If you are looking for a hosting service for your WordPress site you should consider using HostGator and WordPress.

Of course there are a large number of web hosting companies who offer Linux hosting and most are technically able to run WordPress. WordPress.org setout the minimum technical requirements for hosting WordPress as follows:

• PHP should be V4.3 or higher
• MySQL database should be 4.1.2 or higher
• The web server should preferably be Apache or Nginx
• It is also preferable to run suPHP for better security.

Of course this is just the minimum and they also came up with this “Just like flowers need the right environment to grow, WordPress works best when it’s in a rich hosting environment”.

As a hosting customer you need to be looking for an easy means of setting up WordPress, hassle free operation and (of great importance) quality support. You should only compare prices of hosts which meet these criteria.

So why do we recommend HostGator?

HostGator support a great many websites powered by WordPress both for commercial and non-commercial purposes. Their basic shared packages (called Hatchling and Baby) provide the same service except that the cheaper Hatchling package only allows one domain whereas the Baby package offers unlimited domains.  All plans are sold on an unlimited basis which covers, many items including disk space, bandwidth, databases and email addresses. For customers with higher demands, there are several packages for reseller hosting, VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting and dedicated server hosting. So there is an upgrade path if your site gets busy.

The basic Hatchling plan starts at $4.95 per month (based on 36 months upfront) but unusually HostGator do actually allow monthly payments, which avoids an upfront cost and makes it easy if you want to cancel. Using coupon codes you can actually sign up for the first month at $0.01 or (if you are paying months in advance) get a discount of 25% on your first payment. You are not locked into a contract on any plan so you can cancel at anytime and for the first 45 days there is a Money Back Guarantee.

Hostgator are proud of their good reputation for providing support and regard this as a key aspect of their product. They can be contacted at any time by telephone, chat or email.

HostGator provide the “cPanel” control panel which includes Fantastico De Luxe so that WordPress can be easily installed without any technical expertise. They presently also offer QuickInstall (in beta) which enables an easy installation of even more software including Blogs, Content Management Systems, Forum software, eCommerce software, wiki software, chat software, social networking software and much more.

Customer feedback is generally very positive both with regards to the technical service and the support service. You do see the occasional negative comment but given the size of the business it would be very surprising if this were not the case.

In summary therefore using Hostgator for your WordPress site will mean that you have found the best wordpress hosting. HostGators uptime guarantee means that your site will be online as near one hundred percent of the time as possible and should you experience any problems you will know that help is at hand. If you would like to try the service for $0.01 click one of the links in this post.