Recommend a hosting service

OCST

Sunny von Bulow
SoSH Member
Jan 10, 2004
24,483
The 718
Among my wife's job responsibilities is marketing/driving traffic to a certain blog. The blog is nothing extraordinary technically - backend is Wordpress, there is a slightly more elaborate skin on it than the Wordpress default. The content is fairly high visibility and gets picked up routinely by news outlets.

It's hosted by DreamHost.

It has been hijacked/hacked several times in the past couple of months - the site yields a "This site has been compromised" message.

DreamHost has been unresponsive - the only support is by email - can't get a person on the phone to help. The blog author does not have the skills to troubleshoot this kind of thing, so it has fallen to Mrs. OCST.

Can anyone recommend a host who would provide a better support experience? I used GoDaddy a few years ago, but for something very brief and simple, so can't help much. I know that many hosts leave such things to the site owner, but there must be a host who can provide some support to a blogger who lacks the skills to troubleshoot a hack.

Blogger is physically located in Brooklyn, if that matters (probably doesn't).

Thanks.
 

Blacken

Robespierre in a Cape
SoSH Member
Jul 24, 2007
12,152
Switching hosting providers isn't going to help you with application-level problems unless you pay a disgusting amount of money. You need a managed service like WPEngine if you don't want to be troubleshooting it yourself.

(And the literally-literally only way to safely and correctly "troubleshoot a hack" is to restore from a backup, which you should have and services like WPEngine will do for you. Under no circumstances is it worth trying to resuscitate a pwned install of something as simple as Wordpress.)
 

mwonow

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 4, 2005
7,095
We use GoDaddy advance/professional WordPress hosting. Can't say it's been flawless...but it's okay and not terribly expensive
 

canderson

Mr. Brightside
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
39,433
Harrisburg, Pa.
This probably has very very very little to do with the hosting company and more of the server setup/WP implementation.

I have sites hosted with a variety of companies. ICD Soft has the best support most likely, HostGator is quite good, Bluehost is OK. I'd avoid GoDaddy and GreenGeeks at all costs.
 

Wings

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 25, 2007
349
https://asmallorange.com/ would be my recommendation

I currently also use:

bluehost - okay
hostgator - better than bluehost in my opinion
hawkhost - meh
mdd hosting - very protective of sites
justhost - good
downtown host - fine
hostnine - I like
hostmonster
 

Harry Hooper

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jan 4, 2002
34,370
Anyone care to give a current recommendation for a light traffic {as in the complete opposite of e-commerce} hosting option? Grazie!

Having said that, maybe it's worth listing hosting options for higher traffic as well for those who might need it.
 

saintnick912

GINO!
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Oct 30, 2004
4,968
Somerville, MA
People I know like wpengine.com for hosted Wordpress. They do have some odd scheduled downtimes but they generally keep up on the patches.
 

dirtynine

Member
SoSH Member
Dec 17, 2002
8,394
Philly
I build & deploy WP sites for an agency. We use either WPEngine or Pantheon unless the client is dead set on something else. Slightly pricier but you get a tuned environment for managing WP (not just a link to CPanel), built-in backups, automated updates, git repos, dev-stage-live workflows, etc. Customer chat can also dive into your install and help fix issues in real time. WPEngine is probably best for you (Pantheon does more than just WP so might be overkill.)

Apart from hosting there are other steps you can take to harden your WP install - starting with making sure it’s updated. I’d also recommend obfuscating the login path (can be done with a plugin) and auditing plugins to deactivate stuff you don’t absolutely need.

edit - sorry, was responding to the original (old) OP, not the newer bump. For a lighter-weight host check out Flywheel.