WordPress have announced that they’re getting into VIP Hosting which allows some pretty major blogs to ‘piggyback’ on the back of their WordPress.com hosting infrastructure. Basically it’s for blogs that don’t want to use WordPress.com as a platform but who need reliable hosting for their blog. Here’s how they describe it as working:
- You create WordPress.com accounts, import your content, and point your DNS at us.
- We load balance your site across our dozens of servers.
- You can have your own domain name.
- All of your administration will be over SSL, which means no one can sniff your password.
- People logged in to WordPress.com will also be logged in on your domain, which makes it easier for them to comment and link you. (Also gives you free integration with our My Comments, Tag Surfer, and avatar features.)
- Included Akismet spam protection.
- Inclusion in our top lists, which can drive a great deal of traffic.
- You will have the ability to edit your templates via Subversion (SVN).
- You can run most plugins (that don’t modify DB tables).
- There are no restrictions on ads, javascript, etc.
What does it ‘cost’?
- A “Powered by WordPress.com” logo on your site.
- A few standard hooks in your template for our centralized stats.
- Your tags go into and point to our Tags community.
- $500 to setup your site and $250 a month.
It’s not for everyone – you need to do 100,000+ page views a month and have a high profile but it’s something I know some bloggers will be keen to explore. I particularly think it’ll be attractive to those bloggers who’ve been around a while, who’ve built up quite successful blogs but who are not technologically inclined. As one of these types of people myself I know that if I didn’t have some excellent people helping me out that I’d consider it.
Sure it’d not cheap (there’s quite a bit of criticism already going around about the price) – but I’m sure there are bloggers out there who would be willing to pay decent money for it all to be looked after by WP.
Err. I think Matt probably meant to say 100,000 page view per day, as 100k page view per month is *nothing* — your $5/month shared hosting would probably be sufficient.
Sounds like a nice package, but whats the deal with the WordPress Tags community? I’ve noticed this on a few sites recently, are they trying to create a Technorati alternative?…I’d probably want to know more about it, but I know that I wouldn’t be paying that much for hosting if it meant I couldn’t point my tags where I wanted them to (I think..;p)
$ 250 a month for hosting? I’d spend that on a dedicated hosting instead. Still, for us beginners, it would be uber cool to be hosted on WP.com then again maybe that explains the hefty price tag, it’s WordPress.com
I think the only people who are going to go for this are the technically non-savvy. Not that there’s anything wrong with being non-technical.
I just think that’s an awfully high price for non-dedicated hosting with those restrictions, emphasis on the non-dedicated hosting part.
It sounds like a way to attract high-profile bloggers to boost WP.com’s reputation, not the other way around.
I’m not against making money, but Jese.
I think it’s a bit cheeky to ask people to put a “powered by” on a site when they’re charging that much per month.
Interesting… I’m going to take a wait and see approach. This is much higher-end than any of my blogs need, and as other commenters have pointed out, for $250/month you can get some damn nice dedicated hosting.
Who will actually use this service? With those terms, and that price, I think my answer is: the foolish.
Hi
i agree with Amanda Rush , i spend on my VPS or dedicated server instead of all this rules tag,logo
[…] Just came across this new fature,VIP Hosting at WordPress.com, when I was reading ProBlogger. […]
I have a WordPress based blog that i turned into a car news website. It has only 5 months and i am getting 30.000 visits per month…. so i agree with the friend that said it should be 100.000 per DAY…… these 30.000 visits per month are being handled by a hosting firm that charges me 9.95 a month… it i was to pay 250 per month on something, it would be to handle a website with more than 1 million visits per month…. to much money, man……
WordPress.com – Automattic offers VIP hosting, at a VIP price…
The news of Automattic offering VIP hosting of blogs (big, high-profile blogs) has sunk in a bit. Might be old news, but sometimes the ideas ……
“I think the only people who are going to go for this are the technically non-savvy.”
I think the main audience for this is polar: it’s the non-tech savvy folks, and the super-tech savvy folks. If you know nothing, having someone else handle everything for you is great. If you’ve actually dealt with high availability systems before, paying someone a pittance—the price of a single server—is an incredible deal.
There is, however, a huge audience in the middle. Folks who are savvy enough to set up a hosting account, maybe do a bit of server maintenance themselves, but haven’t dealt with truly large amounts of traffic or spikes. This audience doesn’t know what they don’t know, and that’s fine. Maybe 1 in 100,000 will graduate to where they need something like VIP hosting.
I never have liked that “powered by” … It’s my website and if I pay you money for your code, I should put what I want on it.
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HiEvery other blog I have read about Shared Hosting, has been lacking in information. Your insight into Shared Hosting is sooooo much better than anything else I have read. Thanks Amanda.
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