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Need for dedicated IP address for e-commerce WordPress site

Hello,

I recently became a member of WPMU DEV and I’m just starting out with my first WordPress site. So far I’ve only registered a domain name with Gandi. Have been checking my hosting options and I have a problem choosing the right one: was thinking of going either for Bluehost as it provides 1-click install and auto-updates of WordPress, or the Simple Hosting plan of Gandi, considering I already have a domain name with them.

The thing is my site will have an e-commerce side as well. I’ve been reading up on this and they say you need a dedicated IP address with SSL for an e-commerce site. My question is do I really need this for a simple e-commerce site?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Lum Osmani

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 9:35:03
  • PC
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hello Lum,

    Greetings and thanks for posting on the forums.

    Choosing hosting can be tricky as if you choose a hosting which is not optimized for WordPress, you might run into a few issues.

    When your site is small, it doesn’t really matter where you are hosting it, but even if it’s a small e-Commerce solution, it will scale with time and would get more resource hungry. So choose wisely.

    As far as a SSL certificate is concerned, you will need a dedicated IP if you want to use it on your site.

    However, if you are using PayPal or any other gateway which does not process the transaction on your site, but takes the client to the gateway site, its already protected with SSL, so the info is safe anyway.

    So, now the question is whether you need an SSL certificate or not. If you are going to use PayPal pro or Stripe, you will need a SSL certificate. If not, then well you don’t need it :slight_smile:

    I hope that helps. Please feel free to ask if you have more questions

    Cheers

    PC

    Sales &Support

  • nasta
    • New Recruit

    Hi Pranaya,

    Thanks for your detailed response. I’m afraid I still don’t understand.

    So if I use PayPal or say a bank’s gateway if I only accept credit cards, then I don’t need SSL, right? I have a free one year SSL certificate offered by Gandi with my domain name purchase, but it says it’s only a Standard SSL, and doesn’t mention transactions anywhere (just says 2048 bits, auto validation). On the other hand, they also have a Pro SSL that says “Secure transactions up to $250,000.” So that means, with my Standard SSL, I can’t process any transactions, right? And if I have a standard SSL, does it mean Gandi gives me a dedicated IP address?

    On the other hand, I think Bluehost would make life much easier with a WordPress site, but I’m still confused… And say if I go for Bluehost’s plan, can I transfer my Gandi’s Standard SSL certificate? (hope this is not a stupid question :grinning:

    Cheers

    Lum

  • chookiewookie
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Hi lum,

    On hosting, … First wordpress site? I would think Gandi will be good enough. If you sign up for 12 months (or whatever minimum they have) then if that is not good enough for what you need, then you can always change with not much outlay.

    I would spend time and effort on getting to grips with wordpress and getting your site up and running. Unfortunately it will probably take a while to get going (to how you would like it to be) so the host (and hosting plan) shouldn’t be your main concern, in my opinion… Unless you have 10,000 subscribers and a horde of customers all waiting to go already!!!!!

    :slight_smile:

  • nasta
    • New Recruit

    Hi,

    I’m struggling with hosting, as I’m looking for the easiest way to get started with WordPress. This way, once I set up/install WordPress on my host, I can start installing the WPMU DEV themes and plugins to it. So, from my understanding, to be able to do this, I first need to have my hosting plan in place, right?

    Thanks,

    Lum

  • PC
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hiya,

    I would agree with @chookiewookie on this one. First get your hosting in place, once you have got the hosting, you can focus on Installing WordPress and getting the site up and running and then we can move on to SSL.

    Even if you have to install WordPress manually, its not much of a pain but now a days, almost every host provides one click installation. I use WPMU Hosting and have never faced any issues on it.

    Cheers, PC

  • nasta
    • New Recruit

    Thanks for your help, guys.

    What I did was actually set up WordPress locally on my machine, sort of a dev environment, before purchasing hosting and releasing the site. I’ve downloaded some WPMU DEV themes already and am tinkering with them. Once I have the site ready, I’ll buy a hosting plan and then just move over my local wordpress installation — with the site, WPMU DEV themes and all — to the web host. That should be possible, right?

    Cheers

    Lum

  • phillcoxon
    • The Crimson Coder

    That should work fine. You’ll need a way to back up your website and move it into your hosting once it’s ready. That can be a little tricky because you need a backup software package that will search your database and replace all of the references to your development URL with the new URL.

    This is something I use BackupBuddy for a lot. It’s a paid plugin but absolutely amazing for backing up, cloning and moving sites to a new domain name pretty much effortlessly.

    There’s also Snapshot from WPMUdev but I haven’t used that yet so not sure if it will domain name replacement if moving to a new host. Looking at the Snapshot page it doesn’t mention moving sites to a new URL.

    As far as SSL certificates my advice is to ignore the difference in price between SSL certificates unless you are running a very large site. A $7 2048 bit certificate provides exactly the same encryption protection as a $97 2048bit SSL certificate. The only difference is clever marketing trying to fool you into believe a difference between a “standard SSL” and a “premium SSL”. 99.9% of visitors to your website will never know and never care about the difference.

  • aristath
    • Recruit

    Hiya, just going through some of the older threads here.

    As it’s been a little while since we last heard from you I thought I’d check in to see how you’re going?

    If you’re still looking for some further assistance with this thread then please feel free to reopen the thread or of course for any new and related issues you are most welcome to open a new thread.

    Thanks.

    Ari.