WordPress on Yahoo BOMBS!
The announcement that WordPress has partnered with Yahoo Hosting to make available a blogging platform for “Business Bloggers” was met with skepticism by anyone who knows Yahoo’s track record when it comes to the functionality of any of their webtools. And though I’d love for Yahoo to prove me wrong, they didn’t succeed with this.
A client of mine recently fell for the hype and signed up for Yahoo WordPress Hosting. I can tell you from firsthand experience with his site that trying to use Yahoo WordPress Hosting is a total waste of time and resources. The only entities benefitting by Yahoo WP Hosting are Yahoo and Matt Mullenweig, creator of WP. It’s useless for all but the most amateur of users.
Firstly, though the 2.0 final had been out for a few days, it wasn’t on Yahoo, who boasts that they’ll automatically update you to the newest version. So we couldn’t do the Movable Type import that’s available in 2.0 final without either upgrading ourselves or waiting for Yahoo to get around to doing it for us.
Secondly, trying to upgrade manually doesn’t work since Yahoo doesn’t let you do anything with mysql. You as a yahoo hosting user are not given admin mysql user permissions, so though you can create a new database you cannot create a user nor add a user to that database. Nor do you have the password for the user that yahoo creates for you when it installs WP. What this means is that though you can install phpmyadmin (geez, it wasn’t already installed???) it is useless to try to use it in any meaningful way.
Thirdly, Yahoo has its own “hosting tool” rather than using Cpanel or Plesk, tried and true tools we are all familiar with. Yahoo’s hosting tool is not at all intuitive to use, and leads you around in circles click after click after click as you try to find things that either of the other two host admin interfaces, Cpanel or Plesk, make available in one click.
Bottom line is that any serious blogger, and I would include ALL “business bloggers” in that group, should steer clear of Yahoo Wordpress Hosting and find a real host.
Yahoo, WordPress Hosting, Blogging
January 10th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
The fact that this rant is followed with an affiliate link doesn’t lend it much credibility. Especially one which from a WHOIS search only seems to host a few hundred sites.
My name is spelled Mullenweg.
“Firstly, though the 2.0 final had been out for a few days, it wasn’t on Yahoo, who boasts that they’ll automatically update you to the newest version.”
They QA everything quite a bit, and launched before 2.0 was available. I imagine they’ll update soon. It will be automatic.
“You as a yahoo hosting user are not given admin mysql user permissions”
I haven’t heard of a host that does.
“Nor do you have the password for the user that yahoo creates for you when it installs WP.”
It’s in wp-config.php.
“Yahoo has its own “hosting tool” rather than using Cpanel or Plesk.”
As do most larger hosts with hundreds of thousands of customers.
January 10th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Matt, you really have a nerve questioning anyone else’s credibility . . .
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/03/31/wordpress-caught-spamming/
January 10th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Hmmm. Jeez, Matt - I’d INFINITELY prefer being hosted somewhere with “only a few hundred sites” than a big bazoola like yahoo where they don’t know who you are and don’t give a flyin’ **** either.
Spare me from dollar signs and yahoo….
January 24th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
I agree with Matt. Whoever wrote this article apparently doesn’t have the know how to just look in the wp-config file for the database user and password name.
March 4th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Matt, you can say what you want buy Yahoo! hosting is the worst choice I ever made. My site was contantly down, at times I couldn’t even connect to my webhosting manager.
I run a popular weblog and when big sites like Yahoo! (ironically) linked to my site, giving me spectacular exposure, it wend down again.
It’s funny to see that your Yahoo! search pages are never down. It’s not because we run small businesses that you have to treat us like shit.
Stay away from Yahoo! hosting at all costs! I’ve been with them for two weeks and I’m switching. Damn, even the robbers and liars over at lunarpages have a higher uptime.
And one last thing, when a customer send two mails for support and is completely ignored, it’s not Yahoo! anymore, it’s Yapooh!
March 7th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
If Jimmy and Matt honestly think that people who need to pay Yahoo! to install wordpress for them are going to be savvy enough to look in wp-config for their database password, they need a reality check. Fast.
March 7th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Tell the truth, I honestly didn’t think to look in wp-config, since I was so freaking PISSED that phpmyadmin was so totally useless in yahoo. What do you have to do in Yahoo to create a new database? Simple answer. You can’t. Yahoo doesn’t allow it.
Regardless of the db password issue (which, as wank pointed out is still a problem) there are enough other problems to steer totally clear of yahoo hosting, as I’ve noted in my followup post
May 12th, 2006 at 11:35 am
[…] other day I came to this thread. Nothing but negative comments about Yahoo. Then I found two articles linked off the thread. Both extremely negative, as were the […]