Project H
- Filed under: Wpdesigner.com
Wpdesigner.com is entering unfamiliar territory. I’m excited! Project H stands for Project Hosting. I’m not creative when it comes to naming. I know.Shared hosting is a saturated niche. Overselling, false 24/7 phone support, unreliable uptime, it’s a tough market to gain trust, not to mention low return on investment if you don’t pack 800-1000 customers onto each server.So why is Wpdesigner becoming a web host? Simple. You need reliable hosting with WordPress support. I can provide that service and live with the low return on investment ratio.
- I started Wpdesigner because you needed better WordPress themes.
- I released a premium quality theme for free because you were looking for premium themes and I was too lazy to charge for it.
- Now that you need a reliable host and / or better hosting, I’m starting a web hosting company.
Before making the decision to move to dedicated hosting (the whole server to myself), I struggled with the same problem – cheap web hosts overselling what they can’t guarantee. Have you seen those 3000 GB of bandwidth deals for $7 to $10 each month? Yea. That’s what I’m talking about.Those hosts rely on the fact that the average customers will not use all of the resources they pay for. Based on that gamble, cheap web hosts pack hundreds and hundreds of customers onto each server, knowing that their servers cannot live up to the deals.If you’re hosted on one of those servers, once your effort is paying off and you’re actually getting decent traffic to your blog, you have to worry about keeping your blog online because that server simply cannot handle it without affecting hundreds of other customers on the same server.This is where Wpdesigner Hosting comes in. Here are the specs for each Wpdesigner server:
- Xeon Quad-Core
- 4GB RAM
- 20Mbps unmetered
- RAID
- 120 customers limit
One Hosting Plan:
- $20/month
- 1GB storage
- 40GB bandwidth
Those are the basics and don’t forget that this service will come with WordPress support. I’ll elaborate later on.If you’re new to web hosting or if you have no idea what those lists above mean then Wpdesigner Hosting is not for you. If you understand what I’m writing about and have been waiting for something like this… yea, I’m pretty excited too.(Oh yea, if you already have a web host, but want to move to Wpdesigner. Guess what? Free server migration through cPanel!)
I hope that’s not the smallest plan you’re going to offer because that’s an incredible amount of space for a blog or even a WordPress-powered personal site (I have one and it barely takes up 10MB with its content).
You know, all 200 of my autoblogs crashed for a few days last week. This might be the right thing for me. Autoblogs take a lot of resources, I hope its not too much.
Id be interested
Sydney – It’s the only plan. Every customer shares equal amount of server resources. That comes down to 1gb (storage) and 40gb (bandwidth). The extra space and bandwidth on the server will be used for emergency. And of course, it has to host Wpdesigner to keep everything together.
I agree with 1gb being huge. Wpdesigner, all together, takes up about 70-80mb. But unlike hosting with other companies, at least you know that you’ll get all of the 1gb when you need it.
sethuhdiah – I’m not offering unlimited domain addons. Sorry
Where is your dedicated server host ? Beside that, is there other package on your hosting plan.
km – The server is at HiVelocity and I offer only one hosting plan.
[...] Find the link to this great post here [...]
Pretty sweet SP! It’s now 11:14 pm where I live! I decided to camp out by my computer to wait for Project H! Haha and it’s finally here woot.
Hope it’s a good success! There’s a slight possibility I maybe using this!
[...] Check more out about Project H at WPDesigner.com! [...]
Hey SP, I won’t be using this because I’m quite happy with my current host. However, I wish you good luck with this new project! Take care.
Awesome. Good luck with it. Iuno if I’d move. I’m pretty happy with my current host. But really. That sounds nifty.
Mike just reviewed this on the site. Thats a pretty kool idea.
hmmm… sounds interesting!!!… what are other plans on offer?
I think this is ideal for any design/coding clients you have, however I agree with many that it’s not for me. That’s because I have my own dedicated server and use it to host my clients’ sites
If the server is Digg proof / Social Networking proof then I am in and I am sure many others will be too.
In terms of the WP support, be sure you include some great details on keeping a site running clean and things like WP-Cache and otherways to optimise blogs for high traffic spikes.
Good luck and looking forward to more information.
Mr. Potato,
I don’t mean to sound a tad, hm, biased given that I am competition but there’s a few slight issues you might want to consider.
1. RAID. RAID is not a backup system at all. Please, for the sake of your users don’t use it as such.
2. HiVelocity. HiVelocity is Cogent based bandwidth primarily & will not net the performance your users really deserve. Find multi-homed bandwidth or you’re wasting your time (and your users’ time).
I’d recommend a good mix of providers like level3, savvis & UUNet at the very minimum: delicious!
Best of luck with the project though, it’ll be fun to watch
I know a couple of real good companies who give away the same for 5-10 bucks a month…. with money back guarantee. And they sure can handle all the customers and they are in business since many years.
So SP’s offer might sound kinda expensive, BUT don’t forget that SP’s offer includes WordPress support.
So, it’s a fair price, I think.
ThoseShow – It will be configured to survive Digg.
David J. – Mirroring would be more appropriate? I am not familiar with everything yet. Regardless of terms, backups will be done.
Marco – I’m sure there are plenty of hosts that can offer the same for cheap, but they’re basically putting you on the same server as hundreds of others, if not thousands.
Just remember that backups will need to be done off-site, having them on the same system is regarded as useless in the event of something occurring with the server / hardware itself.
Offsite backups will increase the cost of your offering significantly but it’s a worthy investment. Beyond that, good luck
The worst thing about shared hosting accounts is that most of them have fine print about how many simultaneous connections you can have to your site. It’s not a big deal for smaller blogs with a low number of subscribers, but when my site hit about 200 or so, it dropped to a sluggish crawl and timed out most of the time because of all the services and RSS readers pinging my feed. I finally switched a VPS with Futurehosting.biz and all is well. (Great host too, I might add!)
Definitely a great idea. Any plans for an affiliate program?
I may have future clients that would need reliable hosting.
SP, looks like a great plan. I am enticed to switch.
Hi SP, This h project seem like great deal. However, is the cpu and memory resources sharing among user or each user got dedicated memory and cpu ?
km – Resources will be shared, hence, “shared hosting.”
The server resources I’m going to set up is plenty for 120 customers. I’ll also implement some server tweaks, but I can’t go into all of that right now. I’ll write a detailed post soon.
SP, great idea…I’ve got Dreamhost and they are seriously pi$$ing me off. I am not exagerating when I say they’re going down daily for at least an hour. I ranted about it last night here http://www.jjmelo.com/blog/2007/10/22/almost-switched-webhost-today
forgot to mention…have you considered using WordPressMU? I played around with it and it seems to be ideal for specialized WP hosters like you intend to become.
@SP
Sorry for the misunderstanding. It was nothing against you. I 100% support your idea. It’s great. Price is fair, especially because WP support is included.
Hi SP,
I am surprised that you have opted to go down this route. Hosting is a very fickle business and reputations can be tarnished and broken very easily.
You are opening yourself up to infinite numbers of support queries and phone calls at 3am!
Anyway good luck to you
..but I still think you would be better focusing efforts specifically on WP and it’s support. For instance getting the forums going properly…
Marco – No problem. I just wanted to explain how they’re able to offer such a low price.
Richard – I completely agree, but I think this project is the next step for me.
jjmelo – No, I haven’t considered WPMu.
SP, take a look at WordPressMU, which is made by the guys who bring us WordPress. It my help you administer the server from a back-end point of view.
Have you tried it before? I would love to try Mu if it allows each customer to track statistics individually through Awstats and other programs, not just Google Analytics.
And, I need to be able to manage each account, not just each blog, individually.
The problem with Mu is that every blog is connected. If you’ve tried Mu before, please let me know. I’m very interested.
I have tried it…a while ago I had the (unrealistic) plan of starting up many blogs, and gave WPMu a try after realizing that maintaining several WP installations was a pain in the butt (installing updates, plugin-updates…etc).
You should be able to track stats individually (I am not 100% on that, since I didn’t get that far). The benefit that I see that WPMu would bring to you are easier overall maintenance and the fact that you would have one big WP install as opposed to a bunch of them.
Being on WPMu wouldn’t be appropiate for every single one of your users (some would need 100% control over their WP install) but it might be a good option to give others that don’t want to be bothered with the hassles of maintaining a WP install and want to blog on a reliable and flexible platform.
If you’d like to discuss this further, feel free to email me.
very nice blog
thank you