When I first started this blog, I decided to use Godaddy’s WordPress shared hosting. At the time, I had another site that was already being hosted at Godaddy and thought their hosting services were pretty solid. My other site was a 100% HTML site. Since it was an all-HTML site, I didn’t have a database associated with my website. I just noticed the site loading pretty fast and didn’t think any more of it.

Now, that brings me to DomsTechBlog. I had only posted 2 posts to the site and I was already noticing that the site was super slow. Sometimes, I would get load times of over 20 seconds when using http://www.webpagetest.org/. Considering I wasn’t getting any traffic, I thought this was very odd. Since my past experience with Godaddy was so good, I thought that there was something wrong with my site. I tried removing images, changing themes, caching, disabling plugins, downloading and installing WordPress site speed plugins, etc and none of this sped up the site.

I have a background in software engineering and database administration and was able to come to the conclusion that the connection between my blogs web server and database server was really slow. Eventually, I contacted Godaddy support. I tried for about 2 weeks to get the problem resolved with no luck. I kept getting support technicians that weren’t very knowledgeable and kept getting the run-around with them saying “Did you try disabling plugins, removing images, etc”. This was frustrating since I stated in my initial email that I had tried disabling plugins, removing images, etc. Along with all this, I did some research and found that many other bloggers were reporting that Godaddy WordPress sites were really slow no matter what they did. I was so fed up at this point that I made the decision to switch, no matter how hard it would be.

The Switch To BlueHost

After doing my research, I decided on BlueHost’s WordPress Hosting since they had great reviews from other WordPress bloggers (and is recommended by WordPress themselves). I was worried the switch would be tough, but it ended up being pretty easy. I essentially just had to re-download my themes and plugins, backup my database from Godaddy, and then restore the database on the Bluehost account. It really only took me a few hours to get my blog completely moved. After I did, I was really happy I moved it. My blog was moving a ton faster right away. I was consistently getting load times of under 5 seconds. This confirmed my original suspicions that Godaddy doesn’t have its WordPress hosting figured out just yet.

Six months later and this site is still running smoothly on BlueHost (I even have some real traffic now). So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you are considering starting a WordPress blog, you may want to choose a different hosting provider besides Godaddy. I personally like BlueHost’s Hosting, but there are other solid WordPress Hosting Providers out there as well.