Comments on: Hosting

By: Roger

Roger — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:32:52 +0000

Just wondering if any of the free hosts (inlcluding our own) should be mentioned – the ones that set-up a blog for you along the lines username.freehostname.com. Could be useful for people who wish to test drive wordpress.

50% of the profits from your subscription to the developer.

Notice this is “profits” not “revenue”. If there net profit margin is 10% then they are donating 5%. If they don’t make profits, they don’t contribute. Also presumably they put a time limit on it – or does the profit sharing continue for years. In any case it is probably irrelevant – the main thing is that they are wordpress enthusiasts and give or intend to give something back.

By: Hans

Hans — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:03:31 +0000

From the Textdrive signup form (step #3):

TextDrive will pay 50% of the profits from your subscription to the developer

By: Elliott BÃ¤ck

Elliott BÃ¤ck — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 22:36:12 +0000

You might also want to include 1and1 on that list. I use them for hosting, and while they don’t offer WP specific help, they have good tech support, good prices, and support MySQL and PHP out of the box. They also have an affiliate program.

By: alvin

alvin — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 23:39:43 +0000

Where the money goes? Its written right below the donation page in wordpress.org

Here, let me do you a little favor:

In the past, WordPress donations have been used for:

* Hosting and operation expenses
* Domain registrations
* Contests
* Legal costs
* Donations to Open Source projects that support us
* Developer rewards

By: Arthur

Arthur — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:25:55 +0000

“Much of WordPress.org is hosted on TextDrive. If you select “WordPress” when signing up they donate 50% back.”

Really? I thought it was 10%.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:11:58 +0000

When these hosts “donate” a portion of our fees back to WordPress, where does that money go? Into a general fund? The same one the paypal account feeds into?

Some might feel it’s not my place to ask such questions and maybe it’s not, I should shut up and trust the world, but I just want to know how things work. There is a process in place here and given that I’ve donated some money, use the product, have made an investment of time and money in it, I’d like to know where that money goes.

Maybe the bigger question is, when money is involved, in what ways does the open source model differ from the commercial model? I’m not saying that taking donations or having an affiliate program can’t coexist with an open source product but at what point in the money scheme does the balance change?

If I were to pay a license fee to six apart for MT, I’m not going to ask them to tell me how they’re spending the money but again, wordpress has a different lineage so I’m curious how this is working with the small group of core developers who do this for love.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:46:53 +0000

PowWeb has the top spot because they offer the most support for WP (they even trained their phone support in WP) and they contribute the most back.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:46:00 +0000

I would recommend all of the hosts even if they didn’t contribute back to WP. One of them isn’t really set up to send any donations back, but they’ve helped in other ways and I wouldn’t want to penalize an otherwise excellent host simply because of their setup.

By: Andy Skelton

Andy Skelton — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:31:18 +0000

I liked WP as a commerce-neutral product and community but costs are inevitable. I like that it’s a clean, on-topic revenue point. Very bright.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 11:39:09 +0000

Just curious, how did that poweb get that top spot? Is that rotating?

Other than textdrive which is well known as your host and an affiliated site, how were these other hosts singled out? There are so many out there that will install any weblog engine and have them all available (MT and WP for sure) I’m wondering why these particular ones.

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:38:39 +0000

I note it says some of the hosters donate to WordPress – why not identify which ones do – then people will be able to use that a a differentiator (sp?) when deciding which hoster to use?

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 07:51:12 +0000

Gregory, the page mentions that (some of?) the hosts contribute to WordPress for referrals.

Good idea, Matt. (Much better than the “articles” deal…) I’m already with PowWeb, which is annoying — I’m too late to contribute part of the fees to WordPress!

By: Gregory Wild-Smith

Gregory Wild-Smith — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 06:45:22 +0000

Do you have an affiliate deal going on with them? Just asking, nothing sinister.

I recomend Fuitadnet.com they are VERY cheap, and high quality. I host all my sites through them. Plus you can be an affiliate with them too. Some good companies listed there though, nice.

By: David Gonzalez

David Gonzalez — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 05:35:05 +0000

ah, I though it was a WordPress Service , at least you should put “Recommended by wordpress”
also, if you can add servage.net would be cool ^^;; sorry if i spammed