WordPress Hosting Guide: What to Consider Beforehand?
Did you know that WordPress is the world’s most popular Content Management System (CMS)? It is not just a platform where you can write blogs and share your ideas, but there are numerous websites around the globe utilizing WordPress as Content Management System. It is an open source venture and it is created for the community. You can simply create a website for free by using free available templates and themes, but, it does have limitations. You can buy a domain and choose a host for your website as well and you can customize your website by using paid themes. So let us have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of WordPress as CMS. We will also talk about the hosting for WP, we will look at different types of hosting and factors affecting and list of five hosting servers for WP.
Advantages and Disadvantages
This platform has made website creation a child’s play. You don’t require knowledge of PHP or HTML in contrast to Typo3 or Drupal. It is a giant community of users and it allows you to be a part of the larger discussion board. The principal reason why WP is considered as a CMS is the plugins available on the WP website. Most important plugins are offered free to the users. There are several explicit templates available for free which you can use in your website to change its appearance. You can avail extended functionalities in the menu management. You can simply customize the forms by adding or removing categories, descriptions etc.
Though you can modify the look of your website by choosing templates, but you can’t remove some fields in the forms that requires the knowledge of PHP. The graphics offered are much alike and hence to create a website with unique websites, you will require the knowledge of CSS and HTML. Although there are thousands of plugins available, they aren’t efficient because most of them perform the same operation just offered by different developer. The security of the script and applications is of subpar level. Sometimes creating tables and graphics format is complicated than in other applications.
Choosing WordPress Hosting Plan Guide
Opting for the appropriate host for your WP website can be a one heck of a job as there are countless hosts ready to serve you. At times it can leave you in a perplexed situation of whether to decide the costly one or cheap one. Well, it is all up to you, but here are some tips that you can remember while deciding the host for your website.
First question pops up is whether to go for Windows based or Linux based hosting?
The universe of web hosting is dominated by Linux. You will face some inevitable configuration challenges while using Windows based hosting. There are four types of web hosting, dedicated web hosting, VPS web hosting, shared web hosting and free web hosting.
Dedicated web hosting – as the name suggests, is dedicated only for your website. It is most costly among the all and its price starts from $100 to thousands of dollars, depending on the processing power of your server, bandwidth and storage space. It is useful if you have thousands of visitors engaging in your website with some applications and you don’t want them to experience the nightmare of waiting for the website or apps to load, then this hosting plan is the best choice for your online businesses to run smoothly.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) web hosting – works same as that of a dedicated server, but you will get very low level access to all the servers, administration tools and configuration options. You will also be sharing your server at a small scale with other users, hence, you won’t be able to utilize the whole resources but a part of it. You won’t have access to full processing power of the server as it is shared. It is quite cheap, $15-20/month to $100 tops, depending on the power of the server. It is a great option for people with small or medium size business who have around thousands of visitors per month on website, but don’t have to process in some on website application.
Shared web hosting – platform is the cheapest and of prime importance for the beginners. Shared hosting starts from $5 to $10/month. In shared hosting server, you are sharing resources like VPS server, but, unlike VPS you don’t have the luxury of dedicated amount of processing power. It is the least powerful among all.
Free web hosting – is a cost-free hosting plan. However there’s some limitation on your hosting storage, traffic, memory and bandwidth allowed. In recent years, free hosting had became more popular for users who seek hosting for their personal site, with the ability to upgrade to premium paid plan if needed, making this hosting plan more flexible for blogger who just want to find a simple place to host their site other than free builder hosting platform such as blogger.com or wordpress.com.
Here are five hosting that WordPress users preferred
HostGator – One of the popular shared web hosting with more than 9 million hosted websites worldwide. It has proven itself to be the clever choice for its user by facilitating them with single click WP installation, 24/7 support and 99.99% uptime guaranteed.
BlueHost – Being one of the twenty largest web hosts, the Bluehost manages over 1.9 million domains with the support of its sister companies. The company is owned by Endurance International Group. Its sister companies are iPage, FastDomain and HostMonster. Their expert support is 24/7 available at your disposal and hence you don’t need to worry about the website getting slow due to traffic. The support is available via phone, email and live chat. It is also officially recommended host provider by WP.
Site Ground – They are one of the top rated host with superfast sites. The SiteGround manages more than 500,000 domains on its server. They also facilitate free setup and transfer and daily automatic backup. It offers features like automatic upgrades, one-click staging, GIT version control, CDN and integral WordPress caching. They have 24/7 expert service available for their customers.
DreamHost – One of the easiest host, DreamHost which has been around for almost two decades. It is LA based host provider’s USP is its security provision. It has an extensive range of domain management tools. It has some attractive cloud storage plans, unlimited data transfer is offered per month. They also offer some generous money back guarantee.
iPage – It has a robust support for third party applications. It has both Linux and Windows based web hosting. It promises unlimited bandwidth, disk space and email accounts. It also offers dedicated and VPS web hosting server hosting choice.
Final Conclusion
When comes to choosing the right hosting for WordPress website, everyone have different opinions, whether you should go for the high budget hosting like dedicated server or start with cost effective hosting such as shared or free hosting. My suggestion would be go for dedicated hosting if you’re going to run an eCommerce online business, doesn’t matter if you’re just starting up and no traffic yet. It is better to prepare for your up and coming traffic flood, of course you might need to suffer some lost on hosting cost in between months. For personal WordPress website, you should choose shared hosting that have the options of unlimited sites and traffic plan.