This afternoon, I was able to try out Yahoo!’s WordPress Hosting service. They have a promo now that for just over $8 a month, you get 5GB of space and 200+GB of bandwidth (that is so super cheap).
I initially thought there would be something fancy there but the process of just signing up is so long that you’d need more time filling up forms and signing up than actually installing your blog. Your hosting is readily available after paying via credit card but your domain will still be on pending (propagation delays). They will inform you though once the domain is active.
The control panel is simple and straight-forward, then they also have this one-click install for WordPress (and soon Yahoo! 360 as well). The wizard is almost similar to the one-click install in cPanel’s Scripts Library (Add-On Auto-Installer) except that it allows you to use the custom setting (domain.com/blog), or install into an existing folder (domain.com/folder) or even create a new folder. What disappoints me the most was that there was no option (even in advanced mode) to install WP 2.0 on the main path of your domain so you’d really end up having your blog at domain.com/blog. (Pretty silly if you ask me).
For those who really wants to have it on the main path, you’ll end up installing WP from scratch. Creating a DB is more painful than that of cPanel — you will need to install PHPMyAdmin first! Weird huh?
Surely, it is not for the faint of heart. It even took me much longer than my usual 10-minute installation time. (I still had to figure out how to use their control panel.)
Good thing though is that Yahoo! has a really good and accessible documentation and most of the questions I have were answered within a few clicks.
But at the end of the day, there’s nothing really special there.
Yikes. That’s how friendly it is. Would rather setup on our own.