I use Bluehost and you’re right, you cannot set up WPMU using subdomains; you must use the subdirectory option. This was fine with me because I was already installing WPMU into a subdirectory and though http://member/wpmu/sitename.com would look funny.
Also, I ran into a few snags while installing onto Bluehost but found some very easy fixes.
I am using Site5 and they will set up the wildcards on request.
Anyone use MediaTemple?
I am on fused network and they definitely support wildcards. They are a bit pricey, starting at $9.95 a month, but are worth every penny. They truly guarantee 99% uptime.
In the last 6 months they have been flawless with only one month going below 99% uptime and when that did happen they offered a 1 month credit to all customers that were effected. I declined the offer on the grounds that there policy is almost unfair for them! I will gladly pay $10 month just too know that they truly follow their guarantees.
As far as tech support goes, they are the best I have found as well. I have submitted 5 tickets so far and everyone was answered right away. Plus none of those tickets was a problem on their end. It was usually me asking for domain setups up or adding wildcard mask for example.
Highly recommended (and I am not even part of their affiliate network!)
I have used Media Temple for WPMU sites in the past and the Grid is better than most shared hosts, but really WPMU itself can grow past resources quickly. That is why VPS or dedicated is recommended, though many still say they are fine on a shared host if their bandwidth and userbase is low. Other great VPS providers include Slicehost.com and Futurehosting.biz
Getting recommendations for hosts is covered extensively in the WPMU forums, so you might want to pop by for a search there.
Trent
thanks for the great feedback — this helps. i did spend time at wpmu — but it was a bit dated. and i especially want to find someone who has had success with implementing buddypress 
im very much impresses with buddypress — great solution!
Anybody using hostgator or ever heard some problems using WPMU on their shared hosting? I’m interested with their baby hosting package, unlimited space & bandwith. But the inodes limit of 250,000 is worrying me.
guys slicehost is the best hosting if real developer loves it. and it is takeover by rackspace now.
@hudatoriq – and it shoudl worry you. On a shared host, you will *always* hit inodes or sql limits before you use up a tenth of bandwidth or space.
yes, I *did* get kicked off shared hosting. This was before buddypress, and I only had a couple hundred users.
If you plan on being any size, get a VPS. We not not recommend shared hosting for WPMU. Add Buddypress to it and you’re adding a lot more processing. Shared hosting will not be able to handle it.
Another option is iMountain (imountain.com). They offer clustered hosting to VPS to dedicated, without cpu processing limits.
OK. I withdraw my recommendation for Site5. They are no different than other shared hosting and won’t respond well to BuddyPress, based on the warnings I get for my non-BP sites.
I’m with Media Temple on the base DV with BuddyPress and its great, plus it easily scales up when your site grows (I currently fluctuate between two plans depending on traffic). MT has all the requirements for BuddyPress and a lot more. I’ve been with them for almost two years, so if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.
fused network should be avoided by all costs. im suspicious of their fake reviews, as they have a contest that says “write a review, win an iPod.”
here’s a good write up: http://www.hollywood-newsroom.com/tech/fused-network-review-sucks-avoid-for-wordpressmu-buddypress/
I’m currently using future hosting VPS (futurehosting.biz) and am happy as pie. I spent hours researching VPS providers and it was down to SliceHost and Future Hosting. I decided to go with Future Hosting strictly based on cost vs. given resources.
I second the the fact that VPS or a Dedicated server is the best route. Shared hosting is great for a super small WPMU site, anything over a 50 or so active users your going to run into resource issues.
Has anyone messed around with Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services?
BB
Have you checked out http://www.omnis.com/
just simple couple of questions… i have a shared host really cheap one with lunar pages…
I installed wpmu and realised that the subdomain function would work as i didn’t have access the Apache server and this means i cant ad the wildcard dns thingy.. so subdomains we out…
so i reinstaled using the sub directory… this worked fine..
i then tried to instal budypress with teh zip files.. as said in the readme…
with the blogs one it just gave a a parse syntax php ( or one of those php eror lines on a white page just saying something was wring on a line around 300 i forget exactely..) error that would not let me do
anything… so i deleted the blogs one and then it worked and i could ad a profile on the admin contol pannel but not on the splash page from register.. it first asked to creat a new blog then the profile so that didnt seem right..
questions.. does budy press work on sub directories and why was the blogs plugin not working..
i am trying to create a social site for spots or locations in kenya…
cheers..
What about igchosting.in, does it work well with BP?
Hello,
Unfortunately, most hosting companies do not support wildcards due to some configuration settings that should be applied both in the DNS and Apache virtual host. Still, in a properly configured hosting enviropment this can be easily achieved and these requirements can be met without any additional charges.
You may review the following hosting provider which fully support wildcards and has a BuddyPress and WordPress MU hosting packages:
http://www.tmdhosting.com/buddypress-hosting.html
You may also check the following blog on the test platform of BuddyPress at:
http://tmdhosting.testbp.org/
A step by step tutorial on how to install BuddyPress on your hosting is available on:
http://www.tmdhosting.com/tutorials/buddypress/buddypress-tutorial.html
I hope this information will be useful due to the fact that it is not an advertisement — you are free to choose the best hosting provider for your needs. Good luck 
.
TMDHosting Team
I’ve got TMDHosting account and I can say that their support is second to none when helping me out.
I rate them high !!!!
I shall stop wasting my time on AWS EC2 from now on….. 
I’m looking for a host and I’ve narrowed it down to either TMD hosting, http://www.tmdhosting.com
or Media Temple
http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/
Does anyone have any experience with both these hosts, and the ease of hosting multiple buddypress installs on their servers.
Which is the better in scalability?
Thanks
Haroun
no problems with hostgator, just have to ask for the mod rewrite if you have a reseller account, not sure how it would be for a smaller package, but they pretty much rock in terms of support — 3 years and counting.
Anyone think it’s a good idea for me to make a call and ask them to embrace the BuddyPress community?
If you don’t mind using sub-directories for WPMU, I’ve had pretty good luck using 1and1 so far. Had to hack .htaccess and force some extra memory in my php.ini file, but so far so good.
Hmm i couldnt get buddypress to work at all on 1and1. Im not saying it dont, just wondering how you got it to work.
In my .htaccess file, I had to force 1and1 to provide php5:
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
To get rid of 500 errors and out of memory errors, in my /wp-admin/ I put this in php.ini (create it if it doesn’t exist):
memory=40MB
upload_max_filesize=10M;
post_max_size=20M;
My problem was some of the fetures. like when you click on a letter to do a search… say we click the “v” to search with users that start with a v it would just sit there with the loading image and never load. it does with with all the ajax fetures it seems.
