In 2020, global ad spending will increase by 4% to $605 billion. It means more businesses are going to get online and start the promotion of their website. While this sounds like a plan for many, it’s not as straight forward as it may seem.
Launching a business is not as easy as it sounds. While anyone can create a WordPress-based website, taking the first step is often the most challenging part.
Some of the things you’ll probably ask yourself initially:
- Can I host my own website?
- What hosting infrastructure to use?
- Will this hosting perform effectively?
- Will I be able to focus on my business, or will I need to manage the hosting infrastructure as well?
To save you from all of these questions, we decided to provide a simple yet practical guide for web hosting in 2020.
Let’s get started with the basics.
Table of Contents
What is Web Hosting and Why Do You Need It:
You plan to launch your website online. Now, where will you host it? A hosting provider lets you host your website online so that other users can visit it and get relevant information. Just like you are visiting this website and reading this blog, which is hosted by TheWPHelp.
Difference: Domain vs. Hosting
Another thing to note is the difference between a domain and hosting. Consider a domain as your hosting address. For example, facebook.com is a domain name. It is the address of the social media app that you launch to talk to your friends. Its data center is also located in the US. You use the brand name facebook.com to access it.
Even if you don’t have the domain name, you can still access the website through its IP address. The reason domain names were used was because they were user-friendly. Not everyone can remember a 16 digit IP address.
PS: This is the IP address of the Facebook server – if you ever forget the domain name.
Facebook.com > IP: https://176.13.69.63 (It doesn’t work on the browser).
Types of Web Hosting for WordPress
But, website hosting is not of a single type. Here are the types of hosting solutions available to cater to the masses.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most cost-effective hosting solution. But the only problem is that your website will share resources with hundreds of other websites on your web server.
Advantages
– Easy to use
– Cost-efficient
– No management needed
Disadvantages
– Unreliable – Web hosting company can shut down your website without warning if it witnesses a traffic surge
– Limited – You cannot go above the designated bandwidth
– Slow performance
Dedicated Hosting
Then, we have a dedicated hosting solution. On a dedicated host, you have a whole server just for your websites. No more sharing resources and bandwidth with other websites.
Advantages
– Faster performance
– Reliable
– Trusted
Disadvantages
– High cost
– Hard to manage – you may need a sysadmin
– Adding resources is time-consuming
VPS Hosting
A virtual private server (VPS) is similar to a dedicated host. But instead of a single dedicated server available to you, now you have a virtual server. It means you can scale your server as per your needs. If you need more RAM, that can be arranged within minutes.
Advantages
– Faster performance
– Reliable hosting
– Cost-efficient
Disadvantages
– Hard to manage
– Limited to a single server
Managed Hosting
To tackle the problems faced in all other hosting solutions, technologists came up with another hosting solution called the managed hosting solution. Since servers are hard to manage, and a layperson alone can’t install all the relevant apps needed to make a website live. That’s where a managed hosting solution comes in.
Advantages
– Cost-effective
– Performance focused
– Easy to manage
– Scalable hosting
– Reliable support
– Security with SSL and CDN
– Control panel so that anyone can easily manage their website with point-and-click options
How to Choose the Best Hosting Infrastructure?
Now that you are familiar with different types of hosting infrastructure, it is time to learn about various factors that you should take into account while searching for a web hosting solution.
Performance:
Web hosting should be fast. If you have questions about the performance of a web host, check its reviews. You can also visit some of the websites it hosts to check how fast they load.
Bandwidth:
It should offer unlimited bandwidth if you are using a shared hosting solution. If you are looking for a VPS hosting solution, then check the RAM, Storage, and Bandwidth.
In the above image, taken from Vultr Cloud compute page, the company offers 0.50TB bandwidth for a server of $3.5/m. This is fine because it can easily handle around 50,000 users on your website each month.
Cost:
As you can see in the above image, the prices of most servers are highly affordable. That’s why the hosting solution you choose must be within your budget. Most bloggers and affiliate websites can shed as much as $30 per month on web hosting. On the other hand, e-commerce stores can spend even more, ranging from $200 to $500.
Control Options:
Will you be managing the web hosting service through the command line or will you get a control panel? Most shared hosting solutions offer Cpanel. However, if you are using a VPS or a managed server, you will probably get a control panel like Cloudways, Plesk, GridPane, and many others. The WordPress register is also a good example.Remember to check their prices and reviews before you settle for one.
Security:
The hosting solution should offer SSL, CDN, IPWhitelisting feature, 2FA authentication so that site owners can secure their websites from DDoS attacks, hacking attempts, and eavesdroppers.
Uptime:
There is an excellent tool available in the market that you can use to find the uptime of your websites. The uptime tool, called Cloud Harmony, monitors the performance of all top cloud providers. You can check their uptime, performance, and failure rate. This is one of the best ways to determine which site services will suit you best.
Screengrab of Cloudharmony
How to Track Hosting Performance?
The best way to track website performance is to check it through multiple browsers and devices. Since that will be too difficult to arrange. Here are some free tools that you can use:
– Pingdom: Allows you to test the performance of a website from multiple servers in the US, UK. Australia and Europe
– GTMetrix: Provides a holistic report about the website’s speed, errors, usability issues, and much more
– Google Page Speed test: Let’s site owners know the speed of their website and how to resolve issues that might be a hurdle in page performance
Maintenance of WordPress Hosting
No matter what type of hosting solution you choose, there are chances that your site will require maintenance once in a while. So, what is the solution for that? There are many solutions that the website hosting support teams won’t handle. They will only tell you to get the issue sorted from your developer.
Think!
If you are the only person on the team, how will you get these issues solved? That’s where WordPress maintenance service providers like The WPHelp comes in.
Whether your website is slow, having issues, breaking at some point, or simply refusing to work, The WPHelp can take care of it all.
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Hey Maazia, Loved reading such an informative post on WordPress hosting. You have done deep research on such a hosting services provider. Keep writing and posting!