WordPress website hosting,
If you’re setting up a new website for the first time, WordPress is a really good option. It’s easy for beginners to use, widely supported on cheap hosting plans, and provides a great platform to learn about websites and development while launching something useful.
It’s important to note how easy WordPress is to use, flexible, and powerful. Unlike “no coding required” website builders with cute drag-and-drop interfaces, WordPress is real, professional-grade software.
As your business and website need to expand, and your skills improve, WordPress won’t be a hindrance. It’s a platform you can grow into, not out of.
Because WordPress is so popular, and because we recommend it for beginners, it would be a good idea to explore some of the issues surrounding web hosting using WordPress.
Shared hosting for WordPress
Most shared hosting companies are specifically optimized for installing and running WordPress, and a large percentage of websites powered by WordPress are hosted with shared hosting plans.
From a basic technical perspective regarding requirements and setup, shared hosting is just fine. In fact, WordPress itself recommends shared hosting providers Bluehost and SiteGround.
There is a problem with this though – shared hosting plans are generally not suitable for high-traffic websites. This is especially the case with dynamic CMS like WordPress.
For this reason, we recommend shared hosting as a good option only for personal blogs and small websites.
VPS server for WordPress
For a large or complicated WordPress website that is expected to get a lot of traffic, scalable VPS or cloud hosting solutions are usually going to be a better choice than a shared hosting provider.
Having more space and more control over the hosting environment can help a lot, but increasing speed and bandwidth is the big issue here.
Managed WordPress hosting
If you run a serious business website with a lot of traffic, or a busy e-commerce store, you might be a good candidate for a managed hosting plan. These plans bring a level of service beyond simply better access to technology (although they often come with that too).
Managed WordPress hosting can cover a number of value-added support services, such as ensuring your website software stays up-to-date and secure.
Automatic backups, downtime monitoring, advanced analytics, and proactive security measures are common features in a managed WordPress hosting server.
Some managed hosting plans even include their own distributions of WordPress with special plugins and packages designed to boost performance, security, or user experience.
WordPress is built with a strong DIY (do it yourself) mentality, and is relatively easy to use for beginners, compared to other options available.
Managed WordPress hosting is not a requirement by any means, and the benefits it provides can usually be achieved by people who are interested in it.
What managed WordPress hosting really offers you is time. You can easily learn to take care of things yourself and do the work yourself.
But it may make more business sense to simply pay a little more to a hosting company and let them take care of things for you.
How to Get the Best WordPress Hosting Experience
Whether you’re on a discounted shared hosting plan or the most expensive managed VPS you can find, there are several strategies that will improve your WordPress performance and hosting experience.
Keep your core WordPress installations and plugins upgraded to their latest versions
The vast majority of security issues with WordPress are related to people running out of date versions of the core software or plugins.
Aside from general neglect, the biggest reason people don’t update their core and plugins is the fear that there will be a compatibility issue.
These kinds of things don’t happen often and are less likely to happen if you keep an eye on things all the time.
If you miss an update and suddenly have to jump multiple versions, it can cause problems.
Only use plugins that have a large user base and appear to be in active development
A big contributor to version compatibility issues is plugins that are no longer in development.
If a project is no longer releasing new versions, it’s only a matter of time before a new update to the WordPress core introduces some kind of incompatibility issue.
This is even more likely if the plugin code is poorly written, which is often the case with unused and underdeveloped plugins.
A large user base helps ensure that the plugin continues to develop.
Even if the original developer decides to leave the project, a large user base increases the likelihood that someone else will take over and continue to make updates and add new features.
Also, almost all plugins have bugs at some point. If a project is still in active development, you have a way to report the bug and it may be fixed in a future release.
Even if it doesn’t get fixed, a large user base increases the chances that you’ll be able to find someone who has fixed it or found a workaround or other solution.
Back up your code and repository regularly.
This should be old news by now, but too many people don’t properly back up their WordPress content or theme files. Sometimes things go wrong – it’s best to have things backed up.
Also, if you are properly backed up and secure, you can stop worrying about updates that could mess up your site. If something goes wrong, you can just roll things back.
(WordPress itself reminds you to backup your site before updating things, but so many people just skip over these warnings.)
Don’t host your own videos (unless you really, really want to)
Just because WordPress allows you to upload and embed videos doesn’t mean you should.
Videos use up a lot of storage space and bandwidth, so you’ll quickly find the capabilities of your hosting plan if you start uploading videos on a regular basis.
Beyond that, do you really want to convert your video to different sizes and resolutions so that it works equally well on different screen sizes and connection speeds?
Now you’re talking about extra work (to produce different versions) and storing all the different versions on your hosting account.
If you want your videos to be publicly available, the easiest way is to host them on YouTube, and copy in the embed code they provide. If you need your videos to be private (for example, if they are behind a paywall on your site), Vimeo Pro offers excellent video hosting for this purpose.
Hosting your videos on YouTube also provides another point of discovery, another place that can get people to find you who otherwise wouldn’t know about your site.
Read about: How to choose a web hosting package
The article was translated from English to Hebrew.
Written by Adam Michael Wood
Read more: Elementor Pro
