WordPress MU

Hey everyone,

I have read on these forums several times that the best choice for hosting is a dedicated server option. After reading several threads and with my own understanding of web server management, I can understand why this is probably a good idea. However, dedicated hosting tends to be a bit pricey. It is something that I would be more than willing to invest money into if I knew that, what I was trying to accomplish was going to be successful. I am not interested budgeting large cost for projects that fail. Therefore, what I want to do, is try WPMU out on a shared hosting option just to see how things work, and then if things are running smoothly and I am attracting more users I would like to then transfer to a dedicated host.

My question is, does this sound like a good idea? is it hard to transfer to dedicated?

No, it's not hard to transfer to a dedicated. I would recommend you be sure to register your domain name yourself--don't let your shared host do it for you. That way, when you are ready to move your site to your dedicated (or even VPS), it will be a lot easier to transfer your site since you have complete control of your domain name.

The hard part will be learning to administer your dedicated if you are not familiar with server administration. You can make that a lot easier if you go with a fully-managed dedicated server. That will be a little more expensive, but unless you are an experienced webserver admin, it will be worth it.

I would recommend spending some time browsing the dedicated server forum over at webhostingtalk.com...it will be well worth the time and you will learn which dedicated providers to stay away from and which are the quality providers.

Good luck.

Steve

Ok, so its not hard... What would the basic steps be? just so I can get an idea of how "not hard" it is.

Well, that's like asking for the basic steps to painting the Mona Lisa...there are lots of ways to do it...it just depends... :-)

But, if you have WHM on your dedicated server, then one way to do it is to simply use the WHM interface to import your complete site from your shared account to your dedicated site...just takes a few clicks. Then you would set your domain name to resolve to your dedicated server...wait for it to propagate and you're done.

Of course, there are lots of other ways to do it. Transferring the account is the easy part...managing the dedicated server may not be so easy depending on your tech skills and familiarity with server administration.

Steve

You cloud start out in the middle with a cheap VPS as well. Sometimes, a "test" site quickly become daily work and you're even too busy to move it until something drastic happens.

(yes, this is the voice of experience talking.)