What is the best hosting for WordPress?

What is the best WordPress Hosting

Choosing a hosting service for your WordPress site often seems like an afterthought, as most hosting companies out there seem to be providing the same services at similar prices. Especially if you are a small business and only need the basic hosting package, the difference between hosting providers become even more negligible.

However, as incredibly powerful a platform as it is, WordPress has its quirks when it comes to metrics like site speed. There are several factors that contribute to the speed of a WordPress site including the theme you choose to use, the plugins that you install and the server that the site is being hosted.

Managed WordPress Hosting

As WordPress has become more and more popular, hosting companies have started offering plans that are tailored to WordPress sites. Nowadays pretty much every hosting provider out there is offering Managed WordPress Hosting plans to their customers. The biggest advantage of this is that the servers are optimized specifically for WordPress sites that work on databases rather than static HTML sites. Managed WordPress accounts optimize your site for performance, make sure that your site is secure, and keep regular backups. On top of that they advise you if a specific plugin is having a negative impact.

In short, if your site is developed in WordPress, Managed WordPress Hosting is a no brainer. That is the easy part. But going back to our original question about which hosting provider to choose, making a choice is not as easy.

We work with different clients who have their websites hosted with us or they have their hosting plan from another provider. This diversity has given us a good chance to work with different hosting platforms including WP Engine, Blue Host, Siteground, GoDaddy, DreamHost and HostGator to name a few.

Most popular WordPress hosting platforms

BlueHost

Started in 1996, BlueHost has become the biggest name when it comes to WordPress hosting. They are an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. With Bluehost, you never have to worry about your website being slow even when there is a lot of traffic. Their 24/7 expert support is always there to help when you need it by phone, email, or live chat. They are rated #1 in web hosting for small businesses.

SiteGround

SiteGround is one of the most popular and highest rated hosting provider in the WordPress community. They provide unique in-house WordPress speed and security solutions to make your site as fast and secure as possible. They are known for the best 24/7 support in the industry which is why they’re an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. SiteGround features include automatic upgrades, daily backups built-in WP caching, free CDN, free SSL, one-click staging and GIT version control. They are also one of the few companies offering location specific hosting with 6 data centres in USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

DreamHost

Also founded in 1996, DreamHost is known for making web hosting easy. You get a custom dashboard, 1-click WordPress install, automatic WordPress updates, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth and free SSDs which makes your site 200% faster. DreamHost powers over 1.5 million WordPress blogs and websites. They’re also an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

HostGator

HostGator has become more and more popular in the last 5 years among WordPress users. They host over 10 million domains and is one of the most popular web hosts in the industry. With 1-click WordPress installation, 99.9% up time guarantee, and 24/7 support, it’s a smart choice for every website owner.

Our Choice

While all of the options above are great providers for WordPress hosting, we host our website with SiteGround. After having tried numerous providers and having worked with different hosting dashboards through our clients, we settled on SiteGround for 3 main reasons:

  1. Fast servers
  2. Incredible customer service
  3. Custom SiteGround plugins to improve website performance

SiteGround has very fast and reliable servers that are optimized for WordPress sites and they are maintained on a regular basis to ensure that their performance are top notch. In dealing with their customer service on a daily basis, we can also assure you that their response time is incredibly fast through live chat and they won’t let you go until your problem is solved.

Lastly, they have been adding custom plugins to their WordPress sites to optimize website performance and security including image optimization, frontend optimization as well as security features. These plugins make life very easy as a user, as you can simply turn these features on and off with the flip of a switch.

If you want to learn more about Managed WordPress Hosting, there is a great article by WPBeginner that offers an in-depth look into hosting platforms. WPBeginner is the largest free WordPress resource site that we highly recommend you check out for all your WordPress related questions.

What is website hosting?

One of the most common questions we get is “what is website hosting?”. It is usually followed by “what is the difference between domain name and hosting?”. In this article we will try to clarify these two concepts.

what is website hosting

What is a domain name?

A domain name essentially is the address of your website that people type on the address bar of a web browser. In our case “okanagancreative.ca” is our domain name. This is the simple explanation. If you want to learn more, read on.

Internet is basically a gigantic network of computers connected to each other. To make the identification of each computer easier, each machine is assigned a series of numbers, also known as IP addresses. For computers, it is not a problem to remember these numbers to talk to each other. For us humans, however, it is not very practical to remember numbers that look like 209.11.195.35. You can imagine how impossible this would be in practice if every single website in the world was identified with random numbers like this. Enter domain names. In essence, domain names were invented so that we can associate words with these numbers so that they are a lot easier to remember and a lot more human-friendly.

What is website hosting?

Website hosting is the space where all your website files live. Much like photos or documents that you save on to the hard disk of your computer, your website has lots of files that need to live somewhere. When somebody wants to view your website, these files are pulled up and displayed on their screen. The reason you can’t simply have these files live on your personal computer is that they need to be available 24/7 and served up on demand every time someone types in your website address. In the early days of the Internet, a lot of heavy users set up their own servers. This was fine for a while but in the last decade Internet became a lot more sophisticated, larger and more global than ever. Right now a website that you set up in North America will likely be accessed all around the world at some point. This requires a much more complex network of servers that can pass information to one another in lightning speeds. This is why we have professional hosting companies doing the heavy lifting.

To give you a quick idea of how intricate these systems are, when you have a website published on the Internet using a professional hosting company, your website files actually saved in multiple different server hubs around the world. This helps speed up the delivery of your website to the end user. If your user is located somewhere in Europe, then the  hosting company will use its closest server hubs to that location to display your website.

Do I have to have domain name and hosting?

Yes. All websites on the Internet need hosting to store their files. From a technical perspective, you don’t actually have to have a domain name in order to create a presence on the web. However, you probably don’t want your website to be called 209.11.195.35. So in practical terms, you also have to have a domain name in order to create a cohesive brand experience on the Internet.

Can I buy them separately?

Yes. If you have a particular preference for your hosting company and domain name provider, you can certainly purchase them from different providers. Although, it is usually easier to manage them if they are registered under the same provider. And you can always move your hosting or domain to a different provider later on if that is what you want.

We hope that this article helped to clarify the confusion around the concepts of domain name and hosting. If you have more questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

6 Tips To Make Your WordPress Website More Secure

Make your WordPress website more secure with these 6 tips. You can implement all of these changes by yourself simply by installing plugins that will improve your website security.

It is no secret that WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) that over 30% of all the websites on Internet rely on. The power of this incredible platform comes from the open source nature of it wherein countless talented developers contribute to its development year after year. This strength, however, can also become a weakness if left unattended. In this post we will go over some simple steps you can take to make your WordPress website more secure.

First released in 2003, WordPress started out as a blogging platform that gave all content creators a voice on the Internet. Over the next decade it evolved into much more than a blogging system and into a full on website development platform, all thanks to the talented coders contributing to its development. This open source format has been one of the biggest strengths that pushed WordPress forward and gave it a massive edge over its competitors.

It also made it vulnerable at times to attacks and left it prone to security issues. Here are 6 simple tips that will help you make your WordPress website more secure.

1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Company

Good security starts at the very bottom. Think of your hosting as your first layer of security against potential attacks. There are hundreds of hosting options out there and although it may be tempting to go with the cheapest options possible, make sure that the hosting company you choose offers multiple layers of security. A good way to achieve this is to check whether the company offers WordPress specific hosting services. From a front-end perspective you may not notice any difference between a regular hosting space and WordPress hosting. However, the magic happens in the backend where the servers are optimized for WordPress, not just for security but also for speed.

2. Install a WordPress Security Plugin

It’s a time-consuming work to regularly check your website security for malware and unless you regularly update your knowledge of coding practices you may not even realize you’re looking at a piece of malware written into the code. This is where WordPress security plugins come to the rescue. A good security plugin will take care of many things for you including malware scanning and 24/7 site monitoring. There are a number of plugins out there (both paid and free) that will do this job for you and we would need to dedicate an entire post to go through the pros and cons of each plugin so let’s just mention a few that are worth installing.

Loginizer is a great plugin that protects your website against brute force attacks. It has a free and paid version and depending on your needs, you can use either one. Sucuri is another plugin that is great for malware scanning and security hardening.

3. Install SSL Certificate

Installing an SSL certificate will secure your server-side connection. SSL protects the data in transit by encrypting it. It ensures that the data will make it from your computer to the server without being intercepted or altered. SSL becomes especially important if you are handling personal information on your website such as someone’s credit card number or other personal information. This is why SSL is an absolute necessity for e-commerce sites but it is also an important security measure for any type of website to protect it from attacks and defacing attempts.

Depending on your hosting company, you might be able to get a free SSL certificate from your provider. These days a lot of hosts are starting to offer free SSL, as it is becoming more and more an integral part of any website. Otherwise you can purchase it through your host for an annual fee.

4. Customize your WP-login URL

Every WordPress installation comes with the default www.domain.com/wp-admin login URL to get backend access. While this is easy to remember, it is also a point of vulnerability, as everyone who has worked with WordPress (including hackers) knows that this is the default access page to your website. You can simply change this URL to a custom one of your choice through a plugin such as WPS Hide Login.

5. Limit Login Attempts

Once you change your WordPress login URL, another simple measure you can take is limiting the login attempts to your website backend. This will limit the number of times a user can try different username / password combinations to get into the backend of your website. There a numerous plugins out there that will help you achieve this including WP Limit Login Attempts and Limit Login Attempts Reloaded.

6. Keep your WordPress Version Up to Date

This is probably one of the simplest things you can do to make sure your WordPress website is better protected. WordPress is always coming up with new versions that improve security, usability and other features to make it better and more secure. Depending on your hosting company, you can turn on automatic updates on the server side so that when a new version is available your website will update WordPress automatically. Note that updating WordPress is different from updating your theme and should not be confused. If your website is using a custom theme created by a third party company or developer, it will have its own updates issued periodically. Theme updates can be security related as well but they are different from the core WordPress platform updates.

These are just some of the quick measures that you can implement on your own to make your WordPress site more secure. Remember that the field of website security is constantly evolving and adapting to new trends and technologies. The security plugins you install today also evolve over time and issue their own updates to make your website more secure. Make sure to keep the plugins up to date as well as your WordPress version.