-savvy (reads: you understand thoroughly their terms and knows the tricks to avoid being charged) and interested in this option, here is a list of these free WordPress hosting providers:
Paid hosting is the definite choice if you would like to create a quality website with ultimate flexibility. With paid WordPress hosting, you can literally configure every single aspect of your website, down to the original code of WordPress (which is not recommended, of course). This is the only way you can build a professional looking and fully functional website.
When looking at different hosting plans, you may come across many different jargons like shared hosting, vpn hosting, dedicated hosting which would cost from several dollars per month to several thousands of dollars per month. How to choose?
For starters, the shared hosting option is more than enough. In fact, edward-designer.com is powered on a shared hosting.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a WordPress Hosting
Besides the cost factor, below are a list of factors you should be considering when choosing a WordPress hosting:
Percentage of uptime
Size of web storage (amount of data you are allowed to put on the hosting server)
No. of domains supported
Volume of traffic allowed
Help desk Support: Around-the-clock vs office hours
One click installation of WordPress through admin panel
Use the 1-click WordPress installation wizard and get your website up and running!
You will enjoy the same level of easy-of-use as WordPress.com but you are in total control of your website. If you write great contents, your Adsense earning will soon take care of the hosting fee and you virtually have free WordPress hosting!
I began this blog about half an year before and now I can earn enough money for my hosting bill with earnings from advertisements and affiliate marketing in only 1 day, e.g. you can sign up FREE for the affiliate plan of a2-hosting to earn US$85 per referral.
Happy WordPress!
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Edward Chung
Edward Chung aspires to become a full-stack web developer and project manager. In the quest to become a more competent professional, Edward studied for and passed the PMP Certification, ITIL v3 Foundation Certification, PMI-ACP Certification and Zend PHP Certification. Edward shares his certification experience and resources here in the hope of helping others who are pursuing these certification exams to achieve exam success.
Hi, my name is Edward Chung, PMP, PMI-ACP®, ITIL® Foundation. Like most of us, I am a working professional pursuing career advancements through Certifications. As I am having a full-time job and a family with 3 kids, I need to pursue professional certifications in the most effective way (i.e. with the least amount of time). I share my exam tips here in the hope of helping fellow Certification aspirants!
If you have any queries, I am more than happy to help. Please review the certification FAQ here OR leave your queries in the comment section. I promise to attend to them asap.
Great artical Edward I always prefer a paid WP hosting because it provides me with SEO and other functionality