Website Hosting Recommendations for Multiple Blogs | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Does your wife use WP for her photography biz? I want to switch over but will lose my blog.

Does your hosting service use cPanel or another front end management system?  cPanel allows you to look at meters pertaining to bandwidth usage, disk usage, and CPU usage.  You would want to keep an eye on those things (and maybe others, I'm sure) to see how you're doing.  Also, look for slowdowns. If your blogs start to get slower load times, it might be time to look at an upgrade. 

I'm with bluehost and haven't had any problems running multiple blogs. I wouldn't worry about it unless you actually do start to see issues; then it'd be pretty easy to switch to a new package.

MoneyBeagle said:

Does your hosting service use cPanel or another front end management system?  cPanel allows you to look at meters pertaining to bandwidth usage, disk usage, and CPU usage.  You would want to keep an eye on those things (and maybe others, I'm sure) to see how you're doing.  Also, look for slowdowns. If your blogs start to get slower load times, it might be time to look at an upgrade. 

@Money Beagle — We do have cPanel, but I have not explored it much. Thanks for the tip, I will certainly go and check it out. Thanks!

Jeff Rose said:

You should be okay.  I'm using Lunar Pages to host about 6 total sites and haven't had an issue in a long time and it's a shared package. 

 

For GFC, I am using a separate server with Host Gator because that's the host my local web support guys use.  

 

With 2 new sites and a few others in the works, I'm trying out Liquid Web.  Between the 3, I'm spending about $60/mo ($45 for GFC since it gets the most amount of traffic)

 

Side note:  If you are ever wanting to develop new sites to help link to each other, it's better to use the different servers to be able to link back and forth.  Even better if you can setup different Adsense accounts for each.  

@Jeff — Good tip on the linking between sites. So far, I have not had the need or desire to link my sites, but I am planning a new site and will be linking. So thanks for the head's up!

@Eric – Any recommendations on a good caching plugin? Thanks!

the W3 total Cache plugin is really good.  run your site through here first: http://gtmetrix.com/ then install the plugin and use the tweaks offered for Wordpress blogs in gtmetrix.  try again and see how you go.

Have used a Hostgator reseller account for years without problems. (All for my own sites — not to resell.) Costs about $300/year. WHM interface allows flexible and automated account setup and control. Separate cPanel for individual accounts. Takes a bit of time to learn, but I find ongoing management more straightforward than messing with subdomains. I do not think dedicated servers are needed until you are getting a horde of traffic, and congratulations if you are. I have decent traffic on some of my sites and overall never come close to bandwidth and storage limits. Also, you can effectively have your own cloud for free offsite backup of local files.

20s Finances said:

Jeff,

 

Is there any material on this topic? I've heard others say the same thing, but I'm just curious if servers are taken into consideration when some of the rankings are calculated. I'd love to read more about it. Thanks.

 

Jeff Rose said:

Side note:  If you are ever wanting to develop new sites to help link to each other, it's better to use the different servers to be able to link back and forth.  Even better if you can setup different Adsense accounts for each.  

I haven't ready anything about it and the only way I found out when I was selling some of that…eh hum..direct advertising on my sites.   When I mentioned I had another site, they were a go to include that one, too.  When I mentioned some of the other sites on the same server, they wouldn't do them.

Plus, I know another blogger that sells direct advertising all day long and does so on multiple sites.   And all their sites are on different hosts for that purpose. 

I think the only thing you have to be careful on is getting a little too link happy between the sites.  If you're constantly linking back and forth from the same 2 sites, it will yield little value. 

Unlimited Hosting Isn't: All shared hosts will shut you down if you start using a great deal of resources.  You shouldn't have this problem yet, unless you're three sites are getting very high volume, but it's worth paying attention to.

Hosting: You should be good with BlueHost for just three sites.  Now, the photo blog and PSD pages might slow your load times and tax the server a bit, but there are much cheaper ways to speed the site up that don't include new hosting packages.  The easiest and cheapest suggestion is to offload all your content to a CDN (contend delivery network). Basically, pay someone else to host your images and distribute them.  Cheapest way is through Amazon with their S3 service.  You can also look at a service like MaxCND, but AWS S3 is very cheap.  I've implemented it on almost all the sites I host for clients and my monthly bill is normally less than three bucks. 

Multiple Hosts:  The only reason linking between servers is important is if you're trying to hustle AdSense.  The idea here is that if you have multiple servers or C Class IP addresses, Google and other's won't realize that you own a network of sites.  So, since they don't know you own all the sites, they believe all the links are legit, that each blog has truly earned the link, not just that you own all the sites and can create any links you want.  This is really only important if you're running a large network and you are trying to make money via AdSense and are walking the line regarding BlackHat SEO work.  Also, having multiple accounts is against Google's TOS, so that's not a good idea.  People do it all the time, but it can get all your accounts banned and the entire balance frozen.

I highly recommend Rochen.  I've used them for 6 years or more and they're great.  No oversold servers, very limited downtime, and highly responsive tech and sales guys.  They're more expensive than HostGator or BlueHost, but totally worth it.