I seem to remember HostGator being fingered in quite a few plugin support forums, along with Godaddy, as being a particularly problematic host. What Chris says about WP Super Cache being pre-activated is, however, very promising, it suggests that they finally sat down and really thought about how they can accommodate all their WordPress users.

It is crazy that more hosts don't do this; WordPress usage is exploding and they could save themselves endless support and security headaches if they hired WordPress experts to consult on the best possible WordPress "recipe" for their particular setup. WordPress has gone way beyond being just another one of a hundred or so arcane Fantastico applications that hosting customers might, just possibly, want to install, it is now one of the main ways in which people choose to create websites.

Fantastico should be avoided, it is a complete dog, if you are under any illusions about the type of company you would be trusting your installation to, just visit their website. It was all the rage ten years ago but Netenberg, despite all the money they have raked in, seem to have put zero effort into improving it, adding features or keeping their install libraries even vaguely up-to-date. Hosts only offer fantastico out of a combination of laziness, inertia and the fact that so many customers got it into their heads, years ago, that it is a must-have feature.

Installatron, offered by an increasing number of the better hosts, is a far superior option, even out-of-the-box, but is also highly customizable, wonderful if you do a lot of installs and want to automate essential post-installation tasks such as changing permissions, deleting Hello Dolly etc.

The very best way to install WordPress, however, remains doing it yourself, possibly with the help of a good, up-to-date tutorial if it is your first time. WordPress installs so easily, I can't see, for the life of me, how that is really that much harder than using Fantastico and ending up with an insecure installation that doesn't set the permissions correctly for automatic upgrades.