WordPress MU

Hi Im currently a developer for La Cápsula, a emerging web business in Colombia.

We are currently in charge of Web Solutions for a very important university in our country, Politecnico Grancolombiano (www.poligran.edu.co) and we are starting to develop a community model using wordpress mu, for the universities publications and eventually for students (about 8000 Students)

We decided to host mu in a server different to the university one to avoid conflicts with the engineers and such.

So we bought an account at bluehost.com since we saw it recomended in wordpress.org but for our surprise today while installing mu they told us that bluehost did not support a wildcard subdomain so mu is not able to run using subdomains.

Wich host would you recommend to us in wich mu can be properly installed, or what other solution may we have?

We are really looking forward to start building communities around wordpress in Colombia (there aren't many yet) and we would like it very much if we could get really close to Wordpress Mu core developers so we can start building networks in Colombia.

http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=4041
http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=4480

Good luck, and ask about the wildcards before you buy. :)

With 8000 students, if even 25% of those have a blog (excluding staff), you'd better be looking at a good dedicated server.

I can recommend Server Beach, if you (or someone you know) can handle IT for it. Or, get a box from Rackspace and let them manage it for you.

Shared hosting with that many blogs isn't an option, unless you want them to kick you off.

Agreed- and I speak from educational experience.

I think you can start with shared hosting and then move to vps or dedicated. You write "and eventually for students", when will that be?

We use site5.com and they seem to be fine.

*chuckle* Maybe we can convince the poster to use that Techertube.com video support plugin I wrote a few days ago. ;)

selad - how many blogs are you up to?

andrea_r, sorry that I can't say the exact number but the 25% of 8000 that lunabyte talked about works :)

Ah, good to know. :) i have about 10% of that answer.
One time we ran into issues, and figured it was SK@ alogn with being punded by spam, but it seems to have cleanred and I don't wanna move if I don't have to. I also don't want to be shut out of my account either.

"I also don't want to be shut out of my account either."

And not being able to get a db backup would pretty much suck. Shared hosts will do that to you too. If they have to shut you down, a lot of them will see you as "the bad guy", and not be too willing to help you. Especially since they know they're probably going to be losing your business.

Well, we keep a daily full backup on another server. We have this daily\weely\monthly script for the db and all files.

To be honest, you'd be very surprised at how many people don't. Whether it's MU, WP, a forum, or whatever.

Then again, maybe not.

I've learned that no matter how many times you tell someone to make a backup, few listen, and very few stick with it.

lunabyte, I guess you are right. That is why the backup is automated.

Definitely a handy tool to have. I won't deny it, I'm not as regular with backups on some things outside of MU as I should be.

But usually where if something gets lost, it isn't going to do anything other than cost me some personal time to fix it.

Do note though that with automatted backups, you need to be checking to see if they work. :)

Very true :)

What selad said. :) Actually, my host has been pretty good about it and i'm keeping tabs on it all.
Plus we figured out what was using all the resources last time and fixed it (the SK2 plugin - imagine that.)
I'm gonna move it as soon as I get some other things switched around.

I wonder why SK2 was eating so much? Unless you are getting that many spammy comments?

Well, it was back in October when there was a reported worldwide spike in Spam, plus we discovered issues with the log files and the clearing out thereof. And probably a couple things I forgot since then. :-/ But yeah, that was a big reason why we changed & hacked a lot of SK2 stuff.

We were getting pretty pounded, I can't remember the numbers right offhand, but they were huge. A couple users were blissfully unaware how pounded they were getting too. (tens of thousands in a short time frame)

http://akismet.com/stats for reference. It just goes up and up.

Returning to the hosting issue, can someone say something about asmallorange.com? I was looking on the vps they have.

And yes I searched :)

Not from personal experience, no. But I have seen people mention they were happy with them.

Another option may also be Media Temples Grid Server, but I can't speak of that from an MU standpoint.

However, if you are considering a VPS from ASO, why not look at a dedicated box from server beach? You can get on one for under $100.

It won't be the fanciest thing out there, but it would be better than any VPS.

What can you say about server beach? Do you have a wpmu running with them?

I saw an advert for a 2 gig VPS free for a year. Don't have a link or name handy but I'm sure you can find it easily enough.

drmike - no free rides :)

"I saw an advert for a 2 gig VPS free for a year. Don't have a link or name handy but I'm sure you can find it easily enough."

I wouldn't trust a host like that. As selad said, no free rides.

Like anything in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

As for server beach, I can speak from experience. Their dedicated servers, so why wouldn't MU run there?

However, I will say up front that they are not managed (software side). That responsibility comes down on the customer. They do have a support system, with 3 free support tickets when you sign up. They do take care of the hardware at no additional cost. Just the software support that incurs a cost if you can't fix it yourself. It's not as bad as it sounds though, and google is only a click away.

Just make sure it's got a Gig of RAM to start. Later, if you get "big", you can always move up.

I wouldn't trust a host like that. As selad said, no free rides

Agreed, neither would I although I'm very happy with my current host and she gve me three months free. :)