Keeping your WordPress-powered blog secure may seem like a daunting task, but there are a few simple things you can do to make sure that you are not the easiest target on the Internet.

Hackers are usually pretty smart and driven people, so if they really want to get into your website they probably will. This post continues our discussion about blog security and introduces a few WordPress-specific strategies that you can employ.

WordPress is a great blog platform and light content management system, however it does broadcast some information that can help the “people who are up to no good” find your blog. This post will help you stop WordPress from broadcasting this potentially harmful information to these people. Future posts will also recommend some WordPress security plugins that will help you keep your blog secure.

First lets take a look at some areas that your blog may be displaying unwanted information, and how to remove it.

Your Theme

The Problem:
Look at the footer (bottom of page) of your website and see if there is a link or text that says something like this:

If it does, you are letting search engines, and anyone else who wants to, know that you are currently running WordPress. This can make it easy for the “people who are up to no good”, and who target WordPress sites, to find your blog by popular search engines.

The Fix:
To fix this we need to remove the link from the footer, and you can do this from the back end of WordPress.

To get started log in to your blog and then on the left hand menu click the “Appearance” button. After you have done that select the editor link that appears below the appearance button.

Make Sure that the “Update” button below is present, otherwise you will need to change permissions to be able to edit the files necessary.

To make the necessary changes, select the | Footer (footer.php) | from the menu on the right hand side, and make sure the update file button is still there.

Let’s remove the link from the footer the highlighted area in red between the <p> and </p> can all be deleted, and the part in darker red is the link to WordPress.

I am going to replace this with: “Dev Blog &copy; 2010″

and save it, this is how it displays now:

Next week we will show you how to remove the WordPress Generator Meta Tag. This Meta Tag actually displays what version you are running in you page source, and your page source is accessible to anyone with a web browser.

Seamlessly integrating your WordPress blog and your twitter account, all you need is a few minutes to properly setup the WP to Twitter plugin. The WP to Twitter plugin gives you plenty of options, such as Bit.ly and Cli.gs integration, different author accounts, and many other options. This post will cover what you need to do to get your WP to Twitter plugin setup, if you need help with the advanced options just leave your questions in the comments.

Last week we covered why you should use the WP to Twitter WordPress Plugin, in this weeks post we will cover the installation and setup of WP to Twitter. Before you begin you will need to make sure that you have the following:

• A WordPress powered blog
• A Twitter account
• a Bit.ly or Cli.gs account to shorten your URLs

If you are missing any of the above you need to sign up for them before proceeding. Below you will find a screen cast and instructions to help you set up the Plugin.

Step 1.) Install & Activate WP to Twitter Plugin

Login to your WordPress powered blog and then select add new from the Plugins menu. Now you should be at the Search plugins screen.

Type in “WP to Twitter” in the search box and then click on the search plugins button to proceed. The WP to Twitter plugin should be the top search result. Make sure that the author of the Plugin is Joseph Dolson and then click the install link which is located on the right side of your screen. A pop up will come up with the Plugin details, double check that this is the plugin written by Joseph Dolson and then click the big red install button on the right side of the pop out.

After WordPress installs the WP to Twitter plugin go ahead and activate it by clicking the activate link on the bottom left of the screen.

Step 2) Setup WP to Twitter

Now that you have WP to Twitter installed it is time to setup the plugin, to do this lets go to the settings page. There are two ways to get to the WP to Twitter settings:

• 1.) From the Plugin management page. Find the WP to Twitter plugin in the list and then click on the settings link on the left hand side of the box.
• 2.) From anywhere in the back end of WordPress. In the menu options on the left side, look for settings. Either click settings or the drop down arrow (right side of button), and then in the left side menu select the “WP -> Twitter” Link.

Update: You must now register the plugin with twitter, instructions for doing this are in the screen cast above and on the plug-in settings page.

Now that you are in the settings page of the plugin it is time to have the following ready:

• Twitter Username & Password
• URL shortening service: API Key and Username and other information.

Basic Settings
This part is pretty simple, just click the things that you want to the WP to Twitter plugin to do for you. My recommendation is to only check the “Update when a post is published” box. Your twitter followers usually wont be interested whether you just edited a post etc. Once you have made these changes click the save button!

Account Settings
Fill in your twitter user name and password and then press the save button!

Next fill in your Bit.ly or Cli.gs information, the WP to Twitter plugin now allows Yourls and a few other options so, but I haven’t had a chance to use them so I can’t make a recommendation on them. However I do know that both Bit.ly and Cli.gs work well. I am currently using Bit.ly for what its worth. After filling in the information for the appropriate url shortener press the save button!

Advanced Settings
All you need to do in this section is choose the URL shortener that you are using in the drop down menu at the bottom and click the save button.

This plugin can do much more than just post your WordPress blog posts to twitter so make sure and try some of the other options if you think that they will improve your WordPress or Twitter experience. As always if you have any questions about the setup or installation of this plugin feel free to ask in the comments below.

Resources
Plugin Author: Joseph Dolson
Plugin Page: WP to Twitter

Though we have a technical pillar, How-To-Blog.TV is not really geared toward file system tools and really geeky topics.  However, many bloggers are venturing into the world of video because multi-media is important.  Unfortunately, when a blogger enters the world of video, they also get to experience some of the problems.  While shooting video for a medical blog, I came across a situation I’d never faced–a corrupted SD card in our fairly new AVCHD video camera.  What shocked me was the lack of information on the Internet about this situation.  Thus, I thought it might be helpful to other bloggers and video enthusiasts alike to document how I got myself out of this predicament.

What Is AVCHD And Why Is It Ugly To Deal With?

AVCHD File System

AVCHD is a video format jointly developed by Sony and Panasonic.  It’s benefit is that it shoots HD video in a compression format that is appropriate for commodity SD cards amongst other formats.  AVCHD is not widely supported by mainstream software and generally requires an importation and conversion process to be used on computers.  Generally, the entire file system structure is required.  The following graphic illustrates the complication of this structure.

AVCHD Corruption

AVCHD files are like any other computer file.  If you have a faulty storage device or an improper shutdown occurs on your camera, files can get corrupted.  Unlike a simple text file, the complicated format of AVCHD and its surrounding file system structure makes the AVCHD corruption more of a pain.

What To Do If Your AVCHD Files are Corrupted on an SD or SDHC Card?

1. DO NOT write any more data to the card.  Turn off your camera and “lock the card” so that it cannot be written to.  This will keep files from becoming damaged.
2. Connect the SD or SDHC card to your computer through your camera or through an external card reader.
3. Obtain a copy of Stellar Phoenix recovery software and make a block level copy of your drive.  In Stellar Phoenix 4.0 Mac this is done through the “Image” tab on the far right side and it will create a DMG image which is a mountable copy of the drive that gets stored on your hard drive.
4. Once you create this duplicated image, mount it and verify you can see a file system that looks similar to the AVCHD file system image to the right.  You can mount a DMG drive in the Mac by double clicking on it.
5. Remove your original SD card from your reader or disconnect your camera so the volume name doesn’t get you confused.  We are going to perform the next step on the image copy you made of the drive.  The reason is we want to preserve your original card should you need to try another approach.
6. Now, with the same copy of Stellar Phoenix, perform a drive recovery selecting the “Formatted Media/Lost File Recovery” option.  This will end up creating a file structure on your hard drive and will generally create 1-10 additional folders with fairly ugly names in it.  You can actually see this prior to the recovery via their “scan” viewer.  Scans can be saved as well.
7. Once the recovery process is complete, peruse all of the folders in the recovery output and look for files with a .MTS extension.  If they are worth anything, they will actually have some file size to them.  One that is useless will be 16KB or 32KB.  One that has video in it will be MB’s or GB’s in size.  These are your AVCHD files.  Here is the problem.  Most software will not read these files without the complicated AVCHD file system around it.  However, if you obtain a copy of Voltaic HD this software will allow you to convert those .MTS files directly.
8. Use Voltaic HD to review these .MTS files and convert them to something that you can use (e.g. WMV or .M4V formats).
9. Get rid of that SD or SDHC card!  Now, being fair, it could have been your camera or an improper shutdown that caused the issue but these things are so cheap, do not risk it.  Ask your retailer for an exchange.
10. As you buy SD cards, think about getting 4GB to 8GB cards that are class 4 or class 6.  The new class 10 cards are risky and not compatible with all cameras.  Also, smaller cards will allow you to change out cards and diversify.  Having all of your video on a 64GB card is not a great idea when you could potentially loose everything due to AVCHD corruption.

Video and blogging is a lot of fun.  I hope you don’t experience AVCHD corruption issues like I did.  If you do, do not panic as there is a chance you can recover your data.  You can use Stellar Phoenix for free to see if you can get at files.  You’ll have to pay to use their file recovery feature.  In terms of the expensive of Voltaic HD?  That program is awesome as it allows me to quickly review AVCHD files and get them into something mainstream!

URL shortening is a growing trend in online marketing.  Short URL’s are advantageous on many fronts.   First, URL shortening services usually provide some sort of analytic function such as click tracking.  Second, short URLs  use less characters which helps to optimize posts on micro blogging platforms like Twitter.  Unfortunately, when you use a public URL shortening service the disadvantages of these URL shorteners can outweigh the benefits.  In this post I am going to show you how to create your own using Pretty Link Pro for WordPress.

The Disadvantage of URL Shortening Services

If you have followed any of the authors on How-To-Blog.TV, you know we encourage bloggers and online marketers to maintain control and ownership of their domain names.  Nothing changes with this philosophy when it comes to short domain names.  Hence, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that our first major issue with public domain shortening services like Bit.ly are that you end up creating inbound links to your content based on their domain name and not yours.  In doing so you loose potential link juice and deep link opportunities into your domain.  Beyond the SEO opportunity cost, you really never know when your links will be expired with some public services and that could cost you long term traffic.  Last, domains are a strong element of a brand and when you shorten a URL based off of someone else’s brand, you end up diluting yours.

The second downside of URL shortening service is that they charge for statistics and other features.  Some plans get pricey very quickly.  In the end, I’ve yet to come across a feature set slick enough to justify paying a monthly fee.

Decisions Prior to Creating Your URL Shortener

I know creating your own URL shortener sounds really complicated but with WordPRess and Pretty Link Pro for WordPress it really is simple.  The hard part are a few strategic decisions you must make before installing software.  The first decision you have to make is whether to use the URL of your blog or to create your own branded URL shortening service.

If you want to use the URL of your blog, there are several advantages.  The first is that you can keep all inbound links coming straight into your blog.  Second, your statistics and link management are built into the same WordPress console that you blog in daily.  Last, your links maintain your blog’s brand.  The downside to using your blog’s URL are that your actual domain name might be very long which will take up precious characters in microblogging services like Twitter.  The second is that you will likely have to use another service for links that target subject matter that is not part of your blog’s brand.  For example, if I were to link to an article on politics from How-To-Blog.TV, it might look a little funny.

The second option you have is to host your URL shortener under its own domain name.  With the recent introduction of .CO domains, there are a bunch of great short domain names available.  For example, we built a general Orangecast URL shortener from the domain http://oc2.co .  In the end, you might decide to shorten links from both your blog and a dedicated domain likc OC2.CO .  Still, think this through before you start downloading plugins and buying domain names.

Creating Your Own URL Shortener with WordPress and Pretty Link Pro

Once you’ve made the hard strategy decisions, the easy part is creating the actual URL shortener.  Here are the steps.

1. In WordPress, go to the Plugins side menu and choose “Add New”
2. Use the search feature to search for Pretty Link.  Once you find it, install it.
3. Go to Pretty Link Options to tweek your settings.
4. Start creating links under the Pretty Links menu.

Once you get comfortable with the free plugin, I highly recommend upgrading to the pro edition for a one time fee of $37.  The pro version has great features including customizable reporting, the ability to create links outside of the WordPress backend, and Twitter integration.  There is also a great keyword replacement feature if you are an affiliate marketer.

If you share links in social media, there is really not a solid argument for not having your own URL shortener.  It is easy and will save you time as it integrates both link creation and statistics right into WordPress.

The idea behind the Fundamentals of Blogging Series is to help you set up a blog and get started blogging – from purchasing your domain name to publishing content on your site.

Today we are going to begin to discuss the first steps to starting your blog – setting it up.  This will be an overview of the set up process, we’ll go into more details in a future post.

Setting Up a Blog at WordPress.com

First, we will look at setting up a blog at WordPress.com, which is easier to manage but has limited functionality in some areas. However, you can’t beat the price; it is free. WordPress.com will provide you with a subdomain for free (i.e. yoursite.wordpress.com). Simply go to WordPress.com and click the “Sign up now” button.

If you have a certain URL / domain name that you want to use, you can also map the domain of your choosing (i.e. yoursite.com) for a $10 dollar fee. However, if you want to use your own domain you will have to pay GoDaddy or another domain registry for the actual domain name and then an additional $10 dollars for WordPress to map it.  Don’t worry, we’ll explain more about this later!

Hosting Domain

Every web address has to have a hosting account.  This is the service where your web data is housed so that it is available to the Internet user.  If you are planning on hosting your WordPress blog yourself, rather than using the WordPress.com hosting service, you will need to own a domain so that people (including you) have a way to access the blog.

Purchasing the Domain

Purchasing a domain is simple enough. Simply choose a domain registry, create an account, and then pick your domain. For more information on where to get your domain, check out this article at CNET. My recommendation would be to use GoDaddy as they have low prices, renewal reminders, and good customer service. You can also register at our domain registry, but at the end of the day just pick the registry that works for you.

Stay tuned as we discuss more in detail the process of setting up your personal blog and linking your domain and WordPress login.

We all love WordPress for its dynamic functionality and ease of use; however, anyone who has a high traffic blog understands that these luxuries comes at a performance price. The dynamic abilities of WordPress are provided by a combination of programming logic and data. Each time a visitor requests a page, the web server must process the PHP code which contains the logic and access information stored in a MySQL database.  As the number of concurrent users grows, this process slows down your WordPress site.  You may even see a lovely server error or white screen if you overload your hosting.

There are some things that you can do to tune the performance of your WordPress site for high traffic volumes. If you are comfortable enough with php and html you can actually remove a number of php calls from your theme once it is in its permanent location. However, an easier option is to use the WP Super Cache Plug-In for WordPress created by Donncha. Wp Super Cache creates a static HTML file for posts and pages on your WordPress site and redirects visitors to these files alleviating the server from having to dynamically create them.  The resulting page renders in a browser exactly as it would if it were dynamically created so the end user does not experience any difference. The plug-in also offers options like lockdown, which prepares the blog for a traffic spike by keeping the Super Cache plugin from refreshing when a new comment is made.  For more information on the features visit Donncha’s page on WP Super Cache.

Installing WP Super Cache is like installing any other plugin; you simply need to install it via plugin installer in your blog’s administrative panel.  Once installed, you will need to activate it and configure it via the options page.

The challenge that most bloggers have with getting WP-Super-Cache to work is configuring their HTACCESS file.  An HTACCESS file is a file that tells the web server “additional instructions”.  In the case of WP-Super-Cache, the additional instructions are “redirections” from the dynamic content to the static web pages that the plugin will create.  The following blog post discusses these permissions and the overall configuration of the plugin:  Using WP Super Cache .  If all of this technical lingo and references to scripts make your head spin, simply go to the part of your WP-Super-Cache configuration page that says “Mod Rewrite Rules” and have your hosting company follow the instructions provided there.

When confronted with blog performance issues, WP-Super-Cache is the first step every WordPress blogger should consider.  The plugin is well written and is free.  If the traffic levels you are seeing are still killing your blog even with WP-Super-Cache installed, you will want to consider Derick‘s “Ultimate, Affordable WordPress Server Configuration” as it will enable your blog to serve up thousands of concurrent users.

There is no doubt that traffic on your blog is exciting.  Whether it be your first visitor, your first visitor from a search engine, or your first trackback, it is a great experience.  With increased traffic and concurrent visitors, however, come hosting problems.  In this post I’m going to define levels of traffic, common problems I see with hosting, and present a couple of solutions for you.  I’ll try to do so in a way that isn’t too technical.  If I loose you, ask a question on the comments section as there are no “stupid questions” on this blog.

How Do You Know How Many Visitors You Are Getting?

There are two free and effective ways to look at visitors on your blog.  The first statistic that is interesting to view is overall traffic.  Traffic statistics are very valuable as they tell you how many overall visitors you have on your blog and what content is drawing them.   WordPress Stats is a great solution for this as it updates pretty regularly throughout the day and integrates into your blog via a plugin.

The second type of statistic you want to look at is actual users online at any given moment.  You want to have access to actual online visitors as it helps you to understand when something is happening (e.g. a trackback from a newspaper driving significant traffic) and it is a great tool for evaluating hosting performance.  For this I use a plugin called Visitor Maps / Who’s Online .  Speaking of hosting performance, I probably ought to get back to that topic as it relates to this post!

What Do I Need To Support My Traffic Loads?

100 Concurrent Users or Less

If you are experiencing hosting problems and you have traffic that is less than 1,000 visitors a day or less than 100 concurrent users, this is for two reasons.  The first is just poor hosting.  If you are hosting your WordPress blog with a local service provider or a “cheap” masses provider, you could be in this boat.  The second is the hosting package you have selected is placing limits on your blog.  For example, GoDaddy’s lowest in shared hosting package maxes out at something like 50 or 100 database connections.  After that, they start refusing connections leaving your users with a “database error” message.  For an additional few bucks a month you can upgrade and be done with that problem.

Most commodity hosting providers should be able to handle 100 concurrent users or less without performance degradation.  If you are experiencing this, switch providers.  For our blogs in this category, we use MediaTemple’s Grid Service which is $20 a month.

Spikes that Go from 100 to 400  Concurrent Users

Many bloggers will see spikes in their blog that bring 100 to 400 concurrent users to their blog for a period of time throughout the day.  Though any good shared hosting or virtual dedicated server (see my post on WordPress hosting options for explanations) should be able to handle this traffic, it will definitely  pushe the limits of normal hosting memory configurations due to the overhead required to maintain database connections.  A free and fairly easy strategy to take is to remove the database out of the equation.  How do you do that?  A simple plugin called WP-SuperCache .  What WP-SuperCache does is makes a static HTML page from your blog post and serves it up so that each visitor doesn’t require a database call for the same thing the last visitor just saw.  If this is you, install WP-SuperCache and enable it.  Matt will be providing a post tomorrow on how to install and configure WP-SuperCache.

Handling Traffic Over 400 Concurrent Users

If your blog sees over 400 concurrent users in spikes, you will see both shared hosting and virtual dedicated hosting start to fall apart.  This is because these traffic loads start to push up against memory limits caused inefficiencies in most default installations of Apache (the web server software on your hosting).  WP-SuperCache cannot solve this problem for you.  Thus, you are going to have to make a decision as to whether you just let your blog die on these less frequent occasions or whether you do something about it.  If you chose to do something about it, you should do so because your have determined that your blog is growing in popularity and you need to step up and solve the problem.  Doing so will require a solution that cost between $50 and $150 a month and takes about 1 hour of a UNIX administrator’s time to setup.

I will detail this solution in an upcoming post entitled “The Ultimate, Affordable WordPress Hosting Solution”.

Summary

Blog traffic is fun and exciting.  Use statistics tools to keep an eye on your traffic.  Before you start installing plugins and spending money, know the various levels of traffic a blog can see and use the information I’ve provided configure your blog properly and purchase the right hosting solution.

If you haven’t experienced your WordPress blog’s performance tanking, you will at some point.  More frustrating than the actual  blog performance issues are all of the dead ends you will encounter when looking for a solution.  After months of having WordPress blogs crash during big traffic spikes, I finally rolled up my sleeves and came up with a rock solid server configuration for WordPress.  The best part is that it is based on a virtual server and is affordable by just about any blogger.  This week I am going to dedicate a series of posts to WordPress performance and then give away my secret as to the configuration of the ultimate, affordable WordPress host.  I’ll start off by helping you understand why WordPress performance tanks.

Why WordPress Performance Quickly Tanks

WordPress is a powerful blogging platform in that it allows bloggers to quickly deploy their blog in a highly expandable and customizable fashion.  Unfortunately, with this ease of deployment and customization, comes design considerations that do not scale well.  This is magnified by hosting platforms that are designed for minimizing monthly costs and support calls.  In the end, as a blogger, you are left with a software application that does not do well under pressure.  Without going into to much detail, I’ll rattle off a couple of the major pain points.

Database Calls

WordPress calls its MySQL database for everything!  Therefore, each page that gets rendered causes WordPress to make multiple calls to its database.  Though modern day connectivity speeds and high performance disk drives minimize the impact of database calls, the one thing that cannot be avoided is the memory associated with database connections and the overall complexity of performing database calls.  Logically, I’ll walk you through the simple database call in your template that puts the name of your blog on your posts and pages every time someone accesses your blog.  It goes like this:

1. Open a database connection
2. Check credentials
3. Issue a call that might join a few tables
4. Get the record back
5. Parse the information
6. Put less than 30 characters of text on one single element of your page.

This can happen multiple times on a single page and is quite a workout for your web server when you get a spike in traffic.

Web Server Connection Semantics

Most WordPress hosting is based on the Linux operating system and uses Apache as a web server.  Apache is a very sophisticated web server capable of servicing all of the needs of WordPress.  With this sophistication comes the need for resources.  Every user that connects to your server will be requesting multiple elements of your blog including images, scripts, style sheets, and html.  Just like a switchboard operator, your web server can become overwhelmed by too many incoming calls.  This is compounded by the fact that multiple elements on a blog post can end up requiring multiple web server calls.

A second challenge is that Internet communications are chatty.  Just typing in the domain of a blog into your browser requires a three way handshake on the network, a lookup of the domain name, and a first connection to be established.  Remember the children’s book “Go Dog, Go” and the repeated scene where the female dog asks, “Do you like my hat?” and the male dog replies, “No, I do not!” and then end with an exchange of “Good-bye” . . . “Good-bye”.  Yes, browsers and web servers go through this nonsense all the time and it can result in performance issues when thousands of users are visiting a blog during a traffic spike.

Shared Hosting

Most hosting marketed as “WordPress hosting” is shared hosting.  Shared hosting houses multiple websites on one server.  The result is that your blog gets to compete for resources with other blogs on that server.  (For more information on WordPress hosting options, see a post I dedicated to WordPress hosting options.)  The most important aspect of shared hosting is that Apache, the web server, requires memory for every connection and it can get out of hand very quickly as the visitors of multiple blogs connect with the server.

Summary

If your WordPress performance is tanking, there are affordable answers.  The first thing we have to do, however, is define some traffic levels and scenarios.  Why?  Basically, if your blog is tanking because you have 20 users online at one time, the solution is completely different from the blogger who has 1,000+ users online.  In my next post, I’ll talk a little bit about traffic and share a couple of plugins you can use to keep an eye on this.

Whether you are considering starting a blog or are an experienced blogger, if you run the self hosted version of WordPress, you will have to select hosting for your blog (if you need a refresher on hosted versus self-hosted WordPress see our introductory post on the topic ).  Unfortunately, a large part of your journey will require deciphering marketing jargon related to hosting platforms.  In this post, I will explain WordPress hosting options ranging from shared hosting to dedicated servers.  I will try my best to simplify the topic.

WordPress requires a Apache, MySQL, and PHP stack.  This is most commonly found on default LINUX installations.  This is commonly referred to as a LAMP stack (acronym is based on the first letter of each component).

• Linux – The operating system that allows other software components to work with the server hardware.
• Apache – The web server that serves up content to web surfers who visit your blog.
• PHP – a programming language used to create complex functionality on the web.  WordPress is written in PHP.
• MySQL – The database server used to store all of your WordPress configurations, content, comments, and more.

Though the “AMP” part of the stack are available on both Windows Server and LINUX platforms.  Under Windows, the platform is called a WAMP stack.  Still, LINUX is the best choice for your WordPress installation.  Why?  Well, it is kind of like ordering a margarita at an Itallian restaurant.  They will make you one but it isn’t going to be like the one from the Tex-Mex joint down the street!  Even the Wikipedia page that defines “WAMP” is incomplete and lacks citations.

Your options for LINUX hosting will generally include:  shared hosting, cloud/grid hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and content delivery networks.

Shared Hosting

A shared hosting offering takes a single Linux server and allows multiple websites to share both Apache and MySQL.  This offering is quite common as both Apache and MySQL were designed to host hundreds if not thousands of websites and databases.  The pros of shared hosting are that it is very inexpensive and is fully managed by the hosting company.  Most hosting companies provide some sort of “one click installation” of WordPress on the shared hosting offerings making it very easy to get your blog up and running.  The downside of shared hosting is that you lack control which places limitations on performance, reliability, and security.  If your blog sees less than 30 concurrent users or 250 users per day, shared hosting is probably the right solution for you.  An example of shared hosting is GoDaddy’s shared hosting.

Grid/Cloud Hosting

Grid or Cloud hosting servers are very similar to shared hosting; yet, instead of using a single server, the LAMP stack scales across a server farm using very complex software.  A grid or cloud version of shared hosting generally removes the performance limitation of shared hosting; reliability and security are still concerns.  Media Temple’s Grid Server is a good example of cloud based shared hosting.

Virtual Dedicated Servers

Virtual server technology uses software to imitate actual computer hardware allowing you to run multiple “virtual” computers on a single physical computer.  For example, I use a Mac for my daily computing needs but from time to time I will run Windows under a virtual machine in my Mac using Parallels Desktop for the Mac.  Parallels and other companies make enterprise versions of this technology designed to run on very large servers where they run hundreds of virtual machines.  This is very similar to the way that mainframes run.  The technology is designed to address the concerns of performance, stability, and security.  In the case of hosting a WordPress blog, most hosting companies having a virtual server offering that provides a LAMP stack and is compatible with WordPress.

Virtual Servers offer high performance, high levels of control, performance, and reliability.  The downside to a virtual server is that you have to manage it which requires UNIX skills or at least some knowledge of how UNIX servers work so that you can configure the server through a control panel.  Virtual servers are good for blogs that need to support up to 500 concurrent users or as many as 30K visitors in a day.  Virtual servers start at $50 per month and can go as high as several hundred dollars per month.

Dedicated Servers

Dedicated servers forgo the “virtualization” software and provide you an actual server with your own dedicated processors, hard drives, and network connectivity.  Dedicated servers are expensive and require a in depth knowledge of server management.   There are ways to achieve the performance of a dedicate server without taking on the expense and headache.  Thus, I am not going to go into anymore detail on this post.

Content Delivery Networks

Content Delivery Networks are highly complex hosting solutions that use enterprise level caching and replication to make your web content accessible in multiple parts of the world as if it were local.  Though some of the top bloggers in the world are beginning to experiment with these offerings, this solution is not cheap and the complexity of the underlying software makes it succeptible to reliability issues.  If you think your blog requires a content delivery network, you are probably seeing over 1,000,000 visitors a month from across the globe.  If so, contact Media Temple or Amazon and inquire about their CDN offering.

What is the Right Choice?

I’ve given you a few numbers to help you make your decision on a hosting provider.  The majority of bloggers will have their needs met with a shared hosting or cloud hosting solution.  Some might need a dedicated virtual server.  The bottom line is that moving a WordPress installation is very easy and only takes about 1/2 hour.   Thus, if you make a wrong decision or if your blog grows, you can simply move it to a different solution.  The upside of moving a blog is that it gives you a complete backup of your blog and provides you the confidence that you can take that backup and put your blog back together.  The second thing that happens is that when you move a blog, your MySQL database is rewritten and this eliminates “fragmentation” in the database which is a common cause of performance and reliability issues.

In the next week or two, I am going to be writing a post that will explain how to create a high performance virtual dedicated server that handle hundreds of thousands of users a day.  Thus, I will defer higher end bloggers to this type of solution before getting recommending CDN’s or dedicated servers.

With each new version of WordPress there is the possibility of plug-ins breaking when you upgrade.

As the WordPress community has grown this has become less common, but it is still something that can make a simple upgrade into an arduous task.

The release of WordPress 3.0 is scheduled for May 2010 (WordPress Release Dates), so it is high time that we begin to look at plug-in compatibility and some simple house cleaning you need to do before you upgrade.
Things to remember when you upgrade to WordPress version  3.0

• Back up Your Database
  The database holds all of the content for your posts and pages as well as information used by the WordPress and the plug-ins you have installed. Recommended Plugins: WP-DBManager, WP-DB-Backup
• Copy Your Theme
  Your theme controls all of the design, layout, and some functions of your WordPress- driven website. In order to make a copy of your theme you will need to access the FTP of your website and go to /wp-content/themes and download the theme you are currently using. You may not need to worry about this if you have the original copy and haven’t edited the CSS or other files within the theme.
• Upgrade all Plug-Ins
  Upgrading to a new version of WordPress is a great time to delete plug-ins you are not using and upgrade the ones you are. Make a list of the active plug-ins so that you know which ones to reactivate in the following step.
• Deactiviate Your Plug-Ins
  Deactivating your plug-ins will give you a way to problem solve for any plug-ins that break with the upgrade to WordPress 3.0. How you ask? After you have upgraded to version 3.0, activate one plug-in at a time and then test that it works; any white screens or php errors will let you know the last plug-in you activated is the culprit. After you work your way through your plug-ins you should be good to go, but check over your site one last time to make sure everything is working properly.