Cheap and Reliable Web Host?

As I am starting to delve into my prospective career as a graphic designer, I need an online portfolio.

I’ve dealt with web design stuff before, but never web hosts. As I’m planning on building my site from a Wordpress theme, I looked into their recommended sites (BlueHost, DreamHost, and Laughing Squid). The prices seem to be pretty fair, and they directly reward users who opt for Wordpress installation.

However, the attached forums are abound with complaints of pages down for hours on end, and the three recommended hosts being a poor cross-section of the options available. Sure, this is a biased source (no-one goes to a troubleshooting forum to praise the item that is currently malfunctioning), but I would still like to shop around a bit, and I have no idea where to start. The portfolio will not be big (1GB Max); I only need it affordable, reliable, and able to support Wordpress features.

And to ask a broader-spectrum question: is Wordpress even the best option for building a portfolio (most themes seem to be photography- or blog-oriented)? Are there some viable alternatives that I should look into?

Any responses are appreciated.

Try Squarespace!

http://www.squarespace.com/

They are Wordpress compatible, realiable and fairly priced in my opnion :smiley:
I think they have an offer code for 10%- by using LINUS ;D

That’s all I could think of though.

I’m using unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk for both my portfolio (manual html/css code) and blog (uses wordpress) and have been pretty happy so far.

EDIT: I take it back, that hosting is crap. Was fine for the first few months, but now it’s slow as hell, down every few days, and on image-heavy pages it just stops half way for every image.

Thanks for the replies.

Looks good, if a little pricey. Do they do hosting, or is it purely a web builder?

I’m out of the U.S.; would you happen to know what (if any) fees/penalties I might incur?

I’ve used two hosts X10 and Byethost. I haven’t paid a cent, and have been completely satisfied. X10 gives you a lot of resources, but you have to log in to the control panel frequently or your account gets suspended, if you continue to not appear, it get’s removed (that said, I’ve had a site up ~4 years now that way). Byethost gives you less resources, but you don’t have the activity limit.

X10 comes with softalicious, which can install wordpress with a click of a mouse button. From memory, Byethost has a similar service.

Well the service is from the UK, not the US :wink: but no, there are no penalties for what country you’re in. I’m in South Africa, it’s still £2.75 per month with a free .com domain.

Oh and their support is damn good.

3.71 in us dollars pretty cool! Anyone know US hosting that is as cheap as that? I know lots start out cheap with a special but after a couple of month return to their normal rate around $7 a month.

Squarespace looks like its super useful to non coders, but i dont want to pay for something i am not using (will be coding by myself)

Godaddy offers $3.49/mo hosting, if you get that you get a free custom domain URL/100gb/unlimited bandwidth. I believe they have the cheapest around. One click installation of Wordpress as well.

Haha, actually I just saw an ad on blenderartists for godaddy. Right now they’re offering $1/mo for 12 months hosting.

Sorry, poor wording; I meant to say that my messages were coming from out of the U.S. But good to know that there will be no big fees, and good service is a strong selling point for me.

$4.67 USD, actually. Your calculations were for euros, the price is in pounds sterling.

Exactly. I’ll probably not be building this whole site by hand (Wordpress theme, most likely), so having some nice templates to rely on, such as those Squarespace possesses, sounds good. But having to pay quite a bit to so much as attempt to launch my career may be putting the cart before the horse. And as I have the skills to spruce any template up a bit, I see no reason to buy into something that limits my freedom.

I’ve heard a few ill things about Godaddy (the word “evil” was mentioned), but they’re probably better than Blue/DreamHost, which were, until fairly recently, up for consideration. The lack of specifics on said accusation of webhosting devilry doesn’t hurt Godaddy’s case.

I’m doubtful that’s coincidence. I’d pretty much never seen an ad for a web host until yesterday, when I started really searching for one. Targeted ad campaigns and such.

If you are just starting out with a new website, you can consider a free hosting solution.
I am using http://www.zymic.com/ For a free hosting solution they are not too bad. They don’t force ads, offer free templates to start with (i never used them though, but i have tried setting up WordPress some time ago and it worked) and have mostly good up times.
The only downside is that you get a subdomain (ex: yourwebsite.99k.org) rather than a domain. If you can live with that its a nice working solution for someone just starting out.
There are plenty of other ones out there, i chose this one years ago, there may be a better one out there now.

See my website here as an example: http://deniszholob.99k.org/ (Looks like it is conveniently down, the day of me writing this…)

I have however outgrown them and need something better, along with my own domain name.

I did a quick search on google to see the best rated hosts of 2014 with varying results, but a few names popped up throughout multiple sites like justHost, iPage, GoDaddy, Fat Cow, Host Gator, Dream Host

I’m on pow web here been on them for the last few years and not had any major problems so far

I’ve had a couple of sites hosted on Bluehost for many years. They did shut my sites down once when an error in the site code caused excessive database use. But for the most part, they provide reliable service, lots of features at a good enough price that I don’t feel like looking for other hosts. The one thing I could not do was: install a video gallery because Bluehost doesn’t provide the video editing libraries on their shared hosts (for performance reasons). But for a simple Wordpress site they should be fine. If you register your own domain (you should), you can always move the domain to a new host if you don’t like your provider, or if their special deal runs out and they start costing you money.

I don’t know that Bluehost has quite the reliability that I desire, but it seems like it may be a good place to start. The only thing that I’m unsure of is that their dedicated Wordpress hosting is very costly. Can I simply install Wordpress on a regular account?

I run Wordpress on a regular account and have another domain running Drupal on the same base-level $7.99 per month account. They have the one-click install, but you can install it by hand (or almost any other PHP-based CMS if you like).

Alright, I’ve bought into a regular account on Bluehost, and have partly set up my domain. I’ll fiddle with Wordpress for a few days to get the site ready.

In the event that I begin to encounter problems with Bluehost (or need something more budget-friendly), I’ll switch to one of the many options recommended here. Thanks all for your suggestions.

https://www.tsohost.com/ i use these guys (UK), Very reliable and the price is reasonable.

I know a free amazing web host! It hosts WordPress sites and phpBB forums! It’s WWW.xonar.org

It’s great! All my family use it! :wink:

Seems Legit