WordPress MU

I read this in a thread and didn't bookmark it and the search function on this site is less than stellar. I tried searching "host" but that does little good. I am looking for hosting recommendations for WPMU. Obviously they have to support wildcard DNS entries. I'm not going to create a lot of blogs on this, probably less than a dozen, so I don't need top of the line hosting. Any suggestions are appreciated.

I have dealt with one hosting company that seems to be really top notch and that is ThePlanet. A dallas company that does hosting and colo. We hosted a patch to a game their and even though our server there was getting serious traffic, it never melted down nor did the site become unresponsive. The use Cpanel for management and the techs that we dealt with were often top notch. One thing to note is that though they are top notch, they do not gladly suffer fools. Just my $.02 and by no means is this an official endorsement, it's just my experience with that vendor. There are lots of good hosting providers though I'm sure that are less expensive than they were.

I use Knownhost for a few months now, and i am really happy with it. I've recently installed wordpress mu without any problems - i have dedicated server. they are semi-managed for hosting so i think it is possible to ask them to set the wildcard domain thingy. their servers are in cali and texas.

I don't need dedicated hosting. Does anyone know any good shared hosts? Thanks.

I use dreamhost. They have been great plus you can set up cronjobs to do dbase backups and even full site backups. They don't currently offer one touch installs for wpmu but they do offer one touch installs for a lot of other stuff.

Here's a code for $50 off (yes I get a referral bonus if you use it but it is quite great and the support folks are always quick to respond). If you sign up for L1 plan it works out to about $61 for a year of hosting.
The code is: [code removed - drmike]

I run a few quality Dell servers in a quality datacenter and I'm very WP-friendly. swhguy [at] gmail.com if you want to talk.

Just for reference, out lovely spammer is coming from theplanet space.

Let's just say that it doesn't surprise me.

Thanks for all your replies. I decided to check out Dreamhost after recalling their name from someone else. I made sure that they support all the features necessary for the virtual subdomains. That should save me the headache of trying to figure out why WPMU won't work on my friend's host. =) corourke, if I do sign up, I will use your referal link. Thanks.

Hmm, we probably shouldn't have that in there. *shrug* Too late now.

Please tell me when you have the code and I'll remove it.

Go ahead and remove it. Thanks for waiting until I have it.

That's a complaint that I've heard before Mike. I had to ban a subnet of their while working on another job. If I didn't want the first ViagaKra email I certainly didn't want the 10 thousandth. I haven't heard about how good they are in resolving things like that. Have they ever shown up on SORBS or DNSBL? Sorry for the threadjack

Actually I had my very first server in ev1 space. Had a known spammer in the same class c for 9 out of the ten months we were there. They refused to do anything about it.

I did send in a complaint since I can see IP addresses here. Please note that when the poster is making actual comments, it's coming from Ukraine space then. They know what they're doing.

Same IP address doing the spamming here this morning. Reported yet again to theplanet and posted about on their support forums as well. (Not that that will do any good.) Automattic's been notified as well although I haven't heard anything back yet.

On my own boxes, both ev1 and theplanet has been longtime firewalled but we have some whitelisting in place. Not sure about SORBS or the other lists (Locked down term, can't go look) but I know other admins block them.

Also for shared - site5.com. That's where I'm currently at.

(although I'm getting too big. They've been really nice about it though.)

theotheragentm, i was talking about the shared hosting from knownhost. allthough i don't own shared hosting from them, i'm really pleased with their dedicated services.

I recommend Surpass Hosting. You can ask them to set up the features that WPMU needs and they do so readily.

I recall that Dreamhost doesn't allow fopen to run so there are some plugins that don't work and that's one reason I moved my blog from Dreamhost. Other than that they are great and that first year discount ($97 usually) can't be beat!

To andrea_r:
Which Site5 plan are you using? Are there many downtime? Thanks

OK, just talked to Site5 and they say they do not allow WordPress Mu. It's against their TOS to offer people free blogs. My search for a host continues.

Media Temple's grid server. Unless you want dedicated. If so, try Server Beach.

If you want dedicated, check out Total Choice Hosting. Great deals on unmanaged dedicateds.

YEAH. Site5 changed their TOS.

I take back everything I said about them - go for VPS or dedicated.

Just saw that its site5. I could not see this change in their tos. Do you have a link for that?

How hard is it to run a dedicated server? And is everyone running their Mu on dedicated servers?

To Selad:
Here is the link to the part http://wiki.site5.com/Service_Policies

"The creation of a service such as Hotmail (free email accounts), a service such as Geocities (free web space), a service that provides free visitor counters / web stats, a service such as linkexchange.com (banner rotating / link exchanges) and similar services are not permitted under any circumstance."

I would go along with lunabyte and say mediatemple.net in the sense that you should be able to set up Mu there in literally minutes.
They do say that Mu's memory usage may be reflected in their GPU usage, but for a small number of blogs, it would probably not be an issue.
They do seem to have intermittent problems (like everyone, I suppose) but I suspect they are careful to try to maintain their good reputation and I guess that things will genuinely get better, both in terms of their standard existing package and what they are bringing out at the moment.

How hard is it to run a dedicated server? And is everyone running their Mu on dedicated servers?

Like most other tech things these days...it's not hard until you run into problems :-).

I do run a dedicated server. I took the plunge about three years ago when I was booted from a shared account for using too much of the server resources with a php discussion application. It has been a continuous learning experience and can take a lot of time to stay on-top of everything. I think a dedicated person with above average tech skills can do it, but it is always good to have an experienced person as a back-up when you first get started.

I would recommend a fully-supported dedicated or VPS to start. There are a lot of good (and a lot of not so good) providers out there. I spend a couple of months doing research and asking questions at webhostingtalk before leasing my dedicated. Doing your research will pay-off and webhostingtalk is a good place to start.

Steve

Sorry...computer burp..not sure what happened here.

How hard is it to run a dedicated server?

Unless you are technically inclined and are capable of finding answers to problems on your own, I would suggest getting a fully managed server or VPS. For the most part, control panels like cPanel make entry into the market fairly simple. It's when the $*%& hits the fan though that sysadmins like myself make our money. ;)

My feeling is that Mu on a dedicated or VPS is better than trying to squeeze it onto a shared server. If you are going to go shared, you best check with your host first and tell them exactly what you are doing. I see people get booted at my day job all the time for much less than what Mu does.

For anyone thinking about shared hosting...
Read this thread first.

Thanks everyone for your input, I have narrowed down my hosting choice to MediaTemple's dedicated virtual plan. Hopefully there isn't as many downtime with this compare to their grid service.

I'll chip in here for the benefit of anyone else considering going down the VPS path, as its great for WPMU. My exp is based on Rimuhosting (rimuhosting.com), who provide excellent VPS plans very well suited for WPMU. MT seem to have a less technical user base than rimuhosting (for MT, using ssh and the Linux command line is considered a power user, whereas with rimu its pretty standard). Check out the rimu How To articles from their site and you will quickly get a feel for their approach.

ssh access lets you do anything you want, although if you prefer a UI webmin comes free, and Plesk is bundled with higher end plans.

Rimuhosting's DNS utility gives you full control over A records, so its easy to do your own wildcards. Or you can follow their how to and install Bind to run your own DNS. I haven't used the MT DNS utility, just scanned their FAQs, perhaps just check you can do your own wildcarding, it will be better that way for wpmu. svn isn't pre-installed, however rimu will install for you on request and setup so you can get wpmu nightlies.

If you are developing with wpmu and want to work on a small scale or with low traffic sites, wpmu works very well on a VPS with just 160Mb of memory. Will deliver around 3 req/sec on an apache bench test with 10 conc users. This is available from rimuhosting for $30/mth. That is $20 less than MT's entry level, although they work out about the same for equiv memory as you add memory and move up towards dedicated. One of the good things about a VPS is you can migrate to a dedicated server by copying the VPS image onto its own server (there is a small performance overhead involved, but the flexibility is significant). So no problem with MT, but I figured its worth pointing out the lower entry point for those wanting to make the jump to a VPS.

The support team at rimu is responsive and knowledgeable. I've been with them for coming up to a year, and had no problems with reliability or performance.

tene, what is the size of your wpmu site (blogs, traffic...)?