Monthly ArchivesSeptember 2022

Let’s start from the beginning. If you want your own website, you’ll need a web host.

A web host provides the storage and access your website needs to be successful. For example, your site and all of its files live on a server which your web host manages for you. When people visit your website, they want to see these files. The server sends site visitors the requested files — and that’s how your website is viewed by the general online community.

If you’re a new website owner, it can be overwhelming and confusing to figure out which type of web hosting is right for you. But when it comes to web hosting, it’s not one size fits all. There are many different options for you to choose from, whether you have a small business, a new blog, or a large online store. Here are a few different types of web hosting you can get.

• Managed web hosting
• Shared web hosting
• VPS web hosting
• Cloud web hosting
• WordPress hosting

Some cost more, some cost less, and they all offer different features. If you are not sure which would be right for you, we will cover all of them in detail below. It’s important to understand each of the options, as the decision can sometimes be harder to make than you think. But don’t worry, we’ll break it all down in an easy to understand manner.

Choosing the type of web hosting is only the beginning. It doesn’t end there. In fact, there are many more things that go into web hosting expenses.

• Domain name
• SSL certificate
• Extensions and plugins (there are a lot of these)
• Themes
• Ecommerce features
• Marketing tools

As you can see, there are a LOT more things for you to pick and choose. Lucky for you, some of the items on this list can be obtained for free — and sometimes free versions can be better than paid.

Different Types of Web Hosting Cost Differently

Now let’s go into more detail on the different types of web hosting and their costs. Keep in mind that prices may change depending on when you read this.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting by definition is web hosting, where a service provider leases dedicated servers and associated hardware to a single customer and manages those systems on the customer’s behalf.

With managed hosting, you can rent a dedicated server for yourself where you get administrative access but all the configuration, setups, technical support, patch management, and monitoring, are applied by your service provider. This is a big benefit if you are not a developer or don’t have time to work on all of this yourself.

You can expect the following from a managed hosting provider:

• Backup and disaster recovery — this is always good to have as you never know what can happen to your site
• Load balancing
• Security services, such as vulnerability scans and intrusion detection
• Physical security measures for safeguarding data centers
• Support for resolving technical issues — in most cases, hosting companies have their own 24/7 support and security team

Managed hosting can cost anywhere from $80-$500 per month. The cost of managed hosting depends on bandwidth, storage space, and RAM. This makes managed hosting on a dedicated server ideal for high traffic sites that need consistent uptime and fast speed.

The biggest benefit of managed hosting is that you don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of your website. Your host will do that for you, so you can focus on your website and your business. For example, a managed hosting provider will ensure your site is secure and loads quickly, no matter how much traffic you encounter.

We should quickly mention there are also unmanaged servers. They work almost the same as managed servers, but as the word implies, you do everything for yourself. This is not recommended for anyone without at least intermediate knowledge of software management and a team that’s ready to help.

But exactly what is shared hosting? Shared hosting allows multiple websites to utilize a single server. Usually, you will have no idea who or what website is sharing their resources with you. Each customer will usually have a limit on the total amount of server resources they can use, but this is limited by the hosting package. Bluehost is an example of a shared hosting provider. GoDaddy also offers shared hosting plans.

There are a few advantages of shared hosting such as:

• It is by far the cheapest hosting option you’ll find.
• Shared hosting is a great way to start your hosting journey as you can usually upgrade your package over time.
• Shared hosting more often than not comes with equipped cPanel, which makes it easier to manage your site.
• As with managed hosting, there is NO technical maintenance needed to be done from your side — it is usually covered by the hosting company.

Put simply, if you don’t have enough resources to get something more expensive or dont have the knowledge or time to manage your own server all the time, shared hosting can be great for you. And again you can always just upgrade once you think you are ready.

There are also obvious downsides to shared hosting as well:

• The load time is noticeably slower than dedicated servers.
• Server can become overburdened by all the other sites that are sharing the server.
• The bigger your site becomes, the more resources it needs, which means you are burdening the server more and more and you will notice your site perform worse and worse.
• You never truly know who your neighbor is — it is rare but still a possibility that other sites pose a risk to your own.
• There is a noticeable lack of customization options to truly get the highest level of performance and experience you would want out of your site.

If you are someone who is just getting started, shared hosting could be a better fit for you.

VPS Hosting

Also known as virtual private server hosting, this type of hosting falls between shared and dedicated hosting. It is designed for anyone that has surpassed the limitations of a shared hosting server and wants no concerns over other clients on the server.

This is a good solution if you are not ready for your own dedicated server but also want more out of your website. VPS hosting is designed in mind to combine the features of both shared and dedicated hosting.

VPS hosting uses virtual technology called hypervisor to split a single server into multiple independent spaces, also known as virtual machines. Each virtual machine has its own operating system and infrastructure so you feel like you have your own dedicated server, but you are still sharing resources with all others on the server.

What this means is that all the users are allowed to configure and manage their sites independently, as with a dedicated server, but at a noticeably lower cost. This also offers much better performance and scalability than shared hosting. Additionally, it offers all the needs for growth without needing to “upgrade” to a dedicated server.

What also needs to be taken into consideration is that VPS servers are much more secure than the shared hosting counterpart. With its virtual partitioning that keeps the site separate, there is no fear of all the other users of the server. Additionally, in most cases VPS hosting providers are responsible for installing and maintaining the essential security features of the server itself, which means there is no reason to worry about potential hacker attacks.

You can get yourself on a VPS hosted server for roughly $5-100 per month on average. Prices for VPS hosting vary because of the allocated central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM), and solid-state drive (SSD) storage.

Cloud Web Hosting

Next, let’s talk about cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is a type of hosting you want to get into once your ecommerce business is so big that even slightest downtime can prove fatal for your business. The best hosting provider makes sure that there is a cloud server always ready to jump in and keep your site up and running.

Cloud servers can be a bit more pricey, but for a good reason. They provide:

• High reliability in a sense that your sites are always safe from an unexpected downtime.
• Amazing traffic load balancing which means cloud servers maintain website performance even when traffic is high.
• Easy flexibility — when your website grows too big, you can upgrade your bandwidth and storage to the capacity you need.

But of course as with everything, there are also things you need to worry about. Flaws of cloud web hosting include:

• Limited control. In most cases, web hosts manage cloud hosting. As such, users assume less control over their own hosting environment.
• Higher than average cost. As we mentioned before, cloud hosting is on average a bit more expensive than other options, which can make it inaccessible for some people.
• Security vulnerabilities. If set up wrong, cloud site configurations can cause major security issues and overall problems for the sites and the server.

You can get your own site on cloud web hosting for prices averaging between $10-200 per month.

Tips to Reduce Your Hosting Costs

We’ve covered all types of hosting. Now let’s review what comes after you choose a hosting provider — plus a few tips and tricks to lower the cost of hosting as much as possible.

Choose a Host With a Page Builder Included

Let’s start with tip number one. You would think our first tip would be related to the domain and domain name, but you would be surprised how much money you can save if you get yourself a host that includes a pagebuilder in their plans.

You might be asking yourself what a page builder is. A page builder, or website builder, is a plugin or extension that makes it easy to create content by dragging and dropping pre-built controls. It allows you to structure and design responsive pages with ease. The main reason why you should take a look into the page builder is because of its complexity. By that we mean you can create your own website without having any technical knowledge with minimal time and effort.

With the right page builder solution, you can save yourself thousands of dollars, since you won’t need to hire a developer and create a coded and working HTML/CSS website.

Page builder tools can cost anywhere from $40 to over $100, but most don’t come with hosting included. You can find a page builder solution like StoreBuilder, which comes with fully managed hosting, for $19 per month.

Get Your Domain and Hosting From the Same Provider

Tip number two: get your domain and domain name from the same place.

If you don’t know what a domain is, it’s what everyone can see once they type your domain name into the search bar. A domain name is something close to your home address. It’s how people can get to your website directly. Without a domain name, everyone would have to enter your website’s full IP address, which can prove to be inefficient and slow.

Without a good domain name, your ecommerce business could quickly meet its demise. For a business to grow fast and steady, you need a domain name that is catchy, easy to remember, and easy to spell. Good domain names separate successful businesses from everyone else.

Getting domain names in the same place as the domain is a good idea because of simplicity and payment. Usually hosting providers offer a domain name registrar that is trustworthy and sometimes included in the price. If you purchase a domain name separately from the provider, it can affect your price with a couple of different elements.

For example, popular top-level domains (.com, .net, and .org), are much more expensive than something like .store  or .online. Additionally, the name itself can cause you to pay more. For example, cars.com once sold as the most expensive domain name ever for a jaw dropping $872 million. As you can see, domain names are highly important to a business no matter what the industry.

Domain names are usually priced between $1.99 and $19.99 for a registration. You can probably find free domain names on your own, but we highly recommend you stick with your trustworthy hosting providers.

Sign Up for a Long Renewal Period

Tip number three: you should always buy your domain for a longer period of time.

Every single hosting company will give you benefits with a long renewal period, be it a lower cost, better performance, better security, free trials, or all of the above. There is always something you get back for your loyalty to the hosting provider.

But let’s say you are not sure if this business idea of yours will work out. Maybe you want to just give it a shot for a month or two without committing to the full six months, risking even more money. Fortunately, in most cases, you can end your plan with the hosting provider without any drawbacks. You can sometimes even freeze your account and websites for a period of time if you are unable to pay for the site.

Don’t Choose Free Hosting

And last but not least: never choose free hosting.

Let’s say it like this — anything free has a reason to be free, and you’ll soon see why. You wouldn’t want to create your website just for it to break, run out of resources, or be hacked over and over again.

With free hosting, there is no security and no trust in your hosting provider. You wouldn’t want your income to be at risk and your sites unstable. Just to be clear, there is a way that you can get your domain for free and still succeed with your plans.

However, why put yourself at risk when you can get your own paid domain with a trustworthy hosting partner that can offer you any service and support you will ever need? In the end, free hosting will end up costing you peace of mind and maybe much more.

Which Type of Web Hosting is Best for You?

A simple question to ask yourself is this: Where do I want to start?

If you want a website that you don’t need to worry about, go with managed hosting. If you are on a budget and starting small with a new business, go with shared hosting. Choose VPS hosting if you are ready to pay a bit more for additional security and resources. Choose cloud hosting if you are experienced and want your business to grow rapidly with the most security you can get.

Ready to get started with a web hosting plan today? Consider hosting with Hostdedi.

Hostdedi has you covered for any type of hosting server you want, with different plans for any business either small or large, new or transferring. Whether you have a simple blog or a large ecommerce store, Hostdedi has a managed hosting solution for you.

With many plans to meet your needs, a trustworthy domain registrar, free SSL certificates, and an expert support team ready to help you 24/7/365, you’re in good hands with fully managed hosting from Hostdedi.

When it comes to hosting, don’t settle for anything less than the best. Get all-in-one solutions you need for a successful website. Enjoy a headache free experience thanks to award-winning support from platform-specific experts.

See why Hostdedi has a 4.6 out of 5 star rating on TrustPilot.

Check out our fully managed hosting plans to get started today.

Operation modes are a unique feature of Magento 2. They modify the configuration and behavior of the Magento application to suit your deployment and use case.

For instance, you can use production mode to improve performance on a production server and developer mode to accelerate your development workflow in a staging environment.

This guide will explain everything you need to know about Magento modes, including what they are, how they work, and how to use them.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Magento 2 Modes Explained

Magento 2 supports three primary operation modes and a maintenance mode. Here’s a brief overview of all four modes.

Default Mode

The default mode in Magento 2 is how Magento 2 operates when no other mode is specified, such as when it’s first installed on a single server. It isn’t optimized for use in a production environment since its purpose is to help you use Magento 2 without additional configuration.

In the default mode, Magento generates static content such as images and CSS files dynamically instead of serving them from the cache. That results in slower page load speeds which can impact the online shopping experience.

Put simply, the default mode is useful when setting up a Magento store. But once you’re familiar with the application, you should switch to either developer or production mode.

The developer mode in Magento 2 is ideal for development tasks such as debugging errors and installing Magento 2 extensions. In this mode, static view files aren’t cached to the filesystem. Instead, they are generated and written to the pub/static folder on demand.

While real-time code compilation leads to poor frontend performance, it speeds up development as you don’t need to compile Magento code each time you install or update a custom module. You only need to run the setup:upgrade command to update changes.

The developer mode generates verbose logs in the var/report folder, outputs errors on the front end, and throws exceptions in the error handler instead of log files. This way, you can troubleshoot errors and debug extension conflicts without digging into log files.

Enabling developer mode in Magento 2 also adds a “Developer” section in the Magento admin panel under Stores > Settings > Configuration > Advanced. This section includes advanced configuration options such as:

• Frontend Development Workflow.
• Template Settings.
• Debug.
• JavaScript Settings.
• Caching Settings.

You can use these setting options for tasks such as optimizing Magento store performance and enabling template path hints on the front end.

Production Mode

The production mode in Magento is optimized for live store deployments. In this mode, Magento writes static files to the pub/static directory in the project root and serves them from the cache.

Moreover, in the production mode, you can’t enable or disable the cache from the admin. You can only refresh it. You’ll need access to the Magento command line interface (CLI) to enable or disable one or more cache types.

These measures lead to improved performance and a seamless online shopping experience. The only downside is that you need to deploy static view files manually from the CLI when you install a Magento 2 theme or extension in production mode.

Besides optimizing performance, the production mode logs errors to the filesystem instead of displaying them on the front end. That ensures your customers don’t see a page full of error messages when things go wrong.

Maintenance Mode

Unlike the other three Magento modes, the maintenance mode only restricts access to the front end instead of modifying the functioning of the core application. That makes this mode ideal for maintenance tasks like upgrading Magento 2 or updating the front-end design.

Enabling maintenance mode in Magento 2 creates a .maintenance.flag file in the var/ directory of the project root.

When a customer visits your store, Magento runs initialization tasks and checks for that file in the var/ folder. If the file exists, it terminates bootstrapping and redirects visitors to a Service Temporarily Unavailable page.

The Magento 2 maintenance mode is helpful since you can configure it to allow specific IP addresses. That way, you can access the front end and verify changes before disabling the maintenance mode.

Moreover, you can also create a custom maintenance mode page to match your branding and encourage customers to return to your store.

How To Check the Operation Mode in Magento

Log in to your Magento server over SSH, switch to the file system owner, and navigate to the project root directory.

Then, check the current application mode using the following CLI command:

$ php bin/magento deploy:mode:show

You should see an output similar to:

$ php bin/magento deploy:mode:set {mode} [-s|--skip-compilation]

$ php bin/magento deploy:mode:set production

$ rm -rf <magento_root>/generated/metadata/* <magento_root>/generated/code/*

$ php bin/magento deploy:mode:set developer

Learning how Magento 2 modes work and how to use them is essential for Magento store owners. Each Magento mode serves a unique ecommerce use case and helps you get the best value from your Magento installation — just like Managed Magento Hosting with Hostdedi.

With high-performance, PCI-compliant Magento servers, we help you get the best from your Magento store. Our Magento hosting includes a free site migration, proactive security measures, and 24/7/365 support from Magento experts.

Browse our plans to get started today.

Adobe deprecated the Web Setup Wizard in Magento versions 2.3.6 and above. So if you want to perform tasks like installing a Magento 2 theme or extension, you’ll need to use the Magento 2 command line interface (CLI).

In this guide, we’ll explain the basics of the Magento CLI and show you how to use it for daily tasks like managing your store cache and indexing.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

An Introduction to the Magento CLI

The Magento CLI is an open source tool that helps you manage the Magento application and its modules from the command line. You can do everything from installing Magento 2 to configuring and upgrading the application using the Magento CLI.

The Magento CLI is located in the <project-root>/bin/ directory of every Magento installation. You can access it from the Magento root directory using the following command:

$ php bin/magento

Note: Using “php” before bin/magento is optional. Your operating system will automatically find the global PHP variable to execute the command even if you leave it out.

The above command will output the Magento CLI help page to your terminal screen. You’ll see a list of all available commands and a brief description of each one as follows:

$ command [options] [arguments]

For example, here’s a command you’ll use to deploy static content in Magento 2:

$ php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

In the above example, “setup:static-content:deploy” is the command name in the “group:[subject:]action” format.

The “group” is a set of related commands categorized based on a domain or workflow. One command group can have multiple subjects unique to its domain, and each subject can have multiple actions.

For instance, here are two different actions you can perform using the setup:config group and subject:

$ bin/magento setup:config:set

$ bin/magento setup:config:delete

Specifying an action in the command name is optional. You can execute some commands without an action, such as:

$ bin/magento setup:install

Magento CLI commands perform precise actions related to the configuration and management of a Magento store. But you can modify their behavior using options and arguments.

For example, here’s a Magento 2 CLI command with an option and argument:

$ bin/magento module:disable --force Magento_Catalog

Here, “module:disable” is the command name, “–force” is the option, and “Magento_Catalog” is the argument defining the module you want to disable.

10 Basic Tasks You Can Perform Using the Magento CLI

Here’s a quick rundown of 10 tasks you can execute with the Magento CLI.

Note: All commands demonstrated below must be run by the Magento file system owner.

1. Install Magento 2

You can install the core Magento application using the setup:install command. For example:

$ bin/magento setup:install 

--base-url=https://example.com 

--db-host=localhost 

--db-name=magento 

--db-user=magento_user 

--db-password="****************" 

--admin-firstname=bob 

--admin-lastname=smith 

[email protected] 

--admin-user=bob 

--admin-password=********* 

--language=en_US 

--currency=USD 

--timezone=America/Chicago 

--use-rewrites=1

2. Configure Magento 2 Cron

Magento 2 cron is essential for automated tasks like updating indexes on a schedule and sending out order emails. You can generate and install cron for Magento 2 using the following command:

$ bin/magento cron:install

And if you’d like to run cron jobs manually, you can do that by executing:

$ bin/magento cron:run

3. Manage Magento 2 Indexers

Magento uses indexing to update storefront data such as stock information, product pricing, and customer details to match the data stored in the database.

You can view all indexers on your store using the following command:

$ bin/magento indexer:info

$ bin/magento indexer:set-mode schedule [index-name]

$ bin/magento indexer:reindex

Magento 2 includes several default security features, such as reCAPTCHA and Two-factor authentication. You can manage those features using the Magento CLI security group of commands.

For example, you can disable reCAPTCHA for admin users using the following command:

$ bin/magento security:recaptcha:disable-for-user-login

And you can reset Two-factor authentication for an admin user using:

$ bin/magento security:tfa:reset <username> <provider-code>

5. Deploy Static View Files

Magento generates static view files such as CSS and block HTML files and serves them from the cache in a production environment to improve store performance.

Here’s how you can deploy static view files in Magento 2 from the CLI:

$ bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

Optionally, you can modify the command to exclude certain themes and deploy static content for a specific store view as follows:

$ bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy en_US --exclude-theme Magento/luma

6. Manage the Magento Operation Mode

You can operate the Magento application in four different modes. For instance, if you’re testing code, you can run it in developer mode. And if you’re operating a live store, you can run it in production mode for better performance and security.

Here’s how you can set the Magento operation mode to production from the CLI:

$ bin/magento deploy:mode:set production

7. Configure Maintenance Mode

The Magento 2 maintenance mode disables access to the frontend during routine maintenance tasks like design and layout updates. Here’s how you can enable maintenance mode in Magento 2 from the CLI:

$ bin/magento maintenance:enable

Optionally, you can exempt some IP addresses from the maintenance mode using:

$ bin/magento maintenance:allow-ips <xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx>

8. Manage Magento 2 Modules and Extensions

Magento’s modular architecture allows merchants to customize their store design and functionality using third-party modules. It’s no surprise that data from BuiltWith shows that 8% of the top 10,000 websites use Magento to power their online store.

Adobe provides various module management commands grouped into the module: category. For instance, here’s how you can check the status of all enabled modules on your store:

$ bin/magento module:status --enabled

9. Manage the Magento 2 Cache

Magento’s cache management system provides an easy way to improve Magento store performance. Magento uses different cache types such as layout, full page, and block HTML output.

You can view their status using the following command:

$ bin/magento cache:status

And to clear the Magento cache, you can use the following command:

$ bin/magento cache:clean

$ bin/magento admin:user:create 

--admin-user ADMIN-USER 

--admin-password ADMIN-PASSWORD 

--admin-email ADMIN-EMAIL 

--admin-firstname ADMIN-FIRSTNAME 

--admin-lastname ADMIN-LASTNAME

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:ObjectManager/etc/config.xsd">

<type name="MagentoFrameworkConsoleCommandList">

<arguments>

<argument name="commands" xsi:type="array">

<item name="CustomCommand" xsi:type="object">HostdediCustomModuleConsoleCommandCustomCommand</item>

</argument>

</arguments>

</type>

</config>

<?php

namespace HostdediCustomModuleConsoleCommand;




use SymfonyComponentConsoleCommandCommand;

use SymfonyComponentConsoleInputInputInterface;

use SymfonyComponentConsoleOutputOutputInterface;




class CustomCommand extends Command

{

protected function configure()

{

$this->setName('nexcess:helloworld');

$this->setDescription('Custom command example.');




parent::configure();

}

protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)

{

$output->writeln("Hello World");

}

}

$ bin/magento cache:clean

$ bin/magento setup:upgrade

$ bin/magento setup:di:compile

$ bin/magento list

$ bin/magento nexcess:helloworld

The Magento CLI might seem intimidating at first. But once you understand how it works, you’ll realize that you don’t need to become a developer to manage a Magento store, especially if you’re hosting your Magento store with managed Magento hosting by Hostdedi.

Our hosting plans give you access to Magento-optimized servers without dealing with the technicalities of hosting Magento.

Browse our plans to get started today.

Website performance and security are the two major aspects of modern website development that largely affect user experience and SEO rankings. Serving content to end users all over the world and making sure no visitors experience any delays regardless of their location can be extremely challenging.

Employed by all modern technological giants, CDN hosting helps meet the performance requirements of mission-critical applications and overcome the limitations of traditional web hosting by ensuring great page load times and improved security.

In this comprehensive guide to CDN hosting, you will learn how content delivery networks help speed up the internet by bringing content closer to the end user, and how to choose the best CDN provider for unrivaled website performance.

What Is a CDN?

A CDN, which stands for Content Delivery or Distribution Network, is a large network of geographically distributed servers that help speed up the delivery of web content, thus improving the overall user experience. By maintaining a global point of presence with dispersed data centers and offering a pool of additional server resources, CDNs can service a large number of web requests coming from your website visitors without having to direct them to the origin server.

You may be wondering, what is the difference between the origin server and a CDN endpoint? The origin server is the server your website resides on, while a CDN endpoint, which can also be referred to as a proxy server, is one of the physical servers that belong to the CDN hosting provider.

Is a CDN the Same As Web Hosting?

No, a CDN and web hosting are not the same, although both do perform similar operations for content delivery. In the vast majority of cases, a content delivery network can not replace traditional web hosting services due to the fact that CDNs can only be used to cache and serve static content, while dynamic content generation still needs to take place on the origin server.

If you are running a dynamic database-driven website, which can be built using WordPress or one of the other popular content management systems, you need both web hosting and CDN hosting to achieve great performance and high scalability. Managed WordPress hosting with CDN is the best choice for all types of websites built on the open source platform.

How Does a CDN Work?

How does a CDN work to speed up your website? By placing servers in multiple geographically distributed locations, a content delivery network stores copies of your website’s static content and directs each web request to the CDN endpoint closest to the visitor. A CDN can significantly improve page load times by decreasing the number of links and routers between the website visitor and the proxy server from which content is retrieved.

How Do Proxy Servers Deliver Content to Website Visitors?

If a content delivery network is used, all web requests coming to your website reach the proxy servers that determine what content needs to be sent to the visitor. Then, depending on whether the CDN can service the request, one of the following happens:

• If the CDN stores a copy of the requested object, it can send it to the user’s browser without having to load it from the origin server.
• If certain content has not been requested for some time, which means that the content delivery network no longer has it cached, it will establish a connection to the origin server, retrieve the requested object, and deliver it to the website visitor.

Every time a piece of static content is requested, a content delivery network is going to either retrieve it from cache or load it from the origin server and then save it to its cache.

How Does a CDN Speed Up Static Content Delivery?

Static content includes images and video, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other types of documents that can be loaded bypassing the process of dynamic content generation. If no caching solution is used, each time a visitor loads a web page, a request is sent to your origin web server to retrieve and deliver it over the network.

This approach can lead to a substantial increase in latency, resulting in poor performance and long delays. Along with the negative effects on the client side, sending constant requests for static content to your origin server results in an increased utilization of server resources and higher bandwidth usage.

Unless the requested content needs to be tailored to each visitor to create personalized user experience, there is no need for each web request to be sent to the origin server, making large files travel long distances through the network. A content delivery network helps address this problem by providing powerful proxy servers and employing advanced traffic routing techniques.

Additional Features Offered by a CDN

Aside from caching static files on its proxy servers for fast and reliable content distribution, hosting with CDN offers a number of other features. These often include additional security solutions and static content delivery optimization tools.

Web Application Firewalls

Modern content delivery networks offer a web application firewall, or a WAF, which provides an additional layer of security for all modern websites. As the name suggests, a WAF works on the application level of network communication and serves the purpose of filtering out malicious or potentially unwanted web requests, so they never make it to the origin server.

Most web application firewalls offered by CDN hosting include managed rulesets that have been pre configured for you and ensure protection against most security threats, and the ability to add your own rules to block traffic based on custom parameters.

End-To-End Encryption

Content delivery networks can offer edge SSL certificates and ensure end-to-end encryption to protect the traffic flow both between the visitor’s browser and the CDN, and between the CDN and the origin server. Even if you do not have an SSL certificate installed for your website on the origin server, which is required for end-to-end encryption, a CDN will still use an edge certificate. This way, your website will still show as fully secure in all browsers.

Static Content Optimization

Along with storing objects on its proxy servers, content delivery networks can implement various static content optimization techniques, including file compression and minification.

For example, hosting with CDN can help you optimize your images and video by converting them to another format. A continent delivery network can also speed up the content delivery process by choosing the right size and quality of an image or video to be sent based on the visitor’s browser type and their device’s screen resolution.

3 Main Benefits of Using a CDN

Regardless of the website architecture, its size and complexity, content delivery networks provide a number of benefits, with the three most important ones being the following:

• Increased website performance and faster page load times. Serving static content from the CDN endpoint closest to the website visitor and taking advantage of additional features like file compression, image optimization, and HTTP/2 inherently results in the reduction of user-perceived delay, speeding up your website.
• Lowered load on the origin server and reduced bandwidth consumption. As the majority of static content can be retrieved from the proxy servers, and the web application firewall running on the CDN’s side filters out most malicious web requests, the number of connections received by the origin server is significantly lower. This will reduce bandwidth consumption and protect your web server from being overloaded, thus almost eliminating the possibility of downtime.
• Improved website security. Content delivery networks employ modern security standards, which include ensuring end-to-end traffic encryption, providing protection against DDOS, brute force, and other types of network attacks. This can considerably reduce the attack surface and ease the requirements for server-side security solutions.

CDN Hosting vs. Traditional Hosting

Web hosting and CDN hosting are two separate services often used together to achieve better website performance, security, and scalability. The vast majority of modern websites and web applications need at least a web server and a database server, which traditional hosting offers, to handle dynamic content generation, and a content delivery network to improve static content distribution.

However, there are cases where you could use CDN hosting without the need to sign up for traditional web hosting services. If you build a static website, using free CDN hosting is a great way to reduce hosting costs.

CDN Hosting For Static Website Architecture

As opposed to dynamic database-driven websites and web applications, static websites do not require a database, and can be hosted using a content delivery network or an object storage service. For example, Jamstack, which is a powerful web development architecture employing Javascript, API, and HTML markup, can be used for building high-performance static websites and web applications.

Static website architecture is often used for creating landing pages, personal blogs, and web portals. Jamstack can also be integrated with WordPress as a headless CMS by using modern static content generators like GatsbyJS and NextJS. This way, you can leverage all the benefits that WordPress hosting with CDN offers.

How Do I Select a CDN Hosting Provider?

The chosen content delivery network and the CDN hosting provider will have a tremendous impact on how well your website serves static content, and, ultimately, on its page load times and overall performance. Here are the five main aspects of a content delivery network to take into consideration when choosing a CDN hosting provider:

• Network size and server locations.
• Performance and security optimizations.
• Pricing and CDN hosting plans.
• Ease of use.
• Technical support and documentation.

Network Size and Server Locations

The size of a content delivery network is defined by the number of servers it has, which are often referred to as points of presence, and their locations. The number of points of presence and how well they are distributed across the globe is key to ensure no website visitors will experience any delays in content delivery.

A content delivery network should have at least a few points of presence on all continents if you have customers all over the world. More servers should be present in the region where most website visitors are located. If you have your customer base concentrated in one region or even would like to only allow traffic from a certain location, it is generally recommended to have your origin server there for better page load times.

Performance And Security Optimizations

Before choosing a CDN hosting provider, learn what additional features you can leverage. Depending on the plan, you can get a different set of optimization options. Think of what you absolutely need and what can be skipped based on the specific requirements of your website.

SSL, web application firewalls, traffic encryption options represent the main additional security features that can be included. Support for HTTP/2, compression, and various static content optimization tools can provide a great performance boost for any website.

Pricing and CDN Hosting Plans

Review the plans content delivery networks offer and what features are included in each of them. Most companies have free CDN hosting plans that provide core CDN functionality, which might be exactly what you are looking for. Most of the time, you are allowed to upgrade to another plan to unlock premium features.

Ease Of Use

This factor is especially important if you are just starting with CDN hosting. A content delivery network should be easy to integrate with your website and provide a way to configure it according to the specific requirements of your business.

Learn how you can configure the chosen content delivery network for your website, including the changes to the DNS setup, and the modifications that need to be made to the origin server. Your web hosting provider’s support team might be able to help you with some tasks, but they won’t be able to log in to any third-party services. So there is a high chance that you will have to configure your CDN hosting on your own or reach out to their technical support.

Technical Support And Documentation

The CDN hosting provider’s technical support team will be the point of contact if you run into any issues during the initial configuration or if using the content delivery network causes degraded functionality on your website. Learn how the CDN hosting provider accepts and processes support requests – whether you are able to call, chat, or open a ticket – and how fast the reported issue can be addressed.

Study the documentation that covers the content delivery network’s main features and the configuration process. Having access to great documentation allows you to better understand how the CDN hosting can benefit your business, and how you can enable certain optimizations.

Is CDN Hosting For You?

Nowadays there is no website or a web application that could not benefit from using a content delivery network. A content delivery network helps bring content closer to your customers and provide better user experience by serving static content from one of the proxy servers closest to each particular website visitor.

As important as the CDN used is for your online business, it won’t make any difference if your server infrastructure is not configured correctly, which often results in poor performance and frequent downtime. When it comes to web hosting, you can not settle for anything less than the best.

Hostdedi offers high-performance hosting optimized for WordPress and other modern content management systems. With over two decades of providing the best managed hosting for mission-critical websites, Hostdedi combines the power of open source software and award-winning support to create a unique hosting experience.

Leverage unrivaled performance and enterprise-grade security with a lightning-fast content delivery network included with all hosting plans. With more than twenty points of presence around the globe, the Hostdedi Edge Content Delivery Network ensures great page load times employing cutting-edge technology configured out of the box.

Check out our plans to get started today.

Along with popular options like Hostgator and Dreamhost, GoDaddy is one of the largest and most popular hosting providers in the world. Offering all main types of hosting, the ability to register a domain name, and a website builder to help launch your website fast, GoDaddy might seem like the perfect option to choose. However, it is not that simple in the world of web hosting.

The largest and most popular does not necessarily mean the best. And you may soon find yourself in need of a better option that will include more features and meet the requirements of your business more precisely. In this comprehensive guide to GoDaddy alternatives, we have gathered six hosting providers that can offer better services for a more reasonable price.

Keep reading to learn more about this GoDaddy competition, and see which alternative would be best for you.

The 6 Best GoDaddy Alternatives

The six hosting companies described in this article create a GoDaddy competition, each providing unique hosting plans designed to meet the diverse needs of business owners. You will learn what each has to offer, and who it can benefit most.

1. Hostdedi

Hostdedi is a powerful web hosting platform optimized for WordPress and ecommerce and is one of the greatest GoDaddy alternatives. By combining the possibilities of open source software with cloud architecture and award-winning technical support, Hostdedi has managed to open a whole new page in the history of managed hosting.

Hostdedi is perfect for small to medium sized websites built on WordPress, WooCommerce, Drupal, or Magento that need high-performance hosting with scalable infrastructure and a lightning-fast content delivery network.

Types Of Hosting Offered

Hostdedi focuses on cloud and high-availability hosting for all popular content management systems for business owners who do not wish to spend hours configuring and maintaining the server infrastructure or suffer from the limitations of shared hosting.

• Fully-managed cloud hosting for WordPress and ecommerce. Hostdedi cloud hosting plans offer all the benefits of serverless architecture, offering a powerful platform optimized for WordPress and ecommerce.
• Dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting for Magento allows you to leverage the flexibility of dedicated infrastructure to better meet the requirements of your high-traffic online store.
• High-availability enterprise hosting. Hostdedi application-optimized enterprise hosting powers mission-critical websites by offering server clusters fully optimized for the needs of your business.

Best for Managed Hosting

Hostdedi is the absolute best option when it comes to fully-managed hosting solutions. Cloud hosting plans offered by Hostdedi can meet the requirements of the majority of WordPress and ecommerce websites by providing high performance and scalability combined with the best tools for website management. All its benefits make it better than GoDaddy if you are looking for managed cloud hosting.

Automatic backups and updates and robust security solutions are just a few of the features that Hostdedi offers. Support is one of the most important aspects for Hostdedi. A team of strong system administrators and WordPress and ecommerce experts is always there for you should you need any assistance.

Advantages vs. GoDaddy

• More platforms supported. Hostdedi hosting is not only suitable for WordPress and WooCommerce, but provides cloud hosting plans for Magento, Drupal, and a number of other content management systems.
• Better performance and security. Hostdedi provides a range of features that help achieve unrivaled performance. A minimum of 10 PHP workers are included in all hosting plans, which is significantly more than GoDaddy offers on shared and managed WordPress hosting plans.
• Better support. Being focused on WordPress and ecommerce allows Hostdedi to have a team of experts behind each hosted website.
• Powerful ecommerce store builder. StoreBuilder by Hostdedi allows you to design a unique storefront and launch an online store powered by WooCommerce in a matter of minutes with secure payments and no hidden fees.

Hostdedi Pros and Cons

Hostdedi Pros:

• Good domain registration rates
• Free SSL certificates
• 30 days of free daily backups
• CDN included
• Fully-managed cloud hosting for multiple CMSs
• Increased performance and security achieved by a number of unique solutions
• PCI compliant hosting
• Great website builder
• One management portal for all tasks

Hostdedi Cons:

• No VPS or dedicated hosting for smaller websites
• Limited infrastructure customization options and no root access on cloud plans

Choosing a web hosting provider in the modern, saturated market is extremely challenging. Hostdedi can save you hours on researching hosting plans and comparing your options. That’s because everything you need to launch and grow a successful website is already included in Hostdedi managed hosting.

Whether you are running a large ecommerce website or a small WordPress blog, Hostdedi is ready to accommodate your needs by offering a wide range of hosting plans for all popular content management systems. Leverage unrivaled performance and security and award-winning technical support with the best managed hosting in the industry.

Check out our plans to find out what makes Hostdedi stand out from the GoDaddy competition today.

Many of us use a product daily to fight a common problem — chapped lips. While it may not seem like a brilliant business opportunity, the growing interest in natural lip care makes selling lip balm a viable product idea. So if you’re looking for a chance to make money online, a great way to do that is by learning how to make lip balm and other natural lip care products.

In this article, we will walk you through the process of how to make lip balm to sell online and provide tips and tricks on how to get the upper hand on your competition.

How to Make Lip Balm to Sell: What You Need

You need to learn how to make lip balm, and thankfully making it is fun and easy.

Equipment

The necessary equipment includes:

• A double-boiler or a heat-safe glass bowl that fits over a smaller pot
• Lip balm containers, such as ½ ounce tins or .15 ounce plastic tubes
• Glass measuring cups

You may also want to invest in heatproof or infrared thermometers to make sure ingredients reach the proper temperature.

Ingredients

You’ll also need ingredients to make the balm.

• Beeswax. There are many options and even colors available
• Butter. Cocoa butter is the most popular choice, but you can also use shea or mango butter, too
• High-quality food-grade oil such as almond, coconut, or olive oil
• Essential oils (optional)
• Colorants (optional)

We recommend beeswax pastilles and cocoa butter wafers. They are easy to work with and measure. You can purchase them in solid blocks at a cheaper cost, but they may require breaking down or grating. Also, bear in mind while choosing ingredients that options could be an allergen (tree nut allergies are common, for example).

Now that we talked about all the fun stuff, it’s time to start talking business. To create a successful ecommerce business, you need a catchy name. Your business name is one of the most important things in online marketing. Having a name that is easy to remember and find in search engines can make or break an online business.

Once you have a name for your business, there are a few more steps you need to take. First, we need to create an ecommerce business plan. Business plans are not as complicated and scary as people assume it is.

Your business plan needs to include a few things:

• Market analysis
• Products and services
• Marketing plan
• Operations plan
• Financial plan

After creating an in-depth business plan, you’ll need to figure out who your targeted customers will be. You’ll also need to determine what your labor is worth. In other words, you need to fairly price your products and services based on the time it took to create and the cost of materials you used.

Now for the most important thing in ecommerce marketing: creating your online store.

This requires a domain and a hosting provider. You’ll want a domain that makes sense for your business name. You’ll also want a hosting provider that’s optimized for ecommerce. A great way to start off your ecommerce journey on the right foot is to use StoreBuilder by Hostdedi. It makes it quick and easy to build an online store, with no coding or design skills needed. Plus it comes with fully managed hosting to keep your store fast and secure.

Lip Gloss Bundle Ideas & How to Upsell Your Products

You’re probably wondering, How do I get people to my online store? Well, that’s part of starting an ecommerce business.

Take time to examine other online vendors selling lip products. Reviewing our competitors’ offerings can help us determine what products to upsell, what competitive pricing looks like, and much more.

Studies show that the probability of selling to existing customers is 60 to 70%, while selling to new customers is only 5 to 20%. Knowing this information is helpful and can help you make better business decisions, focus your marketing efforts, and plan for inventory.

To attract customers, you need good marketing. Some opt for social media ads. Others work with influencers and sponsored posts. You can use a combination of all of these strategies. A strong content strategy can really help you climb the ranks in the search engines. The best option is what you’re most comfortable with and what works for your budget. Test a few options and see which gets the best engagement.

A great strategy for ecommerce is upselling bundles. Bundles mean offering products together for a cheaper price. The perceived value intrigues customers who feel like they’re getting a good deal for their money.

Often you’ll see “2 for 1” types of deals. It’s a tactic that plays off of human nature. People feel like they’re paying less for more, and may buy things solely because they’re on sale or bundled. Offering seasonal bundles or limited edition themed bundles are also great ways to market your products.

Sell Your Products Online With StoreBuilder

You know how to make lip balm and other lip care products. You know you need a store and a business plan. You’ve probably heard of the most popular hosting options – but now you’re looking for a platform and host that is made for selling.

Try StoreBuilder by Hostdedi FREE for 30 days and you certainly won’t feel chapped. It’s the easiest way to create a store with intuitive design features, freedom to be creative, and live support available 24/7/365.

Get started with StoreBuilder today.

Wondering how we went from shopping in-store and buying infomercial products from a 800 number to making virtually any purchase with a few clicks?  Welcome to the history of ecommerce. We’ll look at how it all started, which technologies paved the way for electronic commerce, and what might come next.

The Precursor to Ecommerce

Before ecommerce, it was all about brick and mortar and mail order.

Brick and Mortar

Stores in a physical location, where you can walk in and browse items on shelves, are also known as brick and mortar stores. Think of all the individual shops in your local shopping mall — all of those are brick and mortar businesses.

The limitations are obvious — businesses need to own or rent a physical store and showcase their products there. A traditional brick and mortar bookstore has hundreds or thousands of books that need to be stored. There are rent and utilities costs to consider. You require physical security — also known as theft prevention. You need to keep your business space clean, have attractive displays, and hope you’ve selected a location that is going to attract customers. You need knowledgeable store representatives so they can answer customers’ questions and reliable employees to monitor your cash and receipts.

In contrast, a company like Amazon doesn’t need to worry about aesthetics. They have all their inventory packed up and ready to ship out – eliminating the need for ambiance, cashiers, and lots more. Amazon doesn’t need to store the books they sell physically at their premises.

The first ever sale to happen online occurred in 1994 – the transaction was for a CD of Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales. The purchase was completed with a credit card and the CD was delivered to its destination via US Postal Service and we can, therefore, consider this a first legitimate online buy.

Limitations in the Early History of Ecommerce

Minitel, a French-developed predecessor to the World Wide Web, was invented in 1982. It was free for telephone subscribers and used a video text terminal and telephone line to connect millions of people — 25 million by 1999.

Real expansion occurred after the rapid rise of the World Wide Web, invented in 1991. It soon eclipsed Minitel, which was finally discontinued in 2012. This expansion allowed for more people to connect across the globe, making it the first condition for ecommerce development as we see it today.

Another limitation that kept online shopping from flourishing in the early days were the security risks implied with online purchases. That changed with the invention of Secured Socket Layer (SSL) in 1995 —  which quickly became the most prominent feature of web security. It made the process of online shopping a much more comfortable and convenient experience for a massive audience of shoppers. After the invention of SSL, we witnessed a growing number of newly registered domains. This transformed the World Wide Web into a commercial use powerhouse, particularly for online shopping.

Making Progress

The First Ecommerce Stores

One of the first online stores was Books.com — a domain name occupied by a company called Book Stacks Unlimited, founded by Charles M. Stack in 1992. This was two years before Amazon was founded. Book Stacks Unlimited started as a dial-up bulletin board in Cleveland, and in 1994 moved to the internet. It offered more than half a million titles to more than half a million visitors each month.

Amazon.com, the biggest online store to date, was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. It started as an online bookstore and it introduced the concept of online book reviews — direct feedback from other consumers. That really made a difference and attracted a huge number of new customers to their platform.

Soon, Amazon expanded its scope, introducing  CDs, DVDs, and video sales. With time, Amazon added more and more items to their repertoire and today it remains the biggest and most well-known online store. Amazon now offers everything from food to furniture.

The First Payment Systems

Electronic payment systems witnessed their revolution with the arrival of the internet. They were crucial for the success of ecommerce — you can’t make sales if you can’t accept payment. Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution that offered online banking to their members, starting with their online banking system in 1994. This and other similar systems to emerge were not entirely user-friendly or easy to operate.

Becoming Mainstream

The evolution of electronic payment and verification systems allowed for quick verification and authorization of digital payments with just a few and simple steps. Nowadays, mobile devices are widely used as payment methods where customers can perform online transactions via their mobile wallets, such as Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Another important milestone was the invention of WordPress by Matt Mullenweg in 2003 — a fork of the b2/cafelos platform. WordPress is simple to set up and offers multiple plugins that make your ecommerce experience easy and painless. The most used ecommerce plugin on WordPress is WooCommerce.

Another important website platform for anyone interested in running their own ecommerce business is Magento — an ecommerce platform owned by Adobe. Read more about Magento in our article, What is Magento?

The Future of Ecommerce

Now that you’ve learned all about the history of ecommerce from its early beginnings, let’s look at where it’s headed.

Overview and Predictions

During the recent pandemic and lockdown, the world witnessed a significant rise in ecommerce. People have gotten used to buying everything they need from the comfort of their own homes. It is safe to assume this trend will continue and that we’ll see more and more customers moving from their local supermarkets to their online equivalents.

With the rising number of ecommerce customers, we expect another aspect of online shopping to continue to grow, as it did during the pandemic — live commerce. These are online events that allow customers to buy the products while watching live streams of their favorite brands. This model of ecommerce is one we predict even more brands will adopt.

One of the most important aspects of ecommerce is and will continue to be the customer experience. Those who can provide the best experience to their buyers will continue to see a lot of success. Knowing the importance of customer feedback and how bad reviews can quickly overshadow good ones – customer experience should be at the center of any ecommerce business.

Growth Projections

As we already mentioned, the COVID pandemic gave a significant boost to ecommerce sales and growth. According to trade.gov, we can expect a continued and steady 8% growth for all ecommerce sectors all the way through to 2024.

Get in on the growing ecommerce industry with an online store of your own. One of the easiest ways to quickly create an ecommerce website is using StoreBuilder by Hostdedi.

StoreBuilder is an online store builder that creates high-performing, customizable, and unique storefronts. It supports coverage through our worldwide CDN, so it doesn’t matter where your business is located. The Storebuilder plan includes hundreds of dollars worth of premium features, plus 24/7 support without transaction fees and expensive add-ons. Your data, website, products, and profits belong to you.

Try StoreBuilder

Are you trying to create an online ecommerce store, but you do not know where or how to start? Try out StoreBuilder, a fast and simple way to create the business you’ve been dreaming of. You’ll be able to reach and handle more customers, regardless of where they might be.

Want to try and build an ecommerce site without help from a developer, or any coding background?

Hostdedi StoreBuilder is the solution for you. Try it risk-free for 30 days today.

The Magento cron module is one of the most important features in Magento 2 because it automates tasks like:

• Reindexing.
• Sending emails.
• Catalog pricing updates.
• Currency rates updates.

Here, we’ll explain everything you need to know about Magento cron, including what it is, how to install it, and the steps to secure it.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

An Introduction to Magento Cron

Magento uses cron, a time-based task scheduling utility for Unix systems, to perform repetitive tasks such as updating catalog pricing and inventory on a schedule. Without the Magento 2 cron module, you’ll need to execute those tasks manually.

Magento cron relies on a configuration file called the crontab, short for cron table, that specifies shell commands and scripts and their execution schedule. Here’s the default crontab file in Magento 2.4.

Magento 2 Open Source categorizes cron jobs into three groups:

• index: Containing all indexer-related tasks.
• consumers: Containing tasks related to message queue consumers.
• default: Containing all other cron jobs.

However, other Magento 2 extensions may add cron jobs and groups to your store. You can view the list of cron jobs for your Magento store by logging into the Magento database and entering the following command:

$ select job_code from cron_schedule GROUP BY job_code;

Magento logs all cron job information in a dedicated magento.cron.log file in the var/log/ folder and also writes it to the cron_schedule table in the Magento database with information such as:

• Job ID and code.
• Status.
• Created date.
• Scheduled date.
• Executed date.
• Finished date.

You can view the information in the Magento database using the following command:

$ SELECT * from cron_schedule;

That command will output all rows from the Magento cron_schedule database table. Instead, you can use the following command to output the 30 most recent rows.

$ SELECT * from cron_schedule ORDER BY schedule_id DESC LIMIT 30;

$ bin/magento cron:install

$ crontab -l

$ bin/magento cron:run

$ bin/magento cron:run --group <group-name>

The steps to set up HTTP authentication will vary based on your web browser. Follow these steps to set up HTTP authentication with Apache:

Create a new directory to store your password file using:

$ mkdir -p /usr/local/apache/password

Then create a password file inside that directory using:

$ htpasswd -c /usr/local/apache/password/passwords <username>

Follow the prompts in the terminal to set a password for the user. Once you’re done, proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Secure Cron in Your Web Server Configuration File

The steps to update your web server configuration file vary based on your web server application.

To secure cron for Apache, switch to the Magento filesystem user and navigate to the Magento root. Edit the .htaccess file inside the pub/ folder using your preferred text editor and replace the default <Files cron.php> directive with the following text:

<Files cron.php>
   AuthType Basic
   AuthName "Cron Authentication"
   AuthUserFile /usr/local/apache/password/passwords
   Require valid-user
</Files>

Save the .htaccess file and proceed to the next step.

To secure cron for Nginx, switch to the Magento filesystem user and navigate to the Magento root. Edit the default nginx.conf.sample file in the project root and add the following text to it:

#Securing cron
location ~ cron.php$ {
   auth_basic "Cron Authentication";
   auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;

   try_files $uri =404;
   fastcgi_pass   fastcgi_backend;
   fastcgi_buffers 1024 4k;

   fastcgi_read_timeout 600s;
   fastcgi_connect_timeout 600s;

   fastcgi_index  index.php;
   fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
   include        fastcgi_params;
}

Save the file, switch back to the root user, and restart Nginx using:

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

After that, proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Verify Cron Is Secure

The easiest way to verify the cron.php file is secure is by accessing it in a web browser. You can do that by opening your Magento store home page and adding cron.php to the end of the URL.

For example, https://www.example.com/cron.php.

You should see the following prompt in your browser:

$ crontab -l

$ crontab -e

Magento cron is one of the most useful features in Magento 2. It automates complicated tasks so you can focus on growing your online business — just like Managed Magento Hosting with Hostdedi.

Our hosting plans give you access to Magento-optimized servers without dealing with the technicalities of server security and maintenance.

Why host with Hostdedi? Browse our plans to learn more.

You’re ready to start a blog or launch an ecommerce store, but where do you get started? There are tons of great options, but we’re going to focus on two of the most popular options: Squarespace and WordPress.

Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder that will get you up and running quickly, but you’ll sacrifice some of the more customizable options that you get from WordPress. WordPress is a free and open source content management system, allowing you more freedom and flexibility in creating your store or website.

Let’s dig in and see if we can help you decide what’s right for you. For the purposes of this article, please keep in mind we are talking about the WordPress available at wordpress.org, which is free to all.

Considering a switch from Squarespace to WordPress? Check out this handy guide.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Ease of Use

Squarespace is perfect if you want the simplest solution. Sign up for an account, answer a few questions, select a template, and you’ve got yourself a website to customize! WordPress requires a bit more effort – but results in much more flexibility. For WordPress, you’ll need to purchase hosting space, a domain, then install WordPress.

There are many hosting providers who offer the option of managed WordPress in their hosting products (including Hostdedi! You can check out our managed WordPress hosting here). They come with WordPress installed. Even the newest beginners can handle setup tasks. The extra time it takes to set up WordPress amounts to just a few moments.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Customization Capabilities

While Squarespace is the simplest, it’s  definitely more rigid with functionality. You can customize templates with words and pictures – but if you want full creative control, you won’t find it here.

What exactly does Squarespace allow you to customize?

• Content
• Basic SEO Settings
• Analytics
• Social Share Buttons
• CSS
• Existing Design Styles

WordPress, however, is customizable in almost every way. From customizing your chosen WordPress theme (the equivalent of templates) to choosing your payment processor when you’re running an ecommerce site. There are thousands and thousands of plugins available for pretty much everything you could think of.

What exactly does WordPress allow you to customize?

• Everything Squarespace does
• Everything else you want to

You may be thinking, everything else I want to do? Yeah, right. Except – it really does! At the time of this writing, there are over 50,000 plugins available that enable you to do whatever you’d want to do on WordPress. Page caching? Yep! Site Backups? Check! LiveChat for your customers? You got it! While everything is possible, you want to be careful not to overload your site with every plugin you can find.

WordPress as a content management system is free. It’s free to use, free to install, and many plugins are free as well. There are costs associated with setting up a server, hosting, and purchasing a domain name – but WordPress itself is free. If you’re looking for a mix of both worlds, you should consider Hostdedi managed WordPress hosting, where you can customize your site’s experience via StoreBuilder and other plugins, but have the professionals handle the maintenance.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Platform Capabilities

If you’re planning a blog with no ecommerce capabilities, there isn’t much to consider. The Squarespace platform is easy to set up and start writing. Despite that, WordPress is the most popular blogging platform for a reason. WordPress is intuitive and easy to use, which is why approximately 60 million blogs are running WordPress.

If ecommerce is more your style, there are some important things to consider. While Squarespace is certainly capable of ecommerce, gaining  access to their ecommerce functionality means a pricey upgrade. That $14 plan jumps to $23.00/month – totaling up to $276.00/year. The more ecommerce functionality you want, the more you need to pay per month to get those features. Squarespace also limits you to two payment processing options, Stripe (which allows Apple Pay from supported devices, AfterPay, and ClearPay) and PayPal.

WordPress, on the other hand, does not have that same cost structure. It also has some pretty robust plugins that help turn your website into an ecommerce site. The most popular plugin is WooCommerce – which helps you set up a store with physical products, digital products, or both. There are also many dropshipping services that integrate well with WordPress and WooCommerce. They can even handle all the shipping and handling for you. This is especially helpful if you want to put your designs on various goods, but don’t have the space or desire to keep them on hand.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Other Considerations to Keep in Mind

Who Controls Your Website Data?

If you ever want to leave Squarespace, you’ll leave behind more data than you’ll be able to take with you. You’ll end up leaving behind your blocks, drafts,  and so much more. If you have more than one blog page, you have to choose which one you want to export.

With WordPress you are in complete control of your data at all times. You own your data. Export your database, and boom: all of your data ready to go with you. WordPress even allows you to export in formats that are easily compatible with importing to other content management systems, if you don’t want to deal with the database.

WordPress is open source, so you can pack up and go wherever you wish, whenever you wish. With a closed source platform, you have to remake your site when you move elsewhere.

What About Mobile Editing?

Both Squarespace and WordPress have a mobile app to keep up on the go. Write, share, and edit posts from your phone or tablet. You can even handle your ecommerce store from the road.

How About Security?

Squarespace handles security for you, but you are responsible for keeping WordPress up to date. Unless, of course, you choose a managed WordPress hosting plan.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Head to Head

We created a quick side by side comparison for you in the table below.

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Studies have shown that around 30% of all online retailers use dropshipping. Furthermore, experts believe that the dropshipping market size will increase substantially in the next five years — making it a great way to start your ecommerce journey.

The chosen ecommerce platform and web hosting provider play a massive role in the long-term success of any online business because they define your website’s functionality and performance. This article will review various hosting providers and explore the best options for hosting your dropshipping business.

Keep reading to learn the best web hosting for dropshipping businesses.

Why You Need Great Hosting as a Dropshipper

Dropshipping allows you to skip all production costs and the difficulties associated with bringing your products to the market. In addition, a lower entry threshold makes dropshipping an attractive option for launching an ecommerce business.

The technical aspects of starting a dropshipping business include choosing the right website building platform for ecommerce and a web hosting provider. It is hard to determine which one of the two is more important. Not all websites have the same purpose and, therefore, the same needs. Are you using a platform more popular for blogging or brochure sites? A host optimized for transactions and concurrent users will work better for ecommerce businesses. Consider whether the hosting provider of your choice is optimized for the specific needs of your business.

What does having the best web hosting for dropshipping look like for customers like yourself? It means having the best solutions for setting up and managing your ecommerce store already included. Look for a host that bundles ready-to-use tools and plugins that keep you ahead of the competition.

What Features You Need To Look For

A great web hosting provider doesn’t just have the best hosting powered by robust technology solutions. It should also be optimized and easy to set up for end-users.

Managed hosting has become a standard in the web hosting industry for an excellent reason. Between combining the best solutions and an expert team that reduces setup and maintenance processes – web hosting no longer means spending loads of time on routine startup tasks.

When choosing the best web hosting for dropshipping, here are the five most important aspects to keep in mind:

• Ease of use
• Price
• Optimization for Ecommerce
• Performance and scalability
• Support

Ease of Use

The chosen web hosting provider should make the website setup and management processes as easy and intuitive as possible. The end-user should be able to get their ecommerce website ready to receive traffic and orders without having to deal with any complicated tasks of preparing the infrastructure. The creation process is much more straightforward if web hosts include a site builder to set up your storefront.

Another important consideration is that you might eventually want to change providers. Is your store able to be migrated easily? If you’re using a closed source provider like Wix or Shopify, it can be a lot harder to move your store over quickly. Some options only provide highly customized solutions that can not be used outside of their ecosystem. This can put a temporary dent in sales if your site is down for a day (or a week).

Price

Web hosting prices vary greatly depending on the type of plan you choose and what features are included. While it seems like a cheaper plan might help you save money on the initial setup phase, consider the long-term. You may lose out on sales due to poor performance and support. You want affordability but you don’t want to sacrifice quality.

Optimization for Ecommerce

Website building platforms for ecommerce require extra attention and time to make everything work correctly. A great web hosting provider knows the best technology solutions and how to customize a chosen ecommerce platform to make use of the best functionality.

Some managed ecommerce hosting plans come prepackaged with the best add-ons and plugins, as well as custom solutions for dropshipping to ensure usability.

Performance and Scalability

The technology stack in use should be well optimized for the needs of ecommerce and any specific platform to provide best performance. As your site gets more traffic, more resources are needed. When you run out of resources, your site experiences significant performance issues. How well your website can handle increasing amounts of traffic is key for ecommerce success.

A good host will have scalability options. Autoscaling enables your site to take on more traffic without having to upgrade your plan at a hefty fee. Cheaper, unlimited plans often push you to upgrade to the next tier, and the tier after that, until you’re paying thousands of dollars you didn’t expect.

Support

The quality of support a web hosting provider maintains is extremely important. Ecommerce websites are even more prone to technical issues and difficulties that are often not easy to troubleshoot without a strong system administrator. The best web hosting provider for dropshipping has a team of technology experts that can help you with any website issue that may occur.

Check to see if they have multiple forms of support available. LiveChat is great, 24/7/365 phone support is better. Email is also a great option. Do they prioritize certain customers? Will you get stuck waiting a few days? The longer your site has an issue, the more sales you’ll lose.

Shopify is one of the leading ecommerce platforms. Shopify hosting is often considered the best web hosting for dropshipping because it is easy to use and has a lot of add-ons available that benefit ecommerce sites. Its built-in store builder provides a handful of themes and other customization options for your storefront. You can get a website up and running in no time.

However, an important thing to keep in mind is that Shopify is proprietary. While you can successfully operate as a dropshipper never leaving the platform, moving away from Shopify isn’t easy. If you decide to migrate from Shopify to an open source ecommerce platform like WooCommerce or Magento, you’ll run into some issues, such as completely recreating your store from scratch. While there are benefits to both, understanding the differences between open source vs. proprietary software can help you decide which solution is right for you.

Shopify plan pricing starts between $29 to $299 monthly. They provide a handful of free basic themes, but the nicest options are premium. They can cost as much as $300. If you want advanced plugins, that’ll cost you too. Unfortunately, the additional charges do not end there. Shopify offers their own built-in solutions for payment processing. Like many ecommerce platforms, Shopify imposes transaction fees when using an external payment gateway.

Shopify ensures high performance and high scalability by using cloud-based infrastructure, the quality of which depends on which plan you have. When things go haywire, Shopify offers 24/7 email, chat and phone support. They also have a forum and knowledge base to help users find answers to frequently asked questions.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is another hosted ecommerce platform known for its user-friendly interface and quick ecommerce setup process. BigCommerce is similar to Shopify in many ways, as it is a full-stack ecommerce SaaS (Software as a Service) solution.

BigCommerce includes everything to launch and manage your dropshipping website fast and easily. It includes a website builder with a number of themes and extensions available. They also offer a number of apps and integrations for dropshipping.

Similar to Shopify, BigCommerce uses proprietary technology – so if you choose to move on to another ecommerce platform, you may face some difficulties during the migration process.

BigCommerce offers a few plans, ranging from $29.95 to $299.95 monthly. Prices for enterprise plans are not publicly available. BigCommerce does not currently impose any transaction fees, but there are payment processing fees.

BigCommerce offers a great level of scalability and has a built-in CDN. They also offer the same support options as Shopify including email, chat, phone, forum, and a help center.

SaaS vs. Self-Hosted Ecommerce Platforms

All ecommerce platforms form two big groups — SaaS or self-hosted solutions. Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer full-service SaaS solutions for ecommerce. Using a SaaS solution has its benefits, but also introduces disadvantages.

Using a SaaS for ecommerce means you have very limited control over how your website actually works. While web hosting providers like Shopify and BigCommerce try to offer a wide range of customization options and pre-made ecommerce operation solutions, you may be missing out on a lot of great tools.

Self-hosted ecommerce platforms like Magento or WooCommerce are free, open source solutions used by thousands of store owners. They’re also supported by a devoted community of developers. But self-hosted means the website-building process is separate from hosting.

Your dropshipping website may be a masterpiece, but choosing a cheap hosting provider with poor support and limited optimization for ecommerce will have repercussions. Chances are, you’ll experience bad performance and frequent downtime. So is it safer to go with a SaaS solution when choosing the best web hosting for dropshipping?

Web hosting that is fully optimized for ecommerce while giving you freedom and control over your website AND allows for endless customization is hard to find. It’s not impossible. What if we told you that a hybrid approach exists that combines the best features of ecommerce SaaS like Shopify – but retains the power of open source platforms like WooCommerce?

Hostdedi Has All the Features You Want as a Dropshipper

Hostdedi has transformed the world of web hosting for ecommerce by combining the best features of a SaaS solution and open source ecommerce platforms. That makes it the best web hosting for dropshipping.

Ecommerce content management systems like WooCommerce already have everything you need to build an ecommerce website for dropshipping. Numerous extensions can help you integrate third-party services to achieve extended functionality, or you can even develop an add-on of your own.

Hostdedi has taken the best of WooCommerce and extended its functionality to create a powerful website builder which can help you create a unique storefront with no coding required.

There are numerous reasons why StoreBuilder is better than the vast majority of ecommerce website building solutions. We’re fully optimized for ecommerce with a built-in CDN, advanced caching, autoscaling, and performance monitoring. We have curated the best WooCommerce extensions so you don’t have to test plugin stacks and figure out for yourself what works best.

Get the Best Hosting for Dropshipping With Hostdedi

Managed WooCommerce hosting with Hostdedi says “peace out” to hidden fees and lack of control over your store. With our impeccable performance and enhanced security, hosting with Hostdedi is truly unique. Check out our Hostdedi Managed WooCommerce Hosting plans to start your risk-free ecommerce hosting experience today.