The easiest wordpress hosting I have seen so far is by hosting companies using cpanel with fantastico. Fantastico has an autoinstaller for wordpress that gets you up and running after you answer a few questions. And if you have troubles with that tech support should know how to do that with no problem. In order to get cpanel and fantastico you need to find a linux web hosting plan.

For a wordpress site you doesn’t need a lot of filespace or bandwith. You need one mysql database and one domain. If all your going to do is a wordpress than just about any linux web hosting plan with fantastico will do fine. If you want an ecommerce store, want to host any other sites or if you need to install other scripts you would need more than the basic web hosting plan. For ecommerce and other scripts you will need a plan with one database for each script you are going to install. So wordpress and an ecommerce store such as oscommerce would be two databases. Fantastico includes an autoinstaller for oscommerce as well as other programs that would be helpful in running your site.

What are the benifits of using a hosting company to host your wordpress blog instead of using wordpress.org to host your blog?

Here are a few limitations to hosting your blog on wordpress.org:

1. No Advertising – This means if you wish to make money online from your blog using advertising programs like Google Adsense, Kontera, Chitika or Text link ads, it is not allowed. One discreet link to Amazon per blog is okay. Read more about their advertising policy and how they may occassionally show ads. To earn money by displaying advertising, you need to buy VIP hosting.

2. No Sponsored / paid posts – Another popular option for bloggers is to earn money via paid reviews using services like ReviewMe and PayPerPost. WordPress.com does not allow you to blog paid articles.

3. Limited Theme Customization – You need to select your themes from a preselected number of themes. You cannot hack and edit these themes as per your liking. You can edit and save the CSS as a paid upgrade. Currently you can select from a large number of beautiful themes, but if you want your own unique design, you need to pay.

4. No Plugin Uploads – A major limitation is the inability to upload plugins. WordPress plugins are amazing tweaks developed by the vibrant WordPress community that adds improved functionality to WordPress for free. Plugins can automate lots of stuff and take your blog to a new level. Here are some WordPress plugins I use.

5. No WP Code hacking – If you like editing PHP files in your wordpress installation to create new functionality for your blog or showcase your PHP skills, then it is not possible at WordPress.com. You cannot edit the core wordpress files to suit your needs.

6. Paid Upgrades – If your popular blog grows in site traffic and branding beyond the imposed limitations, you need to buy paid upgrades

# Custom CSS – lets you style the blog or use an existing stylesheet, but does not allow direct theme editing.
# Domain Mapping and Domain Registration to get the ‘wordpress’ out of your url.
# Space upgrades – to get more space for all your uploads
# Unlimited Private Users who can see your private blog.

You can also get VIP hosting which will let you use your own domain name, host ads and help survive lots of traffic. Check out some notable WordPress bloggers hosted on WordPress.com

7. Violate TOS and Get Deleted – It is essential you read up the terms of service carefully. They will not tolerate copyright infingement, spamming, commercial use, machine generated blog etc. and people can easily report spam blogs and you might wake up to find your blog deleted one fine day!

# the Content is not spam, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);
# the Content is not obscene, libelous or defamatory (more info on what that means), hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;

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