Web4Africa Hosting: Where Cheap Is 99.9% Reliable!

More than a month ago, I blogged about My Experience With Customer Service @ Utiware.net and also mentioned the fact that I would be trying another African web host to see if I could get my second blog off the ground without spending too much.

Well, it’s been a month since the blog (Patchwork Of Tips) was launched and so far so good, I can’t really complain. Mr. Oluniyi David Ajao who runs the show @ Web4Africa has done a good job of keeping me satisfied .

For the price of 6,720 naira ($42) a year, I got Web4Africa’s Bronze Package, which features amongst other things:

1. 5GB of Disk Space
2. 50GB of Monthly Bandwidth
3. Unlimited Add-on Domains
4. Unlimited Emails & Databases
5. 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
6. 24/7 Technical Support
7. Latest Version Of CPanel
8. 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
9. They accept payment via credit/debit cards, PayPal, eCheck, Liberty Reserve, Moneybookers, Alertpay & bank deposit (in Ghana and Nigeria)

With their dedicated servers spread across Washington DC, Dallas and Seattle, the only problems I’ve encountered while using their services are:

1. Wordpress updates and Wordpress plug-in updates keep requesting ftp information before they can be executed. According to the official WordPress site, this happens on some servers and is just another security measure to keep your blog/site safe. I didn’t like it @ first because I wasn’t facing that problem with Hostgator but as time went by I got used to it .
2. Bloggers who use Windows Live Writer might face a situation whereby posts made via WLW appear to have messed up codes due to missing code brackets. The non presence of the combination of libxml2 version 2.7.3 and PHP version 5.2.9 on the server seems to be the cause of the problem. LibXML2 Fix plug-in took care of this.
3. Math Comment Spam Protection plug-in doesn’t work on the comment form. I finally had to settle with SI Captcha.
4. Hyper-Cache gave me a lot of headache and so I decided to go with WP-SuperCache instead.
5. The PHP mail() function has been disabled to combat email spammers and protect everyone on the shared hosting plan. This setback made it impossible for plug-ins such as Subscribe To Comments and Contact Form 7 to work. Not to worry. The following tutorials helped me fix this issue. How To Fix Wordpress Blog Not Sending Emails and Fix Contact Form “Failed to send your message” error.

With regards to the disabled PHP mail() function, this is what Oluniyi has to say

Due to the high risk of our core marketplace, we are compelled to implement very high security measures across our servers, to completely minimize any chances of hacking the server operation systems, PHP scripts (WordPress is coded in PHP), to make our servers retain a high email sending integrity by making it very unfriendly for spammers and the like.

This is in the best interest of our clients too as they can be rest assured of a high degree of safety. The downside of this is the additional inconvenience of entering your FTP information all the time, having to use PHP SMTP instead of PHP(Mail) etc.

In the long run, the additional security gained far exceeds the extra inconvenience.

That practically says it all for me. Nigerians, if you’re looking for cheap BUT reliable webhosting, give Web4Africa a try. I’m most certain that you wouldn’t find a better Nigerian web host that accepts payment in Naira.

Note: If during the order process you get flagged as Fraud, simply send an email to them and they’ll quickly fix it. This happens for people browsing with VSAT internet connections.

UPDATE: As of May 1st 2010, the domain name PatchworkOfTips remains registered under Web4Africa but I’ve moved hosting over to the Blogger platform due to certain factors including excessive server security that inhibits working seamlessly without contacting customer care frequently and most especially lack of time/dedication in updatin with fresh blog posts. Hopefully when things look up, I’ll revert back to Wordpress and owning a Web4Africa server space again .

1. Fix Contact Form “Failed to send your message” error My last tutorial showed you how to get self hosted wordpress installations to send emails on a server with PHP mail() function disabled. This tutorial will help you get Contact form 7 to send your messages successfully and stop showing the “Failed to send your message” error Disclaimer: This tutorial...
2. Wordpress Security Fix: Protect Blog From Theft! I just got this information from Perishable Press' RSS feed. Apparently if your database should for any reason go down, there's a possibility of visitors taking over your blog....
3. CyberUltra: Cheap Web Hosting From $30/yr Being a sucker for cheap but quality products, I was immediately pulled in by their offer: 5GB of web space with 50GB of monthly bandwidth for $29.95 as shown below...

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