um….it depends on what you want and need.
We used to run WordPress MU on site5, which is shared hosting, but they do the wildcard thing for you. It was $240 for 2 yrs ($10/mo) and runs WordPress MU well, if it is a small site with not too many super active bloggers or tons of blogs. It has unlimited Ram and bandwidth, but we had complications once we started to grow, and had to move.
We are now on Slicehost, which is VPS, it starts out at $20/mo (no contract) for 256MB of Ram and 100GB bandwidth, which barely runs WPMU. Upgrade to $38/mo for 512MB and 200 GB bandwidth and you should be fine for a relatively small site. We upgraded to a 1GB Ram and 400 GB bandwidth for $70/mo, for a somewhat large site, and it runs fine. Plus you can upgrade and downgrade at anytime, and it takes 5 mins and they do it all for you.
I knew that any answer would have to be tempered with variables…
But what you have given me is really good information, including growth and reliability. I looked at Slicehost a little bit yesterday…
And then a friend told me that Bluehost just allowed a one click Buddy Press install…which I have no idea how that works – seeing as I just chatted with them yesterday and they said they don’t support VPS, or WordPress MU.
Jrothe-
And then a friend told me that Bluehost just allowed a one click Buddy Press install.
I’m not sure why some ISPs keep trying to push a BuddyPress one-click install option. BuddyPress is not stand-alone software. It requries WPMU. So, at best, and if this was even practical, you would need to click twice–once to intsall WPMU then another time to install BuddyPress.
I would be wary of such claims. Also, be advised that some people have had issues with this in the past, so if you go that route and come here asking for support we will ask how you installed BuddyPress.
Remember, BuddyPress is just a big WPMU plugin. So, you can download and activate it via the WPMU’s admin menus. You don’t need a questionable one-click install.
I use BlueHost. Your friend was talking about the WPMU + BP installation via SimpleScripts (kind of like Fantastico de Luxe, but much more responsive to upgrades).
SimpleScripts calls it “BuddyPress”, but it is really BP + WPMU.
I used SimpleScripts to do my initial BP + WPMU installation. I had a complete site failure yesterday when I upgraded to the most recent BP version. I also had some bugs creating user blogs with the original installation.
I think SimpleScripts automatically configures WPMU to create user blogs as subdomains. For this to work, your hosting provider MUST support “wildcarding”. When opened a support ticket with BlueHost to do this, they quickly replied: “No our system does not support wildcarding.”
If you were creating your own blogs as subdomains, this would not be a problem because you could use the DNS tool (e.g. cPanel > Simple DNS Zone Editor) to support define each one when you create it. But, it seems likely you’re using WPMU to support multiple users. In that case, it would be nearly impossible to define a new subdomain each time your users created a new blog. The wildcard gets you out of that predicament by immediately supporting any subdomain when they create the blog.
If you install WPMU + BP manually, you don’t need a hosting provider that supports wildcarding. During the configuration, just select the option to create user blogs as *subdirectories* instead of subdomains.
I did the manual installation for the first time today. I don’t think I’ll need the SimpleScripts approach again.
Hope this helps.
