I like to review WordPress hosting because a) they’re topical and interesting to our readers and b) they tend to focus on the needs of WordPress users over those of the general population.  Web hosting providers are a dime a dozen.  Especially when you consider reseller accounts.  Hell, I’ve got a reseller package that more than pays for my hosting costs.  But when it comes down to the nitty gritty details, there are only a handful of super high quality hosts out there.  RocketPress is one of those hosts.

Cost

Let’s get to the first thing on your mind, how does it compare in cost?  The cheapest plan, if paid annually, is $3.95 per month.  That’s not a lot of money, as long as you can front the $47.40 once every year.  If you want to pay monthly, the cheapest plan is $6.95.

Platform

RocketPress is using Cpanel combined with a piece of software called WHM (Web Host Manager).  Both of which are very stable, regularly supported frameworks.  Cpanel is a ubiquitous software package that many many web hosts use.

RocketPress is hosted on servers managed by a company called FDC Servers.  They DO NOT offer reseller hosting which is a good thing for you.  This means RocketPress has invested in their hardware and co-located with a company who makes their business managing server farms.  This is a very smart move.  Picture this: a business that buys and manages all their own hardware sounds great.  Now picture this “business” in someone’s garage, with a $400 Windows desktop acting as a “server”.  It’s supervised when this person is home, but when they’re away, anything could happen.  Outsourcing server management seems like a pretty sweet deal now doesn’t it?

Support

They offer Live Chat which is a great resource.  Although they weren’t online while writing this review, there is also a toll-free phone number which says a lot about this company and their intentions to be there for you when needed.

Security and Reliability

Their servers are backed up nightly, so you can trust your data can be restored if something goes wrong.  RocketPress claims to have never been hacked, ever.  That’s 17 years of zero-tolerance.  They claim to never overload their servers but do not back that up with numbers which, to be fair, is hard to quantify.  Hopefully, they follow through on this expectation and their hosting accounts are sound, solid and secure.

WordPress Specific

RocketPress claims to have been built by WordPress coding experts with significant IT security experience.  They will automatically install WordPress on each new hosting account within 10 seconds.  I’m not sure that’s necessary, but it’s a nice feature if you want this hosting account for a very specific website.  The hosting plans are designed to support WordPress installs, and RocketPress offers free WordPress consulting and advice.  Because RocketPress runs Cpanel, it supports Fantastico, which offers two-minute WordPress installations without any database work.

Extras

RocketPress will transfer your existing WordPress site for free which is a really nice perk if you only run one WordPress site.  There’s no mention of how many websites they will migrate.

Each new account gets a free domain.  That’s worth $10/year so it’s not like you’re getting a primo parking spot or anything, but every little bit counts.

Summary

We tried to be both honest and fair in this review of RocketPress.  Whichever host you choose, consider how it will meet your specific needs, and try to ignore flashy sales and gimmicks.  There are so many web hosts out there, you can be a very discerning customer.  If you love WordPress as much as we do, you’ll want to choose a web host that specializes in supporting the most powerful blogging platform on earth.

Disclosure: Pingable was not paid to write this review, however we are part of their affiliate network, clicking through and signing up for an account will result in a kickback for us.

WPfrompsd.com is a service that will convert your Photoshop site designs into a fully functional WordPress themes. In this article I will review their PSD to WordPress service.

What is the service?

This service is aimed at designers. The sort of designer that can produce amazing site designs in Photoshop, but maybe isn’t as comfortable programming. The idea is that the designer produces an amazing design in Photoshop, WPfrompsd.com takes that design and produces a fully functional WordPress theme, that is fully standards compliant and cross browser compatible.

What is the process?

1. You submit your project details and Photoshop file using their request a quote form.
2. They will contact you if the project is approved and work with you on the details of your project.
3. The development team creates the theme.
4. Once the design is complete, you are provided with access to a demo site to ensure the final design is what you asked for.
5. You pay for the service, and once payment has been received, they will send you the completed theme in a zip file.

What we did to test their service?

To test out the quality of their work, I put together a simple Photoshop design. The design was a concept I had to make it easy to produce simple Niche WordPress sites. I gave them very specific instructions, such as the need to have a selectable logo, a selectable background for my header, and a selectable niche graphic.

What was the result?

The theme I received was well coded, clean and exactly what I asked for. The theme has an admin option section so that I can select various graphics for my niche sites. Communication was good, and they asked appropriate questions to ensure they were creating what I was after.

We will be sharing the theme they created for us for free in an upcoming post. I want to source a few niche graphic sets to provide with the theme to make it more useful for people. Once I am done it will be yours for free.

Final word

Their pricing looks very good. If you give them a week to produce the theme they will have it to you for as little as $190. Also, as you get to see the theme in action before for parting with your cash, you know that you are going to get what you ask for. From my observations, this is a very professional service that will be ideal for many Photoshop designers out there.

Disclaimer: This is not a paid review, and this post contains no affiliate links. We were given 1 free theme conversion for the purposes of reviewing this service.

2012 Update

We have received a lot of comments saying how bad Zyma have been, constant down time, and poor service. Zyma were meant to provide us with a free account for life, and they did not renew our account after 12 months, so all I can say as I would not trust these guys. Over the space of the year, we found that our site was down more often, and that it was slower to respond. So if you are considering Zyma, I would not go with them as a provider.

If you are looking for a cheap host, that is not one of the mainstream providers, try BioHost.

Original review

As far as cheap webhosts go, you have a few options to consider on the market that drops to around just under $4US a month. This seems pretty cheap right? Zyma.com, a new player in the market, have just released a hosting offer for £4.95 per year. Yes, you read that right, PER YEAR! Zyma.com is a very new UK based hosting company, and this deal looks like a very good price, that will give the market a bit of a shake-up if successful; so I wanted to check it out, see what the catch was.

What they Offer:

• Unlimited Web space
• Unlimited Traffic
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• Unlimited SQL Databases
• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
• Free Google Vouchers
• Free Transfer & Setup
• Moneyback Guarantee
• Free Tech Support
• cPanel Web Hosting + Fantastico De Luxe for easy WordPress installation.
• Attracta seo tools via cPanel
• Unlimited Addon-domains

This is a shared hosting account which means your site will be hosted on a server with other websites, and will share resources with them. So if all the other sites on the same box as your use up all the resources, your site would start loading more sluggishly. Shared hosting is common place on the internet, and all the other cheap hosting options comparable to Zyma.com are also on shared hosts.

Are there any hidden costs?

Not really. There are some add-ons which other shared hosts will give you for free, however, these other hosts cost significantly more. So if you need these add-ons, you pay for them, and you are at no loss.
These include:

• Daily Backups – £2.99 per month
• Private SSL Certificate £24.99 per year
• Whois Protection – £4.95 per year
• Unlimited Addon-domains

The daily backup option being something that might be worth considering. You don’t want to lose all your website data. However, if you are using a CMS like WordPress, you can get free plugins which will email you a copy of your DB’s regularly, so if you know what you are doing this isn’t necessary. Other cheaper shared host will give you a free domain, this is not the case with Zyma, and the £4.95 per year only entitles you to host only one domain.

How good is the Zyma Host Performance wise?

I did some tests to evaluate the speed of Zyma. I used host-tracker.com to check the response time of the site I have hosted on Zyma, I then compared this to three popular hosts, one in the UK, and two in the US.

• Zyma – Average response time was: Global Average: 0.85 sec, UK locations:0 .55 secs. US Locations: 0 .85 secs
• Dreamhost - Global Average: 1.27 sec
• Clear Host – Global Average: 0.98 sec
• 1and1.co.uk – Global Average: 0.32 sec

These are just spot tests at one point in time. Results will vary depending on peak times in different parts of the world. But they give an indication that Zyma doesn’t stake up too badly when compared to other shared hosts. A ping time around half a second for a shared webhost is pretty damn good.

Zyma guarantees 99.9% uptime. In the few days since having my Zyma account, I have had it monitored every minute using my Pingdom account. What this does is ping the site every minute to ensure it is up, and emails me it is down. So far, it has been up the whole time. This is a fairly short period to test the host thoroughly though. But, so far, so good.

How good is the support?

If you have a support question, they have phone contact numbers, email support, but more importantly, live chat via the website. They also have a good range of FAQ’s to answer common support questions. I was purposely pretty lazy when setting up my WordPress site on Zyma, as I wanted a support query to test their service on. The support person was very helpful, answered my question easily, and emailed me all the details I needed to help me with the problem I was having. So, from a one off spot check, the support was very good.

Who is Zyma best suited for?

Zyma.com is hosted in the UK, which makes them an ideal option for a small UK business. The sort of business that doesn’t have a huge budget for online marketing, but is looking to get a website online for a good value price.
Zyma.com is also a great cheap option for online markers, web developers and SEO types like myself. Why? It’s a cheap way to add more IP diversity to your site portfolio. If you understand SEO, you will know that you need lots of links to your sites. But the catch is that you can’t really link to your own sites that effectively if they are hosted in the same account, in the same IP C class range. However, if you were to host one of your sites on Zyma, for the cheap annual cost, you can then effectively link to other sites you own, without it appearing as though you are linking to your own site. Make sense? This was one of the main attractions for me, and why I was keen to get an account with them.

Conclusion

So from my small review, and some basic tests, I really see no reason what so ever to be nervous about committing to hosting a site with Zyma. They offer a very good service for a ridiculously cheap price. £4.95 per year is about $7.80 US per year. Add to that the cost of a domain… $7 to $10, and you have a very cheap website. The next cheapest option I could find easily was more than $50 US a year. And the standard shared hosting price is around $100- $120 a year. So this really is a great deal and well worth checking out.

Disclosure statement

A Zyma.com employee approached us to review their service. For this we received a hosting account from them free of charge for which we used to evaluate the service. If you would like me to review your webhost on Pingable, get in touch using the contact form.

Wazala is a new service that allows you to insert a secure online store on any WordPress site without bulky plugins or sketchy security measures.  You can also forget about awkward forwarding and checkout pages.  Wazala creates a seamless integration with slick overlay interactivity.

Some key features include the ability to sell both physical and digital goods, Paypal and Google Checkout support and support for inventory and coupon management.

This is not your momma’s shopping cart.  It also includes product options (like shirt size), a smooth backend dashboard, multi-language support and tons of design customization options.

Wazala uses it’s own secure connection via a jQuery overlay which makes for a secure integration.

Here are some screenshots.  If you want to check out Wazala for yourself, they offer a free trial.

We are constantly watching for amazing new WordPress themes that are both free and commercial.  One of the places we look for new talent is ThemeForest, a marketplace for all sorts of web themes.  When we find something exceptional, we add it to the Pingable collection.  Check out the Pingable collection periodically for new, stunning WordPress themes.

Check out the Themeforest collection here.

We all use Google Analytics to track visitors to our WordPress sites.  Right?  Not necessarily.  There were several services before Analytics was the standard, and even more have popped up in recent years that compete with the big G!  Here are some of the best options out there, with a little analysis of our own.

But first, some critique of Google Analytics which has caused some webmasters to look elsewhere.

• Delay.  Have you ever found yourself checking your stats at 12:01 AM?
• Reliability. Analytics isn’t supposed to count bots and spiders, but have you ever found a massive spike in traffic with no real explanation?  Or perhaps you’ve wondered how a search term of “green chili recipes” brought someone to your blog about rugby?
• Ease of use.  There are some very powerful features built into Analytics, but for 90% of webmasters, they’re overboard.  Sometimes I just want a simple, stylish graph of traffic.

Here are several alternatives to Analytics that address some of these issues.

Woopra

• Real Time
• Easily compare and manage multiple sites
• Tons of trackable information
• Promises additional features soon

Clicky

• Real time statistics
• Free and paid plans
• Most of the popular features of Analytics
• A graphically pleasing layout
• Offers a WordPress Plugin to integrate with your site.
• Has an impressive client list including Mashable, SmashingMagazine and BuySellAds.com

Piwik

• Real Time
• Simple
• Open Source
• Plugin powered so you can add/remove features
• Installed on your server so you have complete control and ownership of the data

Sitemeter

• One of the originals
• Free and paid plans
• Easy and fast to set up
• Easily share your stats (or secure them from) visitors

Chartbeat

• Real time
• Simple interface
• Traffic alerts
• $9.95/month at press time

Reinvigorate

• Real time
• Event tracking
• “Heat map” technology
• Desktop integration

Mint

• Self-hosted for full control
• Search support
• Feed subscription patterns
• $30 per domain – One off

Do you know of another alternative to Google Analytics?  Share it below with your comment.

There is a lot to consider when looking for WordPress hosting for your site.  Of course, you don’t have to self-host your site as outlined in this post on How to Install WordPress.  If you do choose to self-hosted WordPress Hosting, you’ll need a hosting provider.  However, not all hosts are created equal and there are a number of parameters that need to be considered. WordPress.org has a hosting suggestion page which currently includes:

• Bluehost.com
• Dreamhost.com
• MediaTemple.com
• GoDaddy.com
• LaughingSquid.net

If you choose to look further than the WordPress sponsored hosting partners, use the following criteria to make your selection.

Meet the basic server requirements

Many hosts meet the minimum requirements for hosting WordPress, but not all.  They include:

• PHP version 4.3 or greater although version 5.2 is recommended
• MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater although version 5.2 is recommended
• Mod_rewrite Apache module
• A Linux based platform with either Apache or NGINX

The official WordPress Hostingrequirements page suggests sending an email to hosts you are considering working with to make sure they meet the requirements.

That’s all WordPress.org has to say.  We have more suggestions when searching for a host.

Excellent Support

• Peruse the forums and see what kind of support is given.  Dead threads and complaining customers is a big red flag.
• Look for 24/7 support, an indication the host is dedicated to the business they’re in.
• Live chat support is a big help and suggests the host is there to help and backs up their service
• Give them a test.  Send a pre-sales support question – maybe asking how their servers meet the WordPress hosting requirements and note the response time and tone of their response.

Site design

We don’t mean to be design snobs, but if a web host can’t even manage their own website, how can they be expected to support you in managing your own?

Look closely

Does the web host have advertisements, unrelated text links or skeezy operations meant to build links but not necessarily customers?  These are all signs of a host that is not operating ethically.

Hosting other WordPress sites

Look at your favorite WordPress powered blogs and use this tool to find out who’s hosting them.

Look for these key features

• They offer one-click WordPress installation like Fantastico
• They offer unlimited MySQL databases (for running lots of WordPress sites)
• They support WordPressMu (just ask them)
• They support AJAX

Based on everything, we recommend these hosts in addition to the ones listed above:

Our Recommended WordPress Hosting Options

• WPWebhost
• WestHost
• Hostgator
• VPS.net

Additional resources:

• http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/
• http://wordpress.org/about/requirements/

Image credit: Verseone.com

We recently reported on Wibiya, an exceptional tool for WordPress blogs (and other sites but we don’t care about them).  At the time, Wibiya was in beta mode, asking you to request an invitation to use the plugin.  Just recently, Wibiya took two pretty big steps.

First, Wibiya is now open to the public.  Simply click “Get it now!” to sign up.  You will select a few settings like applications to include on your toolbar, then download a plugin zip file.  Previously you were given a raw PHP file that required manual upload (instead of the handy “upload new plugin” option in your WordPress Dashboard.

Second, Wibiya updated the toolbar altogether.  If you already had the Wibiya toolbar, you need to reinstall it.  The toolbar now includes a couple more applications and a better interface for adding/removing them.

So what does the Wibiya toolbar do?

• Integrates Facebook into your blog
• Integrates Twitter, allowing users to tweet about you right from your blog!
• Offers easy navigation of random and previous/next posts – increasing pageviews and retaining visitors.
• Lets readers chat with other visitors
• Lets you communicate with visitors by setting up announcements (popup or not)
• Decrease reasons for visitors to leave by allowing social networking right on your site (instead of leaving to do so)
• And tons more applications (translations, real time users and more added all the time)

Like we said, we don’t care about anything that doesn’t involve WordPress, but Wibiya also works with Blogger, Drupal, Ning, Joomla and more.  Check out the new Wibiya toolbar here.

We downloaded the free trial version of Artisteer, a WordPress theme generator that also can export Joomla and HTML website themes.  We then dished out $49 to test the full version with all the features enabled.  It had a promising feature list and made some heady claims as to what was possible with this $49 chunk of coding.  The short version of this review: the software is not worth it.  The long version follows.

In their words:

Artisteer is the first and only Web design automation product that instantly creates fantastic looking, unique website templates and blog themes.

	Design awesome blogs and cool web templates in minutes
	Export to Blogger, Joomla, WordPress and other CMS products
	No need to learn Photoshop, CSS, HTML or other technologies
	Fun and easy to use!

With Artisteer YOU immediately become a Web design expert, editing and slicing graphics, coding XHTML and CSS, and creating Web Design Templates, Joomla templates, Drupal themes, WordPress themes, DotNetNuke skins, and Blogger templates all in minutes, without Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and no technical skills.

These are impressive claims.  As a follow up, they offer these as the “Top 10 reasons to use Artisteer”:

1. Generate cool Web design ideas.
2. Adjust generated designs to create great looking Web and Blog templates.
3. Create perfectly correct, validated HTML and CSS that conform to Web standards.
4. You don’t need to learn Photoshop, CSS, HTML and other Web technologies to create great looking designs, including images and buttons.
5. If you are a Web designer, generate ideas, prototypes and quick Websites for your clients and friends.
6. Choose and use many included design elements, from backgrounds to photo objects and buttons.
7. Automatically solve problems with image aliasing, Web browser compatibility and other details requiring time and knowledge.
8. Learn how to create professional HTML and CSS code.
9. Save money on WordPress Themes and Web design templates.
10. If you don’t have the time, hire your kids to create great looking web design for you.

In our words:

Number 10 is probably the best reason to use Artisteer.  Why? because it can really only produce a theme worthy of a child’s blog.  Although there are some fancy and handy features which are outlined below, the end product is a well packaged piece of junk.

The Pros:

• The interface is super easy to use.  Literally point and click to change the layout.
• The “suggest a design” feature is very cool.  One click and the software will assemble a random set of parameters into a theme.
• Exporting into a full theme package takes just a couple quick steps.  The Home version which we purchased for evaluation allows the exporting of WordPress, Blogger and HTML themes.  The Pro version allows the aforementioned formats plus Drupal and Joomla templates.

The Cons

• As we mentioned, the quality of the themes is poor.  Unless you are a highly skilled graphic designer that can completely customize the theme after export.
• The files exported clearly indicate that Artisteer was used in a Readme file.  Also, the CSS files have the “art-” prefix which hints at the generator of the theme.  This isn’t a big deal for personal use themes.  But if one wanted to sell these themes as their own design, Artisteer would give them away.
• The layouts are limited to specific formats.
• There are three built-in widget options with very limited placements in the themes.
• Menus look amateur in quality.
• Customizing the menus takes quite a long time to get the hang of.
• You can’t pass off the themes as your own. (Read as both a pro and a con)
• It is pretty expensive ($49 for the limited version, $129 for the expanded)
• Their support was fast but snotty.

Our final opinion: The software is neat – but would be neater if it were free.  It produces quick themes if you don’t care about quality or aesthetics.  The support staff lacks interpersonal skills.  Overall, Artisteer is not worth the investment.  You’re better off dropping half as much on a professionally designed, well supported theme over at ThemeForest.com.