Don't Use Ready Hosting!

For years, I have used ReadyHosting.com for my business web hosting.  They were one of the cheapest web hosting companies when I first signed up.  However even though they're competitors have drastically cut costs, ReadyHosting never reduced their fees.

Despite paying higher fees, I stayed with them out of loyalty because I liked their services and being able to readily contact tech support when needed.  But that loyalty has come to and end.

In an attempt to reduce expenses, I decided to cancel my web hosting account since I've been using this blog as a means to share information.  While there are still some advantages of keeping the old website active,  I decided there weren't enough reasons to justify the expenses anymore.

So this morning I contacted their billing office to inform them of my desire to cancel the account and was told that they would do so and would refund the unused portion of my balance after they deducted an EARLY CANCELLATION FEE!

I've been a loyal customer for nearly a decade.  I could have moved the account years ago to one of the cheaper hosting companies, but didn't out of loyalty.  And now, they want to charge me an early cancellation fee?  Unbelievable!  The fee may only be $35, but it's the principle of the matter that really gets my goat!   Especially, since I only had 30 days left in the current subscription!

Needless to say, I won't be recommending Ready Hosting to anybody else any time soon.  If you need domain names or web hosting accounts, go to www.WowzerWebs.com (which by the way happens to be my GoDaddy reseller account). But don't go to ReadyHosting.com!

Forcing WWW to Show in URL in Wordpress

Wordpress is a great place to host a blog, but it does have its frustrations.  I won't go into them all here, but one thing that I and others have found very frustrating is forcing the web address to show 'www' before the domain name. 

Why is this important?  There are several reasons.  First, search engines don't like it when a website's address will sometimes show as www.example.com and other times it shows as example.com.  Search engines will sometimes view this as two different websites with duplicate content.  The easiest way to fix this is to force the URL to always show the www before the domain name.

Some Wordpress Plugins (like S2Member) also require the 'www' in the URL in order to function properly.  The trick, however, is getting the job done.

If you search the web, you'll find a plethora of information about how to force the www in the URL.  Some sites suggest editing the HTACCESS file.  This may or may not work depending on your setup, but it didn't work for me.

I also tried calling tech support for my host (GoDaddy.com) for help in reconfiguring the CNAME in the Domain Manager.  This didn't work either.  The good folks at GoDaddy informed me that things were set correctly to force the www on the server, but that Wordpress was overwriting their configuration. 

After hours of frustration of trying every suggestion on the web, I finally found the answer in the Wordpress settings (and you wouldn't believe how simple it was to fix)!  Here's how I fixed the problem.

1. Log into Wordpress
2. On the left side of the screen, scroll down to SETTINGS and click GENERAL
3. Change the Wordpress Address URL) to www.example.com (replacing example.com to your domain)
4. Change the SITE URL to www.example.com (replacing example.com  with your domain)
5. Scroll down and click the blue SAVE CHANGES button

 That's it.  No need to edit the HTACCESS file, PHP files, or any other files (in this case anyway).