There are a lot of web hosting providers in the market today. This can make it difficult for you to find the one that suits your needs the best. If you are planning on starting a website with WordPress, then you should consider going with WordPress hosting since it is optimized to run WordPress sites.
Here, we will guide you on the things you should be looking for when choosing a WordPress hosting provider for your website. Let’s start with the basics first.
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What Is WordPress Hosting?
WordPress hosting is the web hosting that has been designed to run WordPress sites. It may run on different types of hosting infrastructure. For instance, managed WordPress Hosting usually comes with features that make running a WordPress site easier. With managed WordPress hosting, the service providers will offer managed services such as automatic WordPress updates, automatic backups, and automatic security checks.
Many hosting services also offer a WordPress staging environment that lets you test out changes to your website without having to make changes to the live version of the website. A good service will also offer server-level caching and provide you with access to a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure that your site loads as quickly as possible at various locations.
Things to Look for When Getting WordPress Hosting
If you have decided to start a WordPress website or blog, and now looking to buy WordPress hosting, then you must ensure the following things with your hosting provider:
Strong Support
Whatever can go wrong will go wrong when you’re running a website. That is unfortunately how things seem to go sometimes. That’s why you should look for a hosting provider that offers strong support 24/7, via email, calls, live chat, etc.
Your hosting provider should have a large database of articles that provide advice and recommendations on how to solve commonly encountered issues. They should also be able to help you with things like how to install WordPress plugins and themes.
They should also be able to help you with the technical difficulties that you will encounter. For example, if you need help in installing a theme, that’s something your provider should be able to help you out with. Check the provider’s reviews to see if they have a proven track record for doing these things.
Security Is Important
Software that is up to date is more secure since updates usually patch the bugs which hackers like to take advantage of. Having your hosting provider take care of your updates is a huge plus since you don’t have to worry about this. Most hosting providers offer automatic WordPress updates but sometimes this option is turned off.
Caching
Make sure that you choose a provider that offers automatic updates and the automatic update option is turned on. Your provider should also be keeping an eye out for malicious plugins and they should have strong server-level security in place. If your service provider isn’t hosting your site on a secure server, your site will always remain vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Thus, you must always check the credibility and security standards of the service provider. If you are getting a free SSL certificate, that is a plus point.
Your provider should definitely have a caching solution in place to ensure that your website loads as quickly as possible. Caching essentially stores a copy of your website. This ensures that a copy of your website is already generated when a user tries to access it. With caching in place, your server doesn’t have to generate portions of your website, every time a user tries to access it. This is important since people can be impatient and tend to leave sites that take a while to load.
Website speed is very crucial today as Google considers it as a ranking factor and penalized the slow loading websites. Moreover, if your site loads slow, the visitors will leave it and move to your competitors.
Regular Backups
In the event that something goes wrong with your website or that your website server’s hard drive crashes, it’s important to have a backups system in place.
In today’s era, the cyberattacks have become the norm despite following the best security practices. What will you do if your website is hacked and all the data is erased? In other cases, there might be some accidental deletion of data or any other issue with the theme or plugin you installed. These things can result in permanent loss of data, forcing you to start from scratch.
That is the reason you should ensure that your website is backed up on a regular basis. When you have backups, you can quickly revert to the backup corresponding to the last time your website worked.
You should have the ability to create backups on-demand, and they should also be done on a scheduled basis. This will ensure that your website is never detrimentally affected by errors that occur.
Scalability
In the beginning, your site will have lesser visitors, but with the growth, the traffic will increase. The hosting plan that you have chosen today might not be feasible after some time due to a hike in traffic. So, when traffic grows, you should be able to change your hosting plan whenever required. Your hosting provider must not be a constraint to this.
Wrapping Up
There are many hosting options available. WordPress hosting is a great choice if you will be hosting a WordPress website. This type of hosting is optimized for WordPress websites and takes some of the hassles out of managing a website. You should consider factors like how strong a provider’s customer support is, the type of security offered. If caching is offered and if backups are provided when looking for the best WordPress hosting provider.
We know that finding great hosting can be difficult,. However, it takes some time to go through these tips and you’ll be well on your way to finding the right provider for you.
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