From the title you can probably guess where this post is going, however I want to make a few things clear at the beginning.
- Bear in mind this is My Blog and is only an account of my personal experiences . They are by no means absolute fact as I may have been an anomaly in the case, however what I write is exactly what my experiences have been.
- I have no affiliation to any hosting company and am not paid or influenced to write this in a certain light for any company for any personal gain, once more I iterate this is purely my opinion and experience.
- As you will be able to tell as you read the article I hold no bad feeling to any company regarding my experiences and will portray them with both strengths and weaknesses, I do not aim to damage any reputation of any company here.
For a personal project of mine I needed a web host, me and a friend both decided that GoDaddy would be the way to go, as we had heard good things, the pricing was good etc etc. For the first landing page I uploaded to the FTP all was great, everything loaded quickly the interface was easy to use and any issues I raised with support were answered quickly and efficiently.
One day whilst battling with Dreamweaver…and losing badly I got chatting to a good friend of mine Matt Ogborne, and he suggested using WordPress to design the site, as I had with this blog and as he put it ‘stop trying to re-invent the wheel’…So I did.
Then came the awkward moment of uploading the new site to the GoDaddy server. For a reason unknown to me, Godaddy, WordPress, Stephen Hawking and every other conceivable organism, the page load times were painfully slow. I mean, after running page speed tests i was having a first byte download time of 14+ seconds…in web speak, that’s approaching half a millennium. I do have a screenshot of this somewhere, I can’t find it currently but it’s nearly 01:00 am and I’m probably man looking.
Now i know what you’re going to say. It’s going to be stuff like, “did you have the latest version of WordPress installed” Yes I did. “Did you try to download some plugins to improve performance” I did some and tried others but as the response time was so slow most plugins would fail to download and just crash the WordPress admin page. “Did you try contacting GoDaddy support about this” I did and they were very good and very keen to try to help but everything they had suggested I had already tried and then they insisted it must have been a WordPress issue.
After many days of trying to get this sorted I felt the only real option for me was to move web hosts. After researching on the internet I found that I wasnt the only one who had had trouble with WordPress and GoDaddy running slowly together and now I knew I would be running a WordPress site I knew that I needed a host that could specialise in that. After questioning many web friends for recommendations it was once again Matt Ogborne to the rescue who pointed me in the direction of EvoHosting. This was the best move I made.
The support and installation guys were incredibly knowledgable and quick to get me up and running, and I am happy to say I have now gone from a site with a first byte time of 14+ seconds to a total page load time of under 3 seconds, still with room for improvement.
It is now that I would like to make clear, I am still a GoDaddy customer, I have no bad will against them and already have plans for the hosting package I still have with them. The service I had with these guys before I tried to move to WordPress was faultless and for anyone with a site builder loading straight into GoDaddy’s FTP I would personally recommend, and this is how I will be using my Hosting with GoDaddy.
If however it is a WordPress site you have in mind I would advise to not use GoDaddy until they have worked out the kinks which seem to make it unbearable slow. There are plenty of other hosts out there who handle WordPress with no problem, and I personally give the Dave’sDays seal of approval to EvoHosting. Potentially with a view to convert this blog from a .com to a .org, so watch this space in the not to distant future.
Lots of exciting things going on at the minute which I can’t quite divulge with you yet but as soon as I can You’ll be the first to know. If you have any questions about my hosting experiences or want to know more get in touch, im always happy to talk.
GA, GE and GN
Dave
