Do Not Host a WordPress Website Account on a GoDaddy Server
By Jason Hanson.
Readers, take it from me, do not turn to GoDaddy as your server provider if you intend to host a website developed using WordPress. You will not be pleased with their level of tech support if anything goes wrong with your software.
What a series of awful experiences Creative Developments has had while managing our client accounts with GoDaddy when it comes to the WordPress application. I’m not asking for much. If I host my website on an account called the WordPress hosting account I expect at least a base level of tech support specifically tailored for WordPress.
If GoDaddy installs the WordPress software on their server on a hosting package specifically tailored to WordPress and the application incurs a glitch…investigate into it. I’m not being unreasonable here in this expectation of base level tech support. If something goes awry with the WordPress software you’d expect the technical support team to at the very least login to your account’s WordPress dashboard and review the problem at hand. Nothing doing at GoDaddy!
At the time of this blog entry, the policy at GoDaddy is that the technical support staff at GoDaddy will not access your WordPress account and dashboard even with your permission. They will not login to the wp-admin panel under any circumstance which makes it impossible to address any issue that requires admin access in order to see, address and resolve the issue at hand.
Example: on one of my client accounts if I add an image to any page or post and then publish that page or post, the image posts skewed. If I post the image and that image is 100×120 pixels, upon posting the height displays as far more than 120 pixels. This is a legitimate glitch in the software that THEY installed and host. I shouldn’t have to tell the client to patch every image with CSS. I expect the GoDaddy tech support rep. to login to the panel, investigate the issue and address it. That should be standard practice. But this request apparently does not fit within GoDaddy’s protocol.
Now I understand the need for account security but this is asinine. If I provide GoDaddy with my customer number and my call pin verifying that I am the owner of this account and I personally give them the login credentials to the dashboard of WordPress, where’s the security risk of them logging in? You have my permission! The only problem is in GoDaddy’s reps. refusal to login and address the problem at hand. (Can I swear now? It’s so frustrating).
Note: this is not a problem with other server providers. Westhost will both provide wp-admin, dashboard technical support for your WordPress software. They won’t refuse your request to investigate and address the issues at hand. Even if it’s not generally an issue that they are obligated to address, they will often oblige you. With GoDaddy? Good luck. They claim to not even have level two tech support teams (untrue, I have spoken to them in the past after great effort to be transferred to them).
Do I sound upset while writing this? You bet. I’ve had it! GoDaddy may be a great place to purchase your domain name, they offer far better deals than Network Solutions, but this is just an unreasonable stance taken by GoDaddy, especially when my clients are hosting on what GoDaddy sells as WordPress hosting accounts. Resolve the application breaks on your server or don’t host the application all. I take my client’s tech support needs seriously. They are your clients too, so why don’t you treat them with the same respect I do? You’re not a monopoly, GoDaddy. Stop acting like one.
Creative Developments is a multimedia website design company, video editing house and internet marketing company providing on-line solutions with a creative edge.
To inquire about our web design, video editing, website search engine optimization (SEO) and internet marketing services for your website or blog or business, call us at (480) 968-5096 or email us at dhannes@develop4u.com. Creative Developments is located in Scottsdale, AZ, servicing the entire Phoenix area, the East Valley, Maricopa County, Arizona and beyond.
I agree with you totally. GoDaddy sucks big time. We moved ALL our business elsewhere. Sounds like you’re headed in that direction too.
I think you’re asking a bit much from your host. Especially since they are one of the cheapest around.
Have some personal responsibility, read the documentation and get involved
With your application.
The theme you use may be part of the problem and no host will provide the support you’re looking for. Perhaps you should try wordpress.com.
Thank you for taking the time to write. Although I appreciate your taking the time to reply, I completely disagree. When something goes wrong with software that is not due to the user, but to the software application and the database, it is absolutely incumbent upon the server provider who installs the software and hosts the application to assist in resolving the problem.
If there is a glitch in the software, the manual is not going to resolve the issue. It’s not. This is why software developers provide updates and patches.
Now if the server provider first investigates the problem and concludes that they do not have the technical know-how to resolve it or that it is not the software that is at fault then one can at least be satisfied that the server provider took the time to investigate the issue at hand. GoDaddy will not even login to the dashboard, much less investigate and possibly resolve any technical glitches.
If you read further this blog article, I did mention that other providers will provide WordPress technical assistance and will, at the very least, login to the dashboard and look into the problem.
Recent Example: For one of my clients, images were not being posted with the correct alignment, regardless of how my client configured each image. This was a problem. The host provider at http://www.westhost.com took the time to login and test the application. Sure enough, they agreed with me that the images would not properly align as instructed by the application control panel.
The administrator then suggested that it may be the theme and not the software that was in error. At this point, you couldn’t blame the server provider for passing the buck to the theme provider if this was in fact the case as the Westhost tech rep. logged in, tested the application that they host, attempted to isolate the problem and at the very least attempted to resolve the problem.
Westhost’s hypothesis was a correct one. WordPress, by default, expects to find the CSS classes “img.centered”, “img.alignright”, “img.alignleft”, “.alignright” “.alignleft” in every theme. That “I” figured out by cross comparing the source code with both the theme my client used and the default theme that comes with WordPress. (I’ll blog on this in a future entry as this is a more common problem than one may think in 3rd party themes)
This resolution is not in a manual. This takes real investigative work to conclude this. Without the assistance of the helpful tech support staff at Westhost this probably wouldn’t have gotten resolved. GoDaddy would never have been of assistance. Although Westhost did not resolve the problem, their assistance into investigating the problem helped lead to a resolution by me.
My clients have limited WordPress knowledge. They rely on the software to work. I in turn, reply upon the server provider to provide working software and if GoDaddy is going to install and host the software, it should work.
You’ll save yourself and your clients many future headaches by being proactive in selecting a server provider that will provide advanced tech support assistance and not hosting with GoDaddy. Two such providers are http://www.westhost.com and http://www.hosting.com.
Absolutely, Mark.
You’ll save yourself and your clients many future headaches by being proactive in selecting a server provider that will provide advanced tech support assistance and not hosting with GoDaddy. Two such providers are http://www.westhost.com and http://www.hosting.com.
I have at least 5 clients that have their WordPress hosted on GoDaddy without any problems.
GoDaddy has excellent tech support.
What you asking for is for support on WordPress which is not GoDaddy product or service. They just provide you with the install wizard for WordPress to make you life easier. You should not expect GoDaddy to provide you support on any of the 50+ applications that they provide using the install script.
Hi Mike. Good to see ya on here and thanks for participating.
Here are my great words of wisdom and advice: Just because you have not yet incurred a problem does not mean the problem does not exist.
GoDaddy may be wonderful for any number basic support issues and their tech staff will avail themselves for any number of issues that they have the approval to address but they WILL NOT enter your dashboard. They WILL NOT provide WordPress technical support. That is fair warning.
Re: You should not expect GoDaddy to provide you support on any of the 50+ applications that they provide using the install script.
Well why not? They are not a monopoly. If Westhost, http://www.westhost.com or Hosting.com, http://www.hosting.com is willing to enter the dashboard and provide a modicum of tech support, why should I choose GoDaddy over these providers or any number of other providers willing to engage in issues related to my dashboard. Is Danica Patrick going to sneer at me and run me off the road with her race car?
I don’t know about your clients by my clients expect me to resolve their WordPress glitches even when it may months after the initial site development and I was not the one to initiate the bug or glitch via a faulty plug-in or theme incompatibility issue or another incompatible app that introduced the glitch into the system. I am willing to assist them in resolving the issue but assistance from the server side is quite helpful and frankly I’d rather not spend hours of my time trying to resolve a glitch when I can get the assist from an experienced server tech that has seen the issue before and can resolve it far faster than I can.
Additionally, there are times when I may wish to migrate the WordPress database to another directory or the database may incurs an error. Good Luck in having GoDaddy address the issue and investigate any errors in the DB. If you don’t know MySQL from MySpace, good luck to you in resolving it I you host with GoDaddy.
My best advice is to be proactive, preemptive and avoid these issues from the get-go by hosting with a server provider that will be there to assist if an issue arises at some point in the future from day one.
That’s my rant, I hope you enjoyed it. Good to see ya, Mike
I think it’s a matter of what’s expected, you are saying hey its its called wordpress hosting, Godaddy should support the wordpress install and I think Godaddy is saying it hosting tailored for wordpress so we support hosting and not the software.
Maybe they should be more clear on what there services is.
It sounds like the issues you are talking about with wordpress basically (basic) web development issues, and not hosting, so the question is when sign up to they make it sounds like they will help you trouble shoot support?
anyways I agree that Godaddy is not the best host, but they are cheap, and have a pretty fast call response time so i have clients that use them.