How To Choose The Best WordPress Web Host For Beginners

Saturday, March 16th, 2024
WordPress is now synonymous when needing a personal, corporate or a news type of website. It is now the Internet’s preferred (CMS) content management system. Because of this, what’s now available are a variety of WordPress specific hosting services, to best cater to this platform.

There are some however who think that WordPress is just a simple journal or blogging platform, where new college students write posts about their day, or post images of the food they had for lunch.

But now, it’s become much more than that, it’s evolved into the most popular platform for housing a website.

What WordPress offers is a vast library of thousands of free and paid themes in every imaginable category or niche, along with over 50,000+ plug-ins.

WordPress is now the core foundational platform, that drive millions of websites for businesses.

A Complete Online Platform

WordPress now provides an online presence for the personal blogger, affiliate marketer, small businesses and professional entities such as dentists, as well as accommodating Fortune 500 companies and mass-media brands.

So if you’re wanting to own a website or a blog of your own, and don’t know or can’t be bothered to do computer coding from scratch, then consider a WordPress platform, as it’s your most logical and easiest solution.

The best hosting for your WordPress blog

Choosing The Best WordPress Hosting

Almost every webhost now offers a WordPress compliant package, be it a managed or an optimized WordPress site that’s preinstalled.

This so you won’t have to download WordPress on your own, and then upload it to the host yourself.

Depending on the WordPress specific webhost, what’s usually offered are a huge variety of user friendly plug and play features, such as page caching, automatic data backups, and automated WordPress version updates.

What some WordPress specific managed webhosts also now offers, is a content writing platform, so you can write and test your posts and pages before you publish it live.

Most also come with automatic malware detection, and enhanced security to protect your site from intruders.

The Digital Path Your WordPress Blog Takes

When you go on the Internet and call up a website, the data on the site, which includes the text, images or video, can take a whirlwind electronic tour, for it to finally display on your device.

A tour that travels from the original users computer from home, to the server that hosts the domain of that site, which can physically be located anywhere in the world.

The server searches for, and retrieves the exact information that’s been ordered, and then sends it back to your computer to fulfill that request. Seems like a lot of work for a few keystrokes.

The computer code that’s on the site itself, that describes how the page should be loaded, then makes it’s way back to the end users browser.

The instructions can include fetching of all of the particulars on the web page, which can usually require the translation of yet more messages.

Each of these simple looking messages, involves complicated interconnected hardware and software, which is often likely outdated, poorly designed, or clogged and congested.

The route back to your computer at home, goes through a variety of physical infrastructures, which begins with high-speed wires that connects to the backbone of the Web’s architecture.

Its transmission can travel through fiber optic networks, wireless signals, or at one time cables and phone lines, which then eventually reaches its destination, and delivers the requested website to its intended end user.

The best hosting for your WordPress blog

The Need For Faster Internet Speed

Performance and speed issues are always paramount, and can occur or potentially lag anywhere along this process of transmission. The servers themselves, which hosts the website might just be dog slow.

5 Reasons Why The Internet Is Slow

1.) – The end users computer might be too old, or may not be properly equipped to handle the code efficiently.
2.) – The Internet Service Provider, might be experiencing local delivery issues.
3.) – The webpage code on the server might have too many errors, and thus too difficult to process.
4.) – The servers themselves, at times cannot handle the constantly updating operating systems or Internet browsers, that runs a computer.
5.) – The data, the back and forth negotiation of sending the information, and then determining whether it’s even arrived, is usually governed by protocols designed decades ago. Most of these protocols, weren’t developed for the level of lightening speed interactivity that’s used by today’s modern ultra fast and complicated Web applications.

Give It To Me Now

As a result, users can become extremely impatient and fickle, when it comes to the slightest delay in receiving data from the Internet.

A recent study showed, that even a delay of just half a second when calling up a webpage, can result in the users abandoning that site.

When browsing the Internet, users now expect web pages to load on their computer screen, as if they were flicking channels back and forth on their TV using a remote.

Page Load Speed And Web Hosting Services

What we all want, is to get everything in life instantly and right now, without wanting to wait for it. The same goes when using the Internet.

No one wants to wait, once searching on their computer or mobile phone, as we’ll get upset once a webpage doesn’t load fast.

As a result, the load speed of a website becomes extremely critical for the blog owner.

If a blog loads in a split-second, the user will then most likely decide to stick around and read the content.

Page load speed, is also an important factor when it comes to SEO.

How fast your blog loads, depends on plenty of factors. Web hosting is just one of them, but it’s a key factor.

There are a variety of reasons why a webhost server, can effect the page load speed of a blog page.

The best hosting for your WordPress blog

The Need For Fast Website Hosting

Once you open a web page, you’re trying to get access to some specific information, files or a program, that’s located on the server of that blog site.

If that server happens to be slow, if the page you’re trying to retrieve takes a few seconds longer to load, in Internet time that’s an eternity.

What the remote server has to do is perform 3 separate functions, to retrieve a particular site.

1.) – It needs to read, understand and execute the code
2.) – It needs to crunch the database queries, and
3.) – It needs to send the files back to the end user, all this in a split-second

How A Web Host Can Impact Page Load Speed

The need becomes critical, that you find the right hosting provider, that has the fastest web page load times.

If you have a basic understanding of how a computer works, a web host server operates in a similar way, when it comes to page load times.

Hard drive: A SSD (Solid State Drive), unlike a regular hard drive has faster more accurate load speeds.

If the web host server uses a SSD hard drive, your blog will load a lot faster.

Resources: Before choosing a hosting package, the resources it has is an important factor to consider.

If you choose a dedicated server or a VPS server, your blog doesn’t need to “fight” with the other blogs for resources, such as RAM and processor speed.

With more horsepower on the server, such as process and memory power, the server can then execute requests a lot faster, and provide lightening quick page loads.

Page Load Speed Or Faster Hosting

As far as page load speed goes, a premium hosting plan can be advantageous, especially for blogs that gets a lot of traffic.

However, the impact won’t be that noticeable, if your blog web pages take too long to load.

If this is the case, make sure that you choose a better hosting package.

Code optimization usually isn’t enough, if you’re wanting faster page load speeds. Your site needs a faster server to get better performance, rather than opting for a more expensive hosting package.

Your site won’t load any quicker, if you have a slow web host, or poor coding. If you have a huge blog with plenty of traffic, what’s recommended is choosing a dedicated server.

What’s also recommended is a CDN service, that will speed up your website.

If you have a site that uses plenty of rich graphics or big images, then also consider a CDN.

What Is A CDN (Content Delivery Network)

What a CDN does is it mitigates latency, meaning it serves the content of your blog from a server that’s closest to where that end user is located.

Say for instance, that your blog is on a server that’s somewhere in the USA, but you are targeting users who are in Europe or Asia.

What results is significant latency, as the content needs to make multiple “hops” to reach those readers around the world.

But if the same content is readily available on servers that are already situated in Europe or Asia, then the content delivery is much faster.

A CDN is a distributed network of web servers around the globe, which provides faster delivery of your web content, which results in lightening quick page load times.

The original content that’s on the server in the USA, is copied throughout the CDN’s network, and placed on their servers around the globe.

This way your end-users, will be delivered the requested blog content from a server that’s closest to them.

This also significantly reduces the load time of the original server, because the retrieval of the content from that server becomes significantly lower.

The best hosting for your WordPress blog

What Is An SSL Certificate And Why You Need One

The wild wild west that is the Internet needs a sheriff. The security of a website is an extremely important factor for visitors coming to your domain address. What they need is to be assured they can virtually trust and build a bond with you.

This is where SSL (Secured Socket Layer) certificates come in. This certificate is a piece of data, that digitally provides a cryptographic key on the details of your site proving it’s safe for the end user.

Every website/organization should have an SSL certificate on their site. This guarantees it initiates a secure session with the various Internet browsers.

After it’s installed on a website, the application protocol then changes from HTTP to HTTPS, along with adding a padlock or a green bar, depending on the browser.

An SSL Certificate Gives You Credibility
What installing an SSL certificate on your website does, is it indicates you care about data security and the safety of the visitors who comes to your site.

To get SSL certified, your website needs to go through a verification process by governing authorities, that performs several authenticity checks before the certificate is issued.

It Gives You Data Integrity
Once you have SSL certification, the data becomes encrypted, and the files won’t corrupt once transferred. The site also becomes protected from malicious attacks.

What it does is it assures that the information only reaches the intended end user, and not intercepted by a lurking third party.

Google And SSL
SSL certification is also a key parameter, when it comes to Google SEO.

The majority of the organic listings that now appears the first page of Google, are mostly HTTPS certified.

What an SSL certificate assures is increased customer confidence, which increases conversions, which is the ultimate goal of any website.

Finding The Best WordPress Web Hosting

Finding a good web hosting service, is the online equivalent to finding a good place to live. You can rent a one room apartment or choose to live in a securely gated fully serviced community.

Choosing to rent a cheap yet affordable shared housing complex downtown, is similar to renting a cheap web hosting service.

The most affordable web hosting service on the Internet, is shared hosting.

You’ve seen them around, where you can park your domain name and blog for pennies, where some packages start at $2.00 or less per month.

This is similar to living in a one room shared bungalow with other people you don’t know.

When it comes to shared housing, they’re cheap because you live in the same building, share the same resources and the amenities with the other tenants in the apartment complex.

Shared hosting that’s cheap, what you’re sharing are the same server resources, the same maintenance and the operating costs, with usually thousands of other websites.

These one room apartments, are managed by property managers that look after the entire property, which can become too overwhelming for them.

Similarly, shared hosting is managed by a hosting provider, that needs to look after a massive number of other websites.

Living in a shared one room apartment, has its downsides.

You could have noisy neighbors who party all night, or they use up all the hot water.

With shared hosting, you also have plenty of neighbors, as you share the server with numerous other websites.

When sharing your server, your website can be effected by the poor behavior of these other websites, which can result in your website slowing down or completely shutting down.

For instance, say that a website that you’re sharing a server with, suddenly has a huge spike in traffic, and uses up all the resources.

This will affect your website, and may even cause it to crash, without no fault of your own.

Renting an apartment or renting a shared server, are also both limited in space. It comes down to you get what you pay for.

VPS Web Hosting Is Similar To Renting A Townhouse

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is comparable to renting a townhouse.

Living in a townhouse, usually means better management and fewer neighbors, which gives you more privacy.

You might even have your own backyard, and a rooftop patio.

Similarly, a virtual private server or VPS, you share your website with fewer websites, than you would if you had shared hosting.

You have more privacy with VPS hosting, as you reside on your own virtual private partition on the server.

The best hosting for your WordPress blog

So your site, is separated from the other websites. You’re also given full root access, your own operating system that you can reboot yourself, if the server happens to go down.

Like a townhouse, there’s more room, more privacy, as VPS hosting has a lot more features, resources and better management, than shared hosting does.

Living in a townhouse is better, but you’re still sharing the same property, the walls, the plumbing and the electrical with others, which means you can still be affected by bad neighbors.

With VPS hosting, you’re still sharing the same hardware assets, which means you can still potentially become affected by the poor behavior of other websites.

When living in a townhouse, you’re required to do all the maintenance inside the home.

With VPS hosting, you need to have some technical knowledge to manage the VPS server.

If you don’t have the technical knowledge, then you’ll need to hire someone, or hire the hosting provider themselves to manage it for you, which can become costly.

A Dedicated Server Is Similar To Living In A House

Dedicated hosting, is similar to owning and living in your own house. The greatest benefit, is that you have the house all to yourself and your family.

This gives you complete privacy, since you’re not sharing the walls, amenities or the property resources with anyone else.

Having a dedicated server means it’s just your website, that’s hosted on the server.

Similar to being able to add to your house or property such as a porch, you can also scale up your dedicated server, as big as your budget can afford.

Although the room and the privacy is nice, living in a house can become more expensive than living in an apartment or a townhouse, as the repairs and maintenance can become expensive.

Once you incur costs such as plumbing and electrical repairs, insurance, renovations and the mortgage, since you’re responsible for the entire cost it can add up.

With dedicated hosting, it’s also more expensive than shared or VPS hosting. You’re responsible for managing the server, and need the technical knowledge to do so, or you need to hire someone.

Come Stay At The Luxury Resort

Almost everyone by now, has heard of cloud hosting. Once you host your blog on a cloud server, what you have is full access to an entire team of servers on the cloud hosting network, as they’re all connected to one another.

The servers work in tandem, so if your site suddenly gets busy, similar to a CDN, this heavy load is distributed to the other connected servers in the cloud.

This is unlike a shared server, which needs to burden the entire load.

What your blog on the cloud has access to, is the entire network of multiple connected servers, that are available to you, under the cloud web hosting platform.

What this virtually guarantees is, that your blog will never be offline, while having unlimited processing power.

If your blog happens to get a sudden spike in traffic from advertising, or becomes increasing popular from organic traffic, the cloud servers will accommodate this increase in traffic, by adjusting the load accordingly.

If the demand in traffic from your blog happens to decrease, the cloud server then gears itself down as well, to match the lower load.

Also, when it comes to shared, VPS or dedicated server hosting, what you pay is a fixed monthly or yearly rate.

For cloud hosting, there are options from some companies where you can just “pay as you go” for the usage, much like how you’re billed for your electric or hot water usage.

The best hosting for your WordPress blog

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