Techcrunch was hacked recently. Probably not too unexpected as they are a pretty large and juicy target for any hacker. It seems, however, that the hacking incident motivated the Techcrunch team to pull up stakes and move over to WordPress/Automattic’s VIP Service:
Assuming I am right and Techcrunch has moved to Wordpress.com for hosting, it’s interesting how short of a time they were hosted on the Rackspace Cloud Sites service. I have pinged a couple of Rackspace employees and will update this story once I get any further details.
Update: I can now confirm that Techcrunch has moved to Wordpress VIP hosting as noted in their footer. Rackspace employee Robert Scoble has also confirmed the move in the comments. It will be interesting to see if they continue to run the Rackspace advertisement going forward. It does appear the other sites in the Techcrunch family are still hosted on Rackspace – they could be in the process of moving.link: Did Techcrunch Become a Wordpress VIP? | CenterNetworks
This reminded me of something that I’m often asked: What webhost should I use?
This isn’t an easy question to answer. Because, as this post’s title says—All hosts suck, and all hosts are great. Pick any host and you’ll can find someone who has had a terrible experience and someone who has had a wonderful one. I think the Techcrunch example only tells part of the story. Maybe the hacking incident was the final straw. Or it had nothing to do with it at all. I wasn’t having problems with my last host, I had just out grown it. I knew I’d need to move, so eventually I did. Now I didn’t really have something like a hack to make people wonder if I there was a “straw that broke the camel’s back”, I just wanted to do it before Create Your Own Blog came out so it would be ready.
Maybe there were problems long before. Maybe Rackspace just increased their hosting costs and that just pushed things too far. I’m sure the Automattic team made the move as painless as possible.
In any case, how do you choose a good host?
Is it luck? If you can ask anyone about a host and get conflicting answers, well what then?
The best advice I give is to ask around and see which host is positively recommended most often.
There are lots of hosts out there…I know you can find a couple to choose from.
Me?
Dreamhost. And, yes I’m happy there.
For now…
Tris Hussey is a writer, teacher, blogger, and speaker on all facets of Internet life, WordPress, and social media. He is the author of Create Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Blogging Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro and Using WordPress.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }