WebHostingHub – Tech Support Review

IMPORTANT! This tech support review is based on an actual support phone call I made earlier this week.

I got a WebHostingHub account in the summer of 2011. I needed to spread out my websites across different hosts. Didn’t want too many eggs in one basket. I was having a lot of downtime with my current host at the time and I needed to get my most important sites off that server.

Best WordPress Hosting

I run all my sites as self-hosted WordPress blogs, so I began the web hosting transfer process to my new Hub account. I have done this a ton of times over the past few years. I made myself a checklist to follow. Here are the instructions I use to transfer a WordPress blog to a new host.

After I installed WordPress, I could immediately see that it ran like greased lightning. This is no lie, every other place I’ve used for WordPress was sooo slow. Even just navigating around the Dashboard was slow. The performance on this new Hub account just blew me away. The Hub says their servers are optimized to run WordPress. I’ve never seen any other host make that claim. Here’s what they say.

Web Hosting Hub’s servers are optimally configured to run WordPress. Our servers run suPHP, which allows for a much higher level of security. Our servers also run the latest, most stable versions of MySQL 5 & PHP 5. We configure our servers to utilize PHP Caching and we maximize available server RAM, reducing I/O requests to the server’s hard drives, meaning your WordPress site loads faster!

Best WordPress Tech Support

Ok, here’s the point of this post. Most web hosting companies allow you to install WordPress, but because it’s not their software, they don’t support it. Translation, they don’t have anyone on staff who knows the first thing about it. Web Hosting Hub straight up says they have great WordPress tech support because their personnel actually have blogs of their own and KNOW WordPress. That was certainly the case earlier this week… my Hub hosting account got suspended!

I know I didn’t do anything wrong. It must have been the automatic usage detection that put me in lockdown. So I called up tech support and was greeted by David. He looked at my account and confirmed I had been automatically suspended and then handed me over to Trey, a system admin.

Trey explained to me something that I had never heard of before. He said on one of my blogs, I ___________. Sorry, I can’t tell you what I did because that information could be used in a nefarious way against other WordPress blog owners and I ain’t goin’ there. So this thing I did was pinging the database over and over and over. He quoted over 5,000 hits and that’s why the automatic script shut me down. Ok, lesson learned. Don’t do that anymore.

WordPress Caching

Trey looked at my account and saw I was using a caching plugin called Quick Cache. He said it wasn’t the best one and provides little performance increase. It told me to use WP Super Cache. I said I used to use it, but it was so fricking complex that I removed it and installed Quick Cache. He said we just put up a new tutorial for using WP Super Cache. Step-by-step and easy to follow.

Piwik vs. JetPack WordPress Stats

So as long as we were discussing server resources, I asked him about a script I had installed a few days earlier for website stats. AWStats in the cPanel control panel gives me keyword search terms and the pages that were accessed, but it doesn’t do it by individual day. Everything is glumped together in a monthly summary.  I wanted to see daily stats. The website stats script I installed was an open-source Google Analytics-type of deal called Piwik. It gave me exactly what I want to see, stats on a daily basis.

Trey told me it’s very server intensive because it uses my own hosting account. He said the better option was to use the WordPress.com Stats plugin. That’s the old name. Now it’s called Jetpack. Jetpack uses the WordPress.com servers, not my web server. So I installed it and it, too, gives me the daily stats right in my Dashboard.

Use Google Libraries

One other plugin that the Hub recommends is one called Use Google Libraries. That one I already discovered a couple of years ago and wouldn’t be without. If you only install one “go fast” plugin on your blog, this is the one to use. Back in the day (on another host) I thought the WordPress Dashboard was sooo slow and I researched it. I found a WordPress programmer that recommended this plugin because it allows your WordPress site to use the content distribution network side of Google’s AJAX Library API, rather than serving these files from your WordPress install directly. (Much like the JetPack plugin.) Believe me, after you activate this one, you’ll notice the increase in speed immediately.

In Summary

Both David and Trey were awesome. Very courteous, knowledgeable AND in the U.S. My issue got resolved and I learned a few things. If you want outstanding, lightning fast WordPress hosting with tech support that knows how to root out WordPress issues and is able to resolve them, then you want to get a WebHostingHub account.

• A+ Better Business Bureau Rating
• Unlimited Disk Space / Bandwidth
• Host Unlimited Domains
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• Unlimited Databases
• Unlimited FTP Accounts
• 24/7 U.S. Based Tech Support
• FREE Setup
• FREE Site Builder
• FREE Domain Name For 1 Year
• FREE Website Transfer
• FREE Fantastico Script Installer
• FREE $75 Google AdWords Credit
• NO HIDDEN FEES
• Custom Error Pages
• Easy to use cPanel Control Panel
• SSI, FTP, CRON
• Website Stats
• CGI, Ruby (RoR)
• Perl, PHP, MYSQL
• E-commerce Enabled
• Works with Windows, Mac, Linux computers
• 90 Day Money Back Guarantee