Yesterday felt like webhosting Hades! I spent a good part of my morning going back and forth with GoDaddy, because my site was having more challenges than a backward walking penguin. It was just not pretty. To top it off, I was not able to get my blog post out for the day. What a complete waste of a day for my blogging.

That is why I want to spend a few minutes on having the right webhosting for your blog. Without the right blog webhosting you can run into a lot of challenges. These are challenges that no marketer needs, and as good a reason as any to discuss what to do and not to do. Your resident guinea speaks!

A run through of the webhosting challenges

1. Memory overloaded.

2. Plugins created line errors on the system.

3. Site slowed down to a crawl

First, let’s deal with the memory overload. I use a lot of plugins. I mean a lot of plugins. My belief has always been that it is best to test the limits of how much you can fit into your blog before breaking it. Today I learned my lesson with Godaddy. Apparently, I can had to cut 30% of my plugins as I reduce my plugins from 42 to 28. While, that might seem excessive, please remember that this is home base where I run a lot of different systems through the site.

The Godaddy account that I have for my hosting has suited my needs as AndyNathan.net grew up. However, it is like have a site in high school that needs to go to college. You know that college is different, but the nerves come in when you realize that you are starting from the bottom of the totem pole in college.

While this does not have the same magnitude, I have been debating moving the site over to HostGator in the next month or two, because they have additional space on their site for me to include all the plugins that I need to run my site the way I want to run it. This will be a reseller account, because it just makes sense to use that account due to the extra space and features. More on that when I switch.

Second, too many plugins on your site not only cause memory challenges, but if something goes wrong with a plugin, your entire site can go down. That was exactly what happened with marketlately.com yesterday. One plugin, which I really do not use regularly suddenly decided that the self-destruct button had not been pushed in a long time. It was not a major deal. All I had to do was go into my CPanel in the back end of HostGator and remove the plugin from an FTP file. Once that was finished everything worked perfectly.  Complete Mutually Assured Destruction averted.

Third, with all the action and excitement AndyNathan.net slowed to a crawl. It was taking a few minutes to just open one page. Not surprisingly my blog does not like surprises. This blog wants consistency, and when things are off it moves at a crawl.

What have I learned from this webhosting experience?

1. The right tools for the right job. There is a likelihood that I could switch my webhosting to accomplish what I need with this blog. If anything that is the biggest lesson I re-learned from this. Cheapest or easiest is not always the best.

2. I now know how much my site can handle in terms of memory. Someone once told me to figure out how much gas you can fit in a tank fill her up, set the counter, and mark it when you run out of gas. My blog ran out of gas yesterday, before I filled her. Now, I know how much she can handle before stalling.

3. Understanding is half the battle. I have always that this blog and my use of this blog is an experiment into what to do and not to do. The more I know about blogging the more I can help you achieve your goals. For that I say, “Your Welcome!”

Finally, just to want to add that the webhosting is thankfully up and running.