What people keep running into with web hosting
Complaints tagged web hosting, each raised by more than one person. One-off posts are not included.
13 recurring problems · 99 people · 10 forums we read
Raised more than once
Most people first.
- 16Should I use WordPress or Wix for a new business website?Choosing the right platform comes down to balancing ease of use with long-term flexibility, ownership, and running costs. Freelancers trying to set up a new business often struggle to decide between simpler site builders like Wix and Squarespace or more complex options like WordPress.
- 16How to keep hostnames and IPs when migrating domain controllersUpgrading domain controllers requires deciding whether to reuse the old name and IP after demotion or clean up metadata and DNS. While the process is mind-numbing and laborious, it lets you maintain the same hostnames and IPs during the migration.
- 16How to stop excessive bot traffic and AI scrapersMassive volumes of automated scrapers overwhelm sites with tens of thousands of public pages, driving hosting costs up significantly. This overwhelming bot traffic ruins the reliability of web data and forces owners to look for specialized blocking services to regain control.
- 11Migrating an established online store to Shopify PlusMoving an older e-commerce business to a new platform requires transferring decades of products, SEO, customer history, and custom features, which often exposes missing native functionality. Store owners are forced to pay high recurring fees for basic apps to replace built-in tools they previously relied on, while dealing with disconnected checkout flows that fracture the customer experience.
- 8Why do self-hosted emails keep going to spam?Major email providers constantly flag self-hosted messages as spam, leaving owners unable to reach inboxes reliably. This forces people to abandon self-hosting entirely and rely on external services like Fastmail just to get their messages delivered.
- 8How to clean up a hacked website and fix malwareWebsite hacks manifest as random redirects, injected footer scripts, and unexpected user logouts that force owners to spend entire weekends manually scanning files and troubleshooting PHP functions at 3 AM. This demanding clean-up process stems from neglecting basic security hardening before the breach occurs, leaving sites entirely vulnerable to compromises.
- 5Why am I spending more time on WordPress maintenance than publishing?Content management systems like WordPress demand constant updates to core files, plugins, and server-side components just to stay secure. This endless upkeep consumes hours that should go toward writing and publishing, eventually driving creators to abandon the platform for simpler static alternatives.
- 4Why are automated bot attacks and hacking attempts suddenly surging?Sites on platforms like WordPress and Shopify are being overwhelmed by relentless daily bot attacks and scripts like wp2shell that exploit unmaintained pages and checkout links. This constant barrage prevents small business owners from operating normally, forcing them to spend money on services like Cloudflare while leaving them vulnerable to site cloning and identity theft.
- 4How to make offsite immutable backups affordable and recoverableImmutable offsite backups protect against full compromises, but keeping them affordable often results in slow, painful restores that depend entirely on internet bandwidth. This forces teams to rely on local copies for large multi-terabyte servers just to avoid crippling recovery times.
- 4Why are WordPress security updates delayed on WP Engine?WP Engine relies on a cached updates API and slowly rolls out core releases over several weeks to manage hundreds of thousands of installs. Because there is no way to predict when a crucial patch will actually appear in the dashboard, administrators are forced to bypass the host and run updates manually to secure their sites.
- 3How to fix NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID with GoDaddy certificatesNewly issued certificates, like GoDaddy's R1, are not natively trusted by all systems yet. This triggers "NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID" or untrusted website warnings that block users from browsing the site or downloading clients. To fix the trust chain on picky servers like IIS, administrators must manually download specific intermediate or cross-root certificates directly from the GoDaddy repository.
- 2Why do DNS changes take up to 48 hours to propagate?Complex caching prevents DNS changes from being immediately reflected worldwide, with full propagation across all points of presence (PoPs) sometimes taking up to 48 hours. This unpredictability causes unexpected trouble and forces administrators to wait minutes or even days before tasks like ACME and DNS-01 validation can safely take place.
- 2Client doesn't know where their WordPress site is hostedWhen clients don't know their hosting provider and lack full WordPress admin credentials, developers hit a wall. DNS records often point to proxies like Cloudflare or AWS, masking the actual host and making it impossible to access the server files needed to restore admin permissions.
Comes up alongside
Topics that keep appearing on the same problems — not topics with similar names.