The thing about this feature is that it is so much more powerful than simply listing results in a table. You can actually see the areas of your page that I receiving the most clicks. Additionally, once you’ve loaded the overlay, you can continue to browse to different pages and continue to see the overlay on those additional pages.

These clicks works for any content on your site but does not show when the link points to a different domain. One thing you can do to see links outbound is by setting up a redirecting system. For example, passing something like: http://yourwebsite.com/redirect/?linkname.

Overall, I believe this feature is really awesome: easy to understand and use while answering important questions on how your site is being used. I’d recommend everyone check it out and should offer answers to the novice SEO even without professional SEO assistance.

Why Would I Want a New IP?

Most of the reasons for using a dedicated IP address revolve around SEO. First, it is argued by some that search engines will rank sites higher when they have an IP address that is not used by any other website. For example, if you are using a shared hosting account, the IP address of your site will actually be used by many websites. There is a theory that if your site is the only site using that IP address that you’ll receive SEO benefits from that. Most people do admit that if there is any benefit from this, it is going to be very small.

Another reason for a different IP address is so you can link between your own sites. If you own 20 websites and they all use the same (or a very similar) IP address search engines will recognize this when you link between those sites. This will reduces the amount of benefits you see from these links from a search engine point of view.

Why a Dedicated IP Address at HostGator Doesn’t Provide All This

I decided to get a dedicated IP address for this site, just to see how things worked. It is $2 a month so the risk vs reward seemed worth it. The process of getting a new IP address, which I’ll cover is a minute, is very simple.

However, what I found from my new dedicated IP address is that while is does guarantee I’m the only one using that IP address for my site, it does not affect two fairly important things:

1. Email is still sent using your hosting IP address, which is shared. This means that if someone else using that IP address were blacklisted for spamming, your emails could also be blacklisted too. This isn’t really a very big problem and I wouldn’t worry about it but it is worth mentioning if someone were thinking of getting a dedicated IP for that reason.

2. The IP address is very similar to your current IP address, at least in my case. This means that even though the IP address is different, the SEO gains will not be seen (according to other people’s educated guesses…SEO is a lot of guessing). To get more benefits you would want a new C-class IP address which will be very different from your current IP addresses.

Because of those two areas, I’m not entirely convinced that a dedicated IP address is worth it. If the dedicated IP addresses being provided were a different C-class, then I do think it would be worth it. HostGator does provide SEO hosting which includes several C-class addresses to use as you see fit but I’m not sure I really want (or need) to change my hosting plan. I will be contacting them soon to see if there is an option to have a new C-class IP address under the reseller plan.

How to Get a Dedicated IP

Getting a dedicated IP is pretty easy: just fill out this form if you are using a shared hosting account and this form for reseller accounts and the process will begin. On the reseller form, your “Reseller Domain” is the you main domain (the one you opened the account with) and “Site to Put On Dedicated IP” is just that, the site to give the IP address to. I mention this because the two domains can be different which I found confusing at first. After you fill out this form you’ll receive a few emails to confirm everything and then within a day or two you should have your dedicated IP address.

I have always found Google’s tracking code to be fast, definitely faster than other tracking applications I’ve tried. Still, if they can improve the performance even further I won’t turn it away.

Installing Google’s New Tracking

I found that just relocating the tracking page was a little tricky…not sure why they hide it the way they do. Anyway, here are the steps to install the new (and potentially faster) Google tracking:

1. Log into your Google Analytics account

2. You should be provided a list of sites you are tracking. Find the site you want to change.
3. You should see your site URL and then an identifier that looks like this: UA-1234567-8. Write this identifier down (it is your sites Web Property ID).
4. Click the Edit link.
5. In the upper-right of the page that has loaded you should see a link “Check Status”. Click on this.
   

6. You should now see a new link in the section titled “Instructions for Adding Tracking” that says something like “Try the new Asynchronous Tracking!” – click on this.
   Note: at some point this new feature will likely become a standard feature so this link may be moved or changed but accessing the tracking code should still be available at this page

7. You should now be presented with the page to access the new code. At this time, you have to manually enter your Web Property ID (which is why we wrote it down earlier). I imagine they will at sometime change this so the code presented to you will already have your ID in it.
8. Copy the tracking code text.
9. Find where you keep your old Google tracking code (for example, in WordPress this is normally in the footer.php in your theme).
10. Remove the old Google tracking code and replace it with the new
11. Remember: You will need to update the Web Property ID. The line you need to change looks like this:
    _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
    So on this line you would replace UA-XXXXX-X with UA-1234567-8 (using the example code from above)

12. Save the file you’ve changed and ensure the changes are copied to your web server.

The process is relatively simple, although I do think Google should just be populating the Web Property ID themselves. Seems likely to me that many people will see the new code and replace their old code with it without ever reading that they need to replace the UA-XXXXX-X.

What Does Asynchronous Mean?

Normally, when a web page hits some JavaScript it has to wait for it to download before it can move on. This is why people try to put much of the JavaScript at the bottom of their web pages: this way, it is creating the slowdown after everything else has been loaded and hopefully the user won’t notice the slowdown. Asynchronous just means that the web page will continue to load other items even when it hits this piece of JavaScript. Not only should this improve performance, it means you can put this piece of JavaScript anywhere you want instead of the bottom of the page.

Additional Reading:

• Google’s Documentation

• Googles Need for Speed: Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking
• Google Analytics Asynchronous Code Improves Page Load Time

Shortly after the virus was first identified, someone helpful at Inspirated.com released a script to fix the problem. Fixing the process manually is very difficult because when the site is compromised, every PHP file is updated with a script that causes the redirect. This means to fix the problem you would need to edit every PHP file by removing this redirect (which often appears as the first line in each file as a base64 method).

While I imagine the script provided by the site above works great, I had manually fixed my WordPress blog when I was hit by this problem. I’ll discuss how I manually addressed this problem for those who would prefer to address the problem by hand.

Manually Addressing the Ninoplas Hack

These are the steps I followed. I’m not going to say they are the best steps but they are the ones I used. My blog is hosted in a directory named “blog” so these instructions will be based on that. If your blog is hosted in another directory or in the root, you’ll need to adjust your steps accordingly. Also, you will need a backup of your site’s files to follow these steps. These steps are intended for those familiar with configuring WordPress.
1. First, you need to set your site into maintenance mode. There are plug-ins and in-depth guides for doing this but if you need to do this quickly simply:

• Create an index.html file that states your site is under-going maintenance and will be back soon

• Upload this to your blog’s directory (the same directory as wp-config.php)
• Rename the index.php to index.old (or something else)

Now when people visit your site they will see the index.html. This also protects your visitors from being redirected to wherever the hack was sending them so you should do this when you begin.
2. Create a new directory called blog2
3. Upload your clean backup of WordPress files to the blog2 directory.

• If your theme has changed since your last site backup, download your theme files from your original blog directory (which currently still has the malware in it). Open every PHP file and remove the first line which will be a line of PHP often using the Base64 method. After you have fixed every PHP file, upload your theme files into the theme directory in the blog2 directory.

• If you have added any plugins since your last site backup, I recommend simply re-installing each of these through WordPress itself and reconfiguring them there.
• If you have added images since your last backup and are not using a CDN (you would know if you were using a CDN so if you’re not sure, you’re not using one), you will need to download your wp-content/uploads directory and then upload those to the blog2 directory

4. Rename blog to blog_old and rename blog2 to blog
5. Verify the site is now working. I would recommend backing up the hacked version of your site just in case you missed something. After you have a backup stored locally, I would remove the bad version of your blog from the site.

Are the users really the source of this problem?

Many reasons have been listed as to why people be hit by this problem such as using PHP4, having weak passwords, using incorrect file permissions, etc. My problem with this is that I didn’t fit into any of the categories that have been provided so far. My password was literally a string of nonsense characters I generated using a password tool. My GoDaddy account had been on PHP4 but I upgraded it to PHP5 a few weeks before I saw this problem because I wanted to begin using SSH. I fit none of the reasons given for why a user would be responsible for this problem occurring.

I wonder this: is it possible that many of the compromised sites do have these problem areas but that these problem areas are not the reason they have been hacked? I know that, at least in my case, it seems that everything being listed as a weakness is not something I needed to correct

Why Only GoDaddy?

Assuming this is a problem universal to WordPress hosting, such as incorrect file permissions or weak passwords, then why is the problem only (or predominantly) occurring with GoDaddy hosting? Wouldn’t identifying and attacking GoDaddy-only sites be more difficult than hitting any self-hosted Wordpress site at all? In other words, is it reasonable to believe that a hacker would find a WordPress site with a weakness but then, because they realize it is not hosted at GoDaddy, they decide to leave that site alone? Do hackers really show this type of preference when trying to break into a site? Does the host really matter for their purposes? I am a little skeptical that somehow identifying and then attacking only GoDaddy sites would somehow be easier or preferred. My personal conspiracy theory is that someone out there figured out how to attack all the sites on a particular shared server. In other words, they’ve gained access above where my site files were located and were then are able to attack my site, regardless of how well or how poorly my security was.

New Web Hosting

I found it concerning that: a) my site was hacked but b) my site did not fit into any of the security weaknesses listed. Because there appeared to be no solid answer as to why it happened to my site, it seemed to me that there could be no guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again. GoDaddy had also taken the stance that it wasn’t their fault (which I understand if it really is user errors in security) and they were sending out the message that users would need to fix their sites and improve their security. To me, continuing to host here sounded risky.

I had been researching new hosting options already and knew I wanted to move my old sites to HostGator, this even just gave me the excuse to do so. Shortly after doing so, a second wave of hacks hit WordPress sites on GoDaddy again, this time a different flavor of the same problem. Then people started complaining that their sites were being hit repeatedly with the same problem again…even after implementing all of the fixes suggested. I heard around this point (the beginning of May) that GoDaddy started taking this problem pretty seriously. I’m no expert and I can’t say that GoDaddy was suffering from some kind of internal problem but comments like this seem to make it less and less likely that users are really at fault.

My thoughts now are that I am so glad I moved to HostGator after the first attack. My performance has improved, the support is phenomenal and I’ve not been hit by any problems since the move. I realize moving to another host won’t solve any problems if there is some core issue with my security settings or with Wordpress, but my paranoid personality can’t help but feel that this problem goes deep than individual my settings. So far, the move has proven to be the right choice.

Getting Your HostGator Account

The process of purchasing your HostGator account is straight-forward. I do want to cover a few points about this process though:

• If you are looking for improved database performance over a standard shared hosting option, I recommended the Reseller Account. Even though I am not a hosting reseller, I purchased this plan simply for the improved database performance. It does cost $25, which is outside of the price range for many of us. However, if you’re looking for a step up from shared hosting but aren’t ready for the more dedicated server options I think the Reseller Accounts make a perfect stepping-stone.

• After purchasing your hosting you will receive an email on how to change your domain name servers to point to your new HostGator hosting account. You won’t want to do this just yet though, that will come later.

Transferring All Files To Your HostGator Server

The process here is fairly simple: you will want to download all of your files from your current host to your computer. You will then upload all of these files to the public_html directory in your HostGator account. Keep in mind: at this point you will need to use the IP address of your HostGator account to connect to FTP. On a side note, this stage was where I saw my first real difference with HostGator compared to my previous hosting provider: even FTP activity was so much faster with HostGator.

Note: You can have the files transferred for free for you by filling out this form (within the first 30 days of your new account). This is a great option if you are not comfortable moving your files however I prefer to have control and moving the files yourself means you will not have to wait.

Setting Up Your WordPress Database

The first thing required in the database setup process will be a backup of your current database. Generally speaking, backups are the sort of thing you should be doing on a regular basis. If you are not familiar with creating backups, I recommend the following process:

1. Log into your WordPress admin area and click on Plugins.

2. Next click on Add New.
3. Search for “WP-DB-Backup”. This is my preferred backup plugin. If you see multiple results or are confused by which plugin to install, look for the one created by Austin Matzko.
   

4. Install and Activate the plugin.
5. Click Tools and then Backup.
6. In the top box, you will see the default options for which tables will be backed up. There is also the option to backup other tables, normally those created by plugins. I have never had to backup any of these tables but if you are unsure you should select to back them up.
7. In the next box down select email and then enter your email and click Backup Now! The backup will be emailed to you. I normally do the email option so I have the backup available in my email later if I need it but obviously if you prefer you can also download the backup directly to your PC.
   

Creating Your Database at HostGator
Next, you need to create your database on HostGator.

1. In your hosting cPanel, find the Databases section and click on MySql Database Wizard.
   

2. Enter your database name and click Next.
3. Next enter you User Name and Password – I would recommend using the password generator as this will ensure the password is very strong. Then click “Create User”.
4. On the last screen you will grant all the rights this user and click Next. You now have your database and database user created.
   

Restoring Your WordPress Database
Next, you need to restore the backup of your original database made earlier in these steps:

1. Again in your control panel browse to the database section and then select phpMyAdmin.

2. Click on your newly created database (which should appear in the left)
3. Click on Import
4. Click Browse and select the file that you either emailed to yourself of downloaded to your PC
5. Click Go and your database should be restored.

Your WordPress database should now be restored to your HostGator account.

Reconfiguring Your WordPress to Use Your New Database
You will now want to browse to your WordPress installation and edit the file wp-config.php. You’ll need to change your Database Name, User Name, and Password to the newly created database and account. Also, your DB_HOST should be set to “localhost”. Some hosts require you enter a specific database name but at HostGator you will use localhost. Your config file will look something like this:

/** MySQL database name */
define('DB_NAME', 'hostingusername_databasename');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Remember that HostGator precedes your database name and user with your hosting account user name. So if my hosting account name is gatorfan and my database name is database1 then the DB_NAME would be set to gatorfan_database1.

Testing Your WordPress Blog (optional)

Testing is a little trickier than just loading the web page. These steps are for those who want to be absolutely sure that your WordPress blog is working and these steps are optional.

First, before you have updated your domain, you will need to access your site through the following address: http://ipaddress/~username/. So if your web server IP address were 127.0.0.1 and your username were gatorfan you would access your site with the following address:
http://127.0.0.1/~gatorfan/

Keep in mind that if you have your WordPress installation somewhere other than the root, you will need to include that in the address. For example, if you place WordPress in the “blog” directory you will use: http://127.0.0.1/~gatorfan/

At this point you will probably see your site but ever page will show as 404 (not found). This is because WordPress will need temporarily updated to fully test:

1. Open your phpMyAdmin again

2. Click on your database
3. On the left, click on the table wp_options
4. On the browse screen you need to find two options. The first is siteurl and the second is home. Both of these should currently have your site url which will looks something like this:

   http://yoursitename.com

5. On each of these options click the pencil icon to edit the entry and in both cases change the value to http://127.0.0.1/~gatorfan/ (obviously you will want to enter your IP address and user name). The point is to change the address to the address you are currently using to preview the site.
6. Now you can verify the site, test your plugins and so on.

Updating Your Domain Nameserver

Now that everything is updated and tested, it’s time to update your domain to point to your HostGator account. HostGator has some great guides on doing this for some of the most popular domain companies (including videos which are very helpful).

After this point, you just wait. One “trick” I do at this point is I edit my WordPress footer and add a period or some other symbol to the bottom of my web page. I then check my website over the next few days and when I see the period or other symbol appear at the bottom of my site I know I’m now seeing my site on the new host.

Now just because you’re seeing your site on the new host doesn’t mean you should immediately cancel your old host. I would wait another day or two to ensure everyone is seeing your site on HostGator.

That being said, it appears to me that GoDaddy is marketing itself specifically to these types of people. I recently looked and I couldn’t even find any options for beefier hosting outside of shared hosting. That’s fine, that’s their model and as we all know (and are reminded every Super Bowl) it is working for them. Still, I believe many of us enthusiasts will find that we outgrow what GoDaddy has to offer. With that in mind, I wanted to discuss my thoughts of GoDaddy compared to HostGator, my new website host.

Why Did I Leave GoDaddy?

For someone who hasn’t moved hosting companies before, the idea of leaving your current host can be something you might want to avoid and this was my thoughts exactly. I wanted to stick things out with GoDaddy as long as I could if only for the convienence. There were two issues that led me to search for other options:

Website Speed
My website speed was great some days and then others it was bad. There was no rhyme or reason as far as I could tell. When viewing my sites in Google Webmaster, my page loads were all over the place. I also found that my site “hung” every day between 6:45PM and 7PM. I guess there was some maintenance task or possibly even some other user on the same shared server as me. Regardless, I had been looking at other hosting sites casually for a few months because of my speed issues.

• A database table crashed and my site was down for a few days because I didn’t realize this. This was not anyone’s fault as this sort of thing happens but for someone who was already looking into other hosting options this occurrence only caused me to look more purposefully.

• A few weeks later I enabled SSH and upgraded to PHP5 and there were instructions on how to avoid downtime (basically I had to update some configuration files). Even with following the instructions I was given my site still went down. When I called GoDaddy the first time I was told that I just had to wait. When I called 12 hours later I got a much better support person who recognized there was a problem and escalated the issue up at which point my issue was resolved (in about 4 hours).
• A few weeks after that my site was hit by this virus. Now, most people claim that you get this virus because your passwords were weak (mine were not, I generate mine and they often look like this GlIn454nnL34n), that your file permissions were incorrect (mine were not – 644 and 755 where appropriate), that your hosting configuration was at PHP4 (mine was not as per the previous bullet point), and a few other issues that my site did not have. Oh, and the problem was only affecting GoDaddy sites. Now maybe this was affecting other sites but it appears to me that there was a MAJOR GoDaddy issues that may have been more related to the security of the shared hosts and not my individual settings. At this point I felt I had little other option but to move my site.

At this point I was very glad that I had been researching hosting companies and was able to pull the trigger quickly on this. Shortly after I had switched to HostGator there was another virus that hit GoDaddy accounts so I was relieved to be out of there.

Comparing GoDaddy to HostGator

Now that I’ve been with HostGator for some time I wanted to comment on what is different between the two hosting services.

Domains
I wanted to start by talking about what I feel like GoDaddy is absolutely the best at: domain management. I will continue to use GoDaddy for my domain management. When I buy a domain at GoDaddy and point it to a site the speed at which everything is up in running is nothing short of impressive. The management of domains is easy to use and you can have confidence in the reminders offered by GoDaddy for your domains. GoDaddy in my opinion is an awesome domain company that also provides very cheap, average hosting. I’ve heard so many nightmares with other domain companies, including losing your domain, that I do believe I’ll be using GoDaddy for years to come (just not for my hosting).

Comparing Pricing

As you can see, the prices are comparable. You can save some money if getting both your hosting and domain from GoDaddy but for this comparison I’m sticking with hosting alone. The biggest difference in pricing is that GoDaddy’s solutions stop at Shared Hosting while HostGator’s options continue. In other words, it is far easier to hit the glass ceiling at GoDaddy than at HostGator.

Comparing Support
As I described above, I did have some issues with GoDaddy support but if I’m being honest I think you will, given a long enough time line, have issues with any hosting company you use. My thoughts in regards to support are not that GoDaddy has bad support but rather that HostGator has such great support.

For example, when the virus was hitting people at GoDaddy this is the message they were sending out:

Measures are in place to protect the overall security of the shared hosting server on which your website resides. The compromise of your account is outside of the scope of security that we provide for you. Virus scans are performed on the content that is hosted, but they may not pick up everything, largely due to the fact that hackers tend to upload custom scripts which are not picked up by traditional malware scanners. However, if a virus is detected, you will be notified. The overall security of your password and the content within your account is your responsibility, as password compromises and compromises due to scripting can only be prevented by you.

Now I don’t see a problem with this. If we assume that the problem is caused by some deficiency in how the user has their website set up (even ignoring my experience otherwise) then it is a fairly reasonable response. However, that is what causes HostGator to stand out: their handling of support is unreasonable (in a good way).

Within in my first week I had one issue and several questions and HostGator support went out of their way to fix my problem…they even were logging into my WordPress instance to check plug-ins and other settings. I promise you that this will not happen at your average host because it is going above and beyond the “reasonable” level of support. In my experience so far, HostGator hasn’t just been one of the best customer experiences I’ve had with web hosting, it has been one of the best experiences I have had with any support.

Now this site was on the lowest tier of hosting and I believe that the lower your tier the more people you share your server and database with because another site I had at a higher tier had better, if not great performance. I suspect the same is true of HostGator’s tiers which is why I went with the Reseller Account. Since switching all of my sites to this Reseller Account, I have seen improvements in every site. The site that took 20+ seconds to load now only takes between 3 and 5 seconds normally (and that is without caching enabled). Clearly HostGator was a big step up as far as hosting speed goes and I am extremely happy with the performance I’m seeing with the Reseller Account.

On a side note: if you are looking for WordPress caching I recommend W3 Total Cache. It’s awesome.

GoDaddy Database Tip: If you find your database is loading slowly on GoDaddy but do not want to switch hosts, one thing you can try is to create a new database. Then restore a backup of your current database to the new database and point your web application to the new database. This on its own will not make your site blazing fast however if you’ve noticed a slow down it is something that worked for me in the past. I think the trick is randomly finding your database on a less populated server. I make no promise that this will work and admit that it could have all been in my head! If you find the new database is even slower for some reason just point your web application back to the old database.

Comparing Hosting Management
The hosting tools provided by both companies are solid and I wouldn’t even bring this up except for one fact: every time I navigated through GoDaddy it would open a new tab or window. I swear, just getting to the database management screen would leave me with 4 or 5 tabs. Thankfully, HostGator is less tab crazy and you can navigate through one window through most of the hosting screens.

Final Thoughts on GoDaddy vs. HostGator

As I said in the beginning, I don’t see GoDaddy as a horrible hosting option, I just think you need to be in the audience that they are marketing themselves to. I believe that even GoDaddy would admit that their hosting options are too limited to support every site out there and you need to recognize when you need to move up. With any luck, my sites will continue to grow and I will someday find the Reseller hosting at HostGator inadequate (in a good way). The good news is when this happens I won’t have to change hosting providers again: HostGator has many more options that will allow me to grow with a company that is offering the speed and support I’m looking for in a hosting company.

As I researched hosting options I found that with HostGator I had a hard time finding negative feedback for the company in these two areas. Not just that, people appeared to be going out of their way to sing the praises of HostGator and with their 45 day money back guarantee I decided to give them a try. What follows is a description of my thinking when searching for hosting and how I feel HostGator has addressed those areas.

The Problem with Website Speed

The problem with most hosting companies and speed really comes down to one area: the speed of your database. When you first sign up at a website hosting company you will likely be presented with few static HTML pages and you’ll think to yourself, “Holy crap! My new site is fast!” Then you’ll research solutions you want to host and almost without question you will find yourself venturing into the world of databases either using WordPress or some other application.

This is where things go wrong.

The problem is that shared hosting companies don’t just put you on shared servers but also shared databases. The web servers are able to handle this very easily but what most people find is that the databases, which are also shared across many users, are not able to handle this load very well. It is not uncommon for a simple web page on a shared hosting account to take 7 or 8 seconds to load.

The truth is at this point I believe you need to look at price and if the speed of your website is a concern to you, you need to be willing to spend more than $3 a month. The cheap hosts are great for hobby sites or for someone just learning to manage a website but you will get what you pay for. If someday you find that you have outgrown your cheap hosting it is very, very unlikely that you are going to be able to solve your problem without spending a little more. Once I realized this I took the approach of specifically searching out hosting plans that were priced between $10 and $30 assuming that to charge this price these companies would have to bring more value. I eventually found HostGator with its Reseller Hosting at $24 a month, read tons of great reviews and then decided to give it a try.

Did HostGator Solve My Speed Issues?
For me, the answer to this question is a resounding YES. Now, I should reiterate here: I decided that speed was a top priority so when I left my old hosting company (which was very cheap) I knew I was going to have to spend more. With this in mind, I went with the HostGator Reseller account – even though I am not a reseller! Everything I was reading suggested that the reseller accounts had better performance than their shared hosting counterparts. I have heard that the shared hosting options at HostGator are better than their competition but I would still recommend that you be open to the idea of the higher end shared hosting options (which will run you between $10 and $15 a month).

I moved two sites to my HostGator account. The first was loading WordPress pages in around 15 seconds and is now down to 3 seconds. The second site was loading pages in around 4 seconds and now averages between near instant load times and 3 seconds. Now it’s not perfect and I do occasionally have a long page load but the difference for both sites is still night and day and I’ve been very happy with this choice.

The Problem with Website Support

I’ve had problems with support at hosting companies in the past. There have been three categories of problems I have experienced:

1. Where I didn’t understand or made a mistake. Obviously for someone who is learning about websites every day I don’t hold any grudge against my hosting company when something like this happens.

2. When the hosting company says that “it is not our problem.” You know, I can accept and understand this but if you hear it a little too early and a little too often you begin to wonder if all hosting companies would handle the problems the same way (they all don’t but I’ll get to that soon).
3. Where the hosting company made a mistake or did not fulfill a promise. This is where I become irate and seriously start to look for other options. This has happened to me once in the form of having site downtime for a change that the support personnel said there would be no downtime for. A second time this occurred when my site was down and when I called in several times and got very different answers each time. It also occurred when I would get the general feel that support was trying to offer me any solution to get the case closed.

Did HostGator Solve My Support Issues?
Again, I can absolutely say YES. In my first week of hosting with HostGator I was trying to test WordPress prior to my domain being repointed to the new name servers. I ran into problems with this and when working with HostGator, they were the ones who would not let the issue drop. Literally. I was chatting with their support person and I said something to the effect of, “I was just testing so it isn’t a big deal that this get fixed. I imagine when I point my name servers things will work fine” but he didn’t take the queue. He just said he wasn’t sure and that he was going to keep looking into the problem. An hour-and-a-half later we had the issue resolved (and it was my fault not theirs).

This was exactly the kind of support I was looking for. For the first time ever in my online hosting life I actually felt like my host was on my side. That my site was their site. Prior to signing up at HostGator I read plenty of reviews that said this very thing but I only understand it now that I’ve seen it myself.

What is Most Important in a Host to You?

So for me, HostGator has been an excellent move and my top priorities have been met and my expectations have been exceeded. If speed and support are two of your top issues with your website hosting I would really encourage you to looking into HostGator. So far, I don’t think I could be happier.

I found myself in a situation where I needed to improve the speed of my websites but could not afford the hundreds of dollars a month the best hosting requires. I was looking for that next stepping stone in hosting and I was not looking to make a huge leap in pricing.

Enter HostGator

I always planned on creating a website based on my research of web hosting but after finding HostGator I decided to simply discuss this service as, in my opinion, it is far better than the other hosting companies I have tested.

Why HostGator?
For me, this choice came down to two issues: support and database speed.

First, with support, no matter what hosting company you choose you will at some point find yourself dealing with them over some technical issue. HostGator is known for its awesome customer support and even knowing this I was stunned by how committed they are to fixing problems. I had a WordPress problem that any other hosting company I have worked with would have told me was not their problem but HostGator spend an hour-and-a-half working with me until we resolved the issue. I was floored by this!

Second, the database speed. Most of the time today when you see a slow website it is because of the database running the show. All web hosting companies I have used can host static files (such as HTML files) just fine. Unfortunately, most hosts will put too many websites on the same database server to save money and all of the users can suffer because of this. The databases at HostGator (and I have moved three sites there already) are much more responsive.

A Small Step to Better Hosting
When I decided to use HostGator, I went with their Reseller Account which can be used to sell hosting service. You sell your website creation and maintenance service but instead of owning a web server, you can host and manage all of the sites on HostGator.

Now I am not a reseller but I selected this type of service because it is said to have better database performance over shared hosting accounts (I have found this to be true). At $24 a month, this was exactly the size of step I was looking to make. I wasn’t looking to spend hundreds of dollars a month but I was definitely willing to spend more than $5 a month if it meant a more responsive website. I couldn’t be happier with this decision and I even have taken advantage of the reseller features by hosting additional websites there (even though I hadn’t originally planned to do this).