@strebel - I agree that shared hosting is fine for 90-95% of websites, probably even 99% of them, because it simply isn't important that they remain up all the time.

If, however, you are investing a lot of time into your site, are working towards it becoming your main business and are trying to build a community around what you do, uptime becomes far more important and, sadly, the extent to which you become a target for hackers increases. Probably far less than 1% of websites fit into that category, but WPTavern certainly does. The value of Jeff's time (and, indeed, the time of all the commenters and posters in the forum) dwarfs the cost a VPS or small server.

A lot of businesses overspend ridiculously, getting a server long before they actually need one. In Jeff's case, however, I think there is a danger that he will underestimate the damage that occasional outages will inflict upon the momentum he is trying to create. I know that it has not been easy to monetize the Tavern, it certainly is not yet anything near to justifying the time and effort that he pours into it, and that is why the temptation to remain with shared hosting, to simply cross his fingers and hope for the best, is no doubt strong.

What I am saying, however, is that shared hosting, no matter how well-liked the company, no matter how perfectly it works for an army of amateur bloggers with a completely different set of circumstances than Jeff, is simply not going to be a good fit for the Tavern as it grows, that the attempted DDoS attacks and other related bullshit is going to increase, not diminish. Growing pains.