I had a little problem with the text of my posts not showing up in my technology blog, Global Nerdy, earlier today. After trying the fixes I was aware of, I’d run out of ideas and decided to file a support ticket with my host, PressHarbor. Within an hour, they’d identified the problem: the “ShareThis” plug-in that I’d updated earlier this morning seemed to be incompatible with WordPress 3.8. They disabled it, confirmed that it was the culprit, and emailed me to tell me that my blog was back in business.
That’s what I like about PressHarbor: they’re not just a web host, they’re a full-service WordPress host. They maintain the WordPress installations, make the necessary patches, tune the databases, and all those little things that you need to do to keep a WordPress installation running at its best so that I don’t have to. Better still, during the few times I’ve had to file a support ticket, they’ve been quick and helpful.
The other great thing about PressHarbor is that they’ve been able to handle it when one of my blogs — either The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century or Global Nerdy — has a hit. Recently, my post about how terrible Millennials are in the workplace, despite having been posted without much fanfare back in June, started getting pageviews by the boatload near the end of November. I ended up getting nearly a million hits last month, with nearly 150,000 on Friday, November 22nd alone:
I’ve been with hosting services that would’ve melted under the click-rage-fueled deluge of visits by huffy twenty-somethings and the people who don’t think highly of them, but PressHarbor kept ticking along, smoothly switching into high gear without a hiccup. I just sat back, watched StatCounter climb, and enjoyed as my AdSense revenues literally paid the November rent on a two-bedroom Toronto apartment. (Annoying millennials is profitable, apparently.)
Yes, social media is still useful, since it pretty much guarantees that what you post will be seen as long as at least one other person is in your network. However, for long-term findability, Googlejuice, making money from ads and other things, and just plain old control over your content and how it’s formatted, nothing beats a blog. And in my experience with blog hosting, nothing beats PressHarbor. If you rely on your blogs like I do, you need PressHarbor. Drop ’em a line, and tell them Joey sent you.
Full disclosure: No, PressHarbor didn’t ask me to promote them. In fact, they have no idea I’m doing this. I’ve just been so pleased with them over the past month for being great at what they do.
2 replies on “If you need serious WordPress hosting, you need PressHarbor”
Which “Share This” plugin? I may need to troubleshoot some blogs after the recent update.
Ginny: It was ShareThis 7.0.8, which is compatible with WordPress versions up to 3.5.2. It is most certainly not compatible with WordPress 3.8. ShareThis 7.0.6 seems to work, however.