
WordPress.com Enterprise is Live - twapi
http://vip.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/enterprise/
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itsgettingcold
Very excited about this. Wordpress hosting for medium and large sites is a
major pain point that I've dealt with on multiple occasions. Once a site grows
beyond the cheapy hosting plans, there was a huge gap in the mid range before
something like VIP became a possibility.

I am interested to see how existing sites migrate over, it looks like only a
group of approved themes are allowed. Presumably, those looking to migrate
will have to recreate their existing UI experience on one of those pre-
approved themes.

The theme issue actually smells like a decent business opportunity for savvy
Wordpress theme designers. If someone offers quick turnaround ports of old
themes to supported themes, which is almost entirely CSS, I bet they'll get a
lot of business as more and more sites want to move over to the Enterprise
plan.

Anyone made the jump yet? How was the experience?

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elmuchoprez
They're pushing features like "launch your site within minutes" and "customize
your site without needing to touch the underlying PHP code," which makes it
feel like they're playing to the wrong audience. By the time someone is ready
to spend $500/month on hosting, you would think they'd have someone on their
team who isn't intimidated by Wordpress level configuration or PHP.

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LiveTheDream
Not true. The company site/blog may be the responsibility of a non-technical
marketing person, for example. $500/month hosting plus some chunk of that
person's time is much, much cheaper than hiring a PHP developer who must then
work with the marketing person to implement the changes.

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elmuchoprez
I guess I just don't see a situation where the only tech barrier (the only
thing you would need regular access to a tech for) for a site that's getting
thousands of daily page views is finding appropriate hosting.

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riledhel
Glad to see they continue to offer more products and services. How this
compares to WPEngine and such?

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bwilliams
For $3750/month I could get a lot more than just a WordPress install and the
title "VIP".

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ohashi
It says $500/month on the annoucement

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bwilliams
It's $500/month only if you host it yourself, if you host with them it goes up
to $3750/month.

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LiveTheDream
I believe it's actually $500/month for just this "Enterprise" subscription,
which gives you some level of support and access to a bunch of themes and
plugins. Seems like the VIP level is different, and includes 24/7 phone
support.

Will be interesting to see how the support actually stacks up. My experience
with another popular "enterprise" Wordpress platform was been shockingly
subpar (bad enough that we just bailed out and ate the loss since we paid a
year up-front).

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troymc
When I first saw this, I thought, "Oh good, finally Automattic has something
to compete with Page.ly, WP Engine, and Synthesis (i.e. managed WordPress
hosting)."

But then I read their prices. The other guys all have managed WP hosting plans
starting at under $30/month.

Maybe Automattic is playing the old game "If we charge crazy high prices, the
Enterprise customers will think we're better, thinking, 'you get what you pay
for.' The other guys will look like cheap crap."

Their scheme will probably work. Automattic has a lot of cred. Red Hat and
Acquia play the same game. It sounds like a good business, if you can get into
it!

(Disclaimer: I have my personal website on wordpress.com service [the free
version]. I'm also doing a trial with Synthesis.)

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nnq
> you also get our new Javascript customization service that allows you the
> flexibility to customize your site without needing to touch the underlying
> PHP code

wtf is this, how it works, what it does, and where can I find more details?

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nnq
so because it's an Enterprise thing, someone just decided to add one more
bullet point "out of thin air" and pasted that incomprehensible thing about
"Javascript customization" ...niiiiiice.

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cmwelsh
If you have $500/month to spend you could also get equivalent managed PHP
hosting (that's all this is) from many other providers like RackSpace Cloud,
etc. with spare money left over for an update service like ManageWP.

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jemka
The "managed" hosting you're referring to typically means the NOC will
troubleshoot services that are down or not working correctly with default
settings. They won't, however, help you optimize your server or help with ANY
code.

So if this WordPress offering provides the least bit of service for
server/code optimization, then they're way ahead of the hosting game. But as
you can see, it comes at a significant cost.

~~~
wpsrc
But there are also managed hosting companies specifically for WordPress, which
offer pre-configured servers, optimized WordPress installs and WordPress
related support. Most of these companies have custom solutions that are
suitable for enterprise customers. A couple of them, such as BlogDroid or
Pagely, will even help customers solve issues with their code's performance.

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sami36
wonder how much of this will stat eating in Autonomy's Teamsite grip on the
corporate market.

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hissworks
sincerely hope it does but doubt it will

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ecaron
Interesting they call this "live" now, TechCrunch has been running on
WordPress.com's "VIP" platform since early 2010.

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Yhippa
Oh wow. This is big news. WP is a well-known CMS in North America. Coming up
with a hosted cloud solution is big as well.

