Best Practices for Web Hosts

Here’s our list of recommendations for web hosts who want to provide a great WordPress experience to their customers (if you would like to apply to be listed on http://get.wp.com/hosting/, please send us information on how you have implemented each of the recommendations below):

One-click install: One click installers for WordPress are recommended and more or less standard for web hosts at this time. We also encourage web hosts to offer auto-upgrade functionality to keep all their WordPress installs on the newest and most secure version.

Latest version: It’s crucial that you offer the latest release of WordPress at any time. The fastest host upgrade their versions of WordPress within hours of an official release. Here are some links that will help you keep up with the latest versions of WordPress: http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/, http://core.trac.wordpress.org/timeline, http://wordpress.org/news/

Support: You can help both your customers and the volunteers who run WordPress support by keeping a close eye on issues that mention your company in the WordPress forums. You can track forum posts that are tagged with your company name at http://wordpress.org/tags/yourcompany (for example http://wordpress.org/tags/godaddy). The faster you jump in on issues and help answer them the better.

Contributions: The most important thing you can do for the long term satisfaction of your WordPress customers is to contribute to the WordPress project. By hiring WordPress experts and investing into the WordPress platform you earn customer loyalty with a great product experience and you build great WordPress expertise in house. There are many ways to contribute to WordPress, including development, design, testing, feedback, or helping out with WordCamp events.