What is website hosting? How a WordPress hosting is different from website hosting? Why a good hosting is important for a good website? This blog explains it all.
I have been developing websites for more than 15 years now and in these all years I have had experience with many website hosting companies. As a new website guy I obviously started with searching the cheapest host available on Google. I remember in year 2007 there were not much options for the hosting like we all have today, this was actually a good thing at that time because a small number of choices makes the decision making thing fast. Yahoo was still alive in those times and there were options to subscribe to a website hosting through them so I decided to proceed with it since it was the cheapest option.
The surprise here is that the hosting I opted for worked really well but there is a catch; the timing of the website launch matters, it definitely turn the results around when we compare that hosting with the current time. Websites were just starting to take shape from the skeleton to a well dressed style like remember WEB 2.0. WordPress was still an alien thing for a new website designer like me which fascinated me from head to toe when I created my first WordPress website.
In the current web world, websites are more focused towards the usability since it provides website owners much sought Google results. The primary criteria for those results lie in the website’s load speed and this is where you need a good hosting for your website. Simply ignoring this only thing will have deeper affects to your business leads or online sales you make from your web presence.
We start are with the questions we have raised at the start. So..
What is website hosting?
In simple words, website hosting can be compared to a rented house or office for which you pay a fixed monthly/annually rent to live or work; similarly website hosting is where your website’s files like stylesheets, javascripts, HTML and other type of files resides. A house or office can be found on a location in a city or state and with website hosting there are servers which are located in different origins. These servers are just like a computer but with additional resources to handle large requests or store large data like in lots of terabytes.
How does a website hosting work?
It all starts with an IP address. It is a like an address of your house or office where a visitor can reach to meet you. In the case of website IP address is where your website’s visitors will reach to see your website on their web browser. When we buy a new domain name the next step is to connect it with an IP address. Here comes the role of a website hosting provider. A website hosting provider are large companies having servers in place to host files for many and many websites. These computers serve them on request of a visitor of your website.
Once you subscribe to one of the plans offered by the numerous website hosting companies out there. They will help you connect your domain name with their server’s IP address. Mostly but not all hosting provider give you access to your own control panel. Control panel is a settings panel where you can manage emails, databases and many other things related to your website.
What is WordPress hosting?
Different websites can have different type of requirements. When it comes to WordPress it has several requirements which are best taken into account when opting for a new hosting.
I assume that you are already aware about what is WordPress and how it works. So we move forward to our topic why it is important to choose best WordPress hosting. Here I am listing a list of basic needs of a WordPress hosting environment:
- Web server: Nginx or Apache with mod-rewrite module
- PHP: Version 7.4 or higher
- Disk Space: 1 GB minimum
- Database: MySQL 5.015 or higher (An alternative is MariaDB, version 10.1 or higher)
- RAM: at least 512MB
- CPU: at least 1.0 GHz
- Free or paid SSL
All of our WordPress website maintenance plans come with free website hosting fulfilling all the needs mentioned above? Choose your plan
What’s the difference between web hosting and WordPress hosting?
We hosting in in general is an umbrella under which all kind of hosting comes including WordPress, Cloud, VPS etc. whereas when we talk about the WordPress hosting, it is a special environment built to leverage additional potential of the hosting server.
What are the benefits of a WordPress hosting?
- Improved security. Security was and will always be an important aspect for any website. WordPress hosting offer servers which are equipped against WordPress-specific threats alongside.
- Better performance. WordPress CMS capabilities are endless and using it to it’s full extent can make it resource hungry. A dedicated WordPress hosting fulfils all the resources demand with it’s specially built configured servers.
- Built in functionality/plugins. People installing a WordPress website for the first time usually worries about the page load speed and due to this they install several plugins to improve the loading speed. With a special WordPress hosting you won’t need to use as many plugins, because performance, security, and caching will all be optimized by the host..
- SSL certificates. Most managed WordPress hosting plans allow you to add an SSL certificate to your site in a couple of clicks, at no extra charge.
- Exclusive support. When you opt for a focused WordPress hosting service, you’ll be able to access dedicated customer support services, experts in resolving WordPress issues.
Why a good hosting is important for a good website?
Hey! don’t get me wrong, I know that every website is a good website for it’s owner 😉 What I mean here is about the websites which are actually good at fetching leads and online sales for you. Everybody wants to earn in this unicorns and startups wave running around the world.
People do make a lot of plans about their website decision, hire the most talented freelancer or a top notch agency to get their website sky rocket launch. But the thing many not all of them ignore is to choose a good hosting for their beloved website.
A bad hosting can ruin all your plans about the startup you were dreaming, planning and projecting to VCs’. By bad hosting here, I mean some really bad hosting companies which sells their plans at par major hosting providers but never stand behind their services.
According to my experience with building themes, plugins and websites for my hundreds of clients, here are some of the hosting provider I would like to recommend. This link includes hosting services for every size of the websites.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, choosing a great hosting for your website is the best investment you can do for the success of your business website. We also recommend opting for a maintenance service for your WordPress website. It will help you keep it always up to date, backed up security, up and working always. Check our website maintenance plans.
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