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Why Use WordPress? 8 Reasons Why You Absolutely Need It

You’re going to build a website, right? With so many options available, making a choice just keeps getting harder. You’re probably familiar with household names and why some of them just aren’t for you, and still have some questions.

You know the WordPress name, but maybe you’ve never used it for page-building. Maybe you were just hitting high school when pioneers of content communities like Open Diary, Live Journal and Xanga were becoming the next big thing.

Everyone got to live out their Doogie Howser aspirations. Maybe more than a few of us have that lingering in our heads when we’re given WordPress as an option to build our sites. And it’s not uncommon to ask, Isn’t WordPress just for blogs?

Oh, no. There’s a reason 44% of all content management systems rely on WordPress.

When it comes to building a website, WordPress gets stereotyped as the “best for writers and bloggers” when its versatility is one of its biggest strengths.

That’s because there are two versions of WordPress. WordPress.com is geared towards blogging and WordPress.org is the open-source powerhouse we’re really talking about.

You want to know why WordPress? Let’s find out. Keep reading to learn some of the benefits of WordPress and why you should choose it.

Why Use WordPress? 8 Good Reasons

1. WordPress is Easy to Use Without Sacrificing Quality

It may have been a fashion designer that said, “simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance,” but the same is true for running a website. The more complicated your CMS, the harder it is to update, edit, and keep your site looking great.

When you start with WordPress, you aren’t starting from scratch. You technically get a fully composed website to work with that you pull elements into and customize the way you want.

You pick a theme, select plugins, edit code if you want, and pretty much start adding content. It can get as technical as you want, or you can keep it super simple. The beauty of WordPress is that you make it your own and it’s really not that hard to do.

The interface is user friendly and navigation is intuitive. If you find yourself in a bind, there is a robust support community both within WordPress itself and externally. If you use Managed WordPress, there’s even more support available to you.

Outside of the domain itself, everything you need to manage your site is at your fingertips.

Just because it is simple doesn’t mean it is “less.” The elegance within WordPress is in its simplicity because it doesn’t take a lot to understand how to make it great. That in itself makes it a huge asset.

2. Like it Custom? Have it Your Way

With so many options available for making a website, you may be wondering, why WordPress? Well, it’s highly customizable — which is a huge draw.

Look and feel are what make your site better and different from everyone else in your space. If you want to stand out, you’re going to have to do more than just load a basic template.

There are themes to suit everyone’s purposes and tastes. Better ones are highly customizable. You can pick one that’s gorgeous from the get-go, or use a tried and true one that you truly stamp your brand on. Some WordPress themes are faster than others. A little research goes a long way with WP.

Don’t like where you’ve ended up? You can make changes all day long. Found something you like on another site? Give it a whirl.

Whatever vision you have for your site, there’s a path forward using WordPress, and that’s why more people select it for their sites.

3. Tools? Try a Utility Knife

Plugins can increase and alter the functionality of your site, change how you monitor or otherwise interact with it, or even add ways to communicate with you.

The Essential Guide to WordPress Plugins >>

Whether you want to add images, give visitors a way to contact you, or supercharge your performance — there’s a plugin for that.

With simple, easy integrations, and constantly becoming more innovative, WordPress is simply Stellar at making your experience better than the rest.

There are free plugins, paid plugins, and even add-ons to those plugins that enhance the functions of those plugins. Think of add-ons as DLC for a game you’ve already installed.

Not only are there countless great plugins available, but a great combination can take your site from iron-tough to Iron Man. Test different combinations and see what works best for you, or leave it to the pros

4. Great for SEO. No Quip — It’s Just True

When it comes to search engine optimization, it’s more than just about keywords. Think of it this way.

If Google is a highway, your website is a driver. WordPress is the car flashing lights, honking horns, making turns, and (hopefully not) crashing with other cars on the road trying to get other drivers’ attention. But that’s not all!

WordPress is also being monitored by some cameras that are keeping an eye on the road to ensure everything is going smoothly, nobody is driving erratically, and figuring out who shows up at the green light first.

With fantastic plugins like Yoast SEO, your digital content strategy, and the simple fact that so many WP themes are SEO friendly to begin with — WordPress already has a leg up with SEO. It’s one of the key benefits of WordPress.

Further capabilities make it even more valid of a choice. Compression tools like EWWW Image Optimizer, compatibility with a variety of page builders like Beaver Builder and Elementor, and features like autogenerating a robots.txt file are important for your SEO efforts.

The Top 5 SEO Plugins for WordPress Compared >>

Site structure, page load time, and crawl are all affected by the way your site is designed and the size and quality of your resources. That all affects your page rank. WordPress helps make it a breeze.

5. Support So Robust, Emeril Issued A Cease And Desist

As WordPress is free, you’re going to have a ton of people both asking questions and looking for help on the internet. One of the best parts of choosing WordPress to build your site is its enormous support community.

Chances are, if you’ve run into an issue, someone else has too. Simply running a search will likely find you an answer or point you in the right direction.

If you’ve gone with managed, secure WordPress hosting, you’ve got access to an even more extensive panel of experts. There are even companies that provide WordPress Support Services because, as you might expect, with so much of the web dominated by WP, there’s absolutely a need!

As with any open source software, there are limits to what you can get for free on demand — but between YouTube and web forums, you can find an answer to nearly all your questions.

So why choose WordPress? Why do a bit more work? Frankly, everything looks and works better when you’ve put effort into it, and your website’s visitors can tell. 

Taking the time to look through support pages and learn can be the difference between staying and leaving when UX means so much to users. 

6. More Secure Than That Password You’re Never Going To Remember

Let’s face it. You can really bungle some things up pretty easily if you try. Keeping your site updated (not a problem with Managed Plans, by the way), installing SSL certificates, and enabling security options will go a long way.

There are some vulnerabilities on your site — and that is usually within maliciously-coded themes and plugins. How do you avoid that? Research.

If your theme or plugin has malicious code, it can affect visitors of your site and potentially people sharing resources on your server. Protect yourself with plugins and software that detect that right off the bat like iThemes

7. Flexibility That Makes Yoga Enthusiasts Jealous

Why choose WordPress when there are so many other options? Well, the flexibility of the CMS makes it an ideal choice for just about anyone.

Want a blog? Done. Want a site for your business? That’s easy. Heard membership sites are all the rage and want to build a subscription-based business? WordPress ticks that box, too.

Beginner? No problem. You don’t need to have coding experience. Veteran? Even better. There are options for you, too. There are countless plugins, tools, and interfaces available for transforming your site into virtually whatever you want.

Migrate your existing site over or start fresh. Want to take it a step further? There are plenty of coding tutorials available to guide beginners, and seasoned professionals will be right at home.

With all the resources available online, nothing can stop you from building a site the way you want it because it’s capable of being anything. And really, if you don’t want to learn but have the vision, you can also hire a skilled WordPress developer too.

If you’re wondering, why WordPress? just think of it this way. WordPress is a site builder tofu: it’s got all the important core elements you need. All you need to do is add your flavor.

8. It’s So Reliable, This is Almost a Car Commercial

It’s hard to believe WordPress has only been around since 2003 when it feels like it’s been around forever. With WordPress history going back to almost 20 years, you can’t go wrong with a classic.

Nearly half (44%) of all of the websites on the internet were built on WordPress. If you’ve visited a site today — you’ve probably seen a WordPress site (hint: you’re on one right now).

Why do people use WordPress? Easy. Because it’s great.

People trust WordPress because it consistently performs well. You can create beautiful, functional sites with it. Thanks to it being open source and highly customizable, it’s become the powerhouse that it is, and it’s only gaining more territory.

Generally speaking, people trust what is familiar. WordPress isn’t just familiar, it is used extensively and by industry leaders.

Don’t believe us? Some of the most recognizable brands and hottest celebrities have dropped sites built on WordPress: Clorox, Snoop Dogg, BBC America, Felicia Day, The Walt Disney Company … even The Official StarWars.com blog is built on WordPress.

I Don’t Think You’re Ready For This Query

Why use WordPress? Now you have eight great reasons. And we’re just scratching the surface of all the benefits of WordPress. There are countless reasons why you should use WordPress for your website. 

If you want a powerful, customizable site that won’t look like anyone else’s, WordPress is for you.

If you have tried drag and drop interfaces and feel like you’re playing a kid’s game instead of building a professional website, WordPress is for you.

If you want a simple, but elegant solution that doesn’t compromise on the tech flavor that today’s devs can offer, WordPress is for you.

Are you ready to try WordPress yet? We can start singing that ABBA song if you really want us to. Something makes us think you’ve gotten the point. 

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What is Shared Hosting? Definition & Guide

What is shared hosting? It’s a hosting solution especially popular amongst small and medium sized businesses. In this blog we’ll talk about how it works, which benefits it provides, and what differentiates shared hosting from fully managed hosting.

Shared Hosting Definition

What does shared hosting mean? Shared hosting is a model of service that rents space to multiple websites. They all share a single web server which implies costs are also split.

This type of hosting tier can host hundreds of users, and each of them has access to features such as monthly traffic, disk space, email accounts, databases, FTP accounts, and other additional features offered by their host.

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is one of the most common, but also the cheapest and the most basic hosting solutions out there. Here you rent space on a hosting server, but also share it with plenty of other sites alongside yours.

What is shared web hosting in terms of everyday life? You could compare it to renting an apartment. You have your own apartment (website), but also share certain resources and the building (server) with other tenants. 

This is the cheapest option for hosting — so prepare to get the least flexibility, security, and performance.

How Shared Servers Works

All the websites you see on the Internet are stored — or so-called “hosted” — on a server. That’s a type of computer that operates the websites on the Internet and allows them to be publicly available to users.

So, let’s say you start by typing the address of a particular website into your browser. The browser uses the URL to find out where this site is stored and requests information about it from the server.

The server then gives you all the necessary data, after which the web page you’d searched for appears in your browser. That allows you to interact with the website by clicking on links you find there, navigating to other pages, opening the files, filling out forms, etc.

So, what is shared hosting, and, more importantly, how does it work?

With a shared hosting plan, a single server keeps all the files for multiple sites at once. That also means it’s responsible for providing information about them, which is the opposite solution to a dedicated server — one that hosts just a single website.

5 Shared Hosting Features

What is shared hosting good for and which features do you get with it?

1. The Basics: Traffic & Disk Space

When you want to start a website, you need a certain amount of disk space for things like databases, media, and code files.

When you find a place to store the files on your website, you want to allow your visitors to access the data, which is where bandwidth comes in. Picture it as a tunnel — the wider it is, the more information can go through. Plenty of hosts offer unlimited bandwidth, but they limit traffic speed.

Pay attention to bandwidth traffic speed when searching for a shared hosting solution since it can affect your overall website performance.

2. (Free) Backups

There are plenty of situations where you can accidentally lose your data, like in the instance of cyber attacks, physical issues, system errors, and more. You can’t predict them, which is why it’s very important your shared hosting package includes backups too.

That way, you can restore your site and all the data pretty quickly, without having to build and recreate it all from scratch. Some companies offer free backups, while others charge them additionally. You can have automatic or manual backups.

3. Pre-Installed Applications

The majority of host companies include many different additions into their shared plans such as extra-fee services, unlimited options, pre-installed applications, and so on. You can easily get confused because you won’t know which features you really need.

To keep it simple, focus on the pre-installed apps. We’re talking about specific widgets that will help you establish your site pretty quickly as well as control all its features more efficiently. 

4. Control Panel

The control panel is one of the most essential and basic apps your hosting plan should include. Life gets way easier with this one because you’ll be able to manage even those complex server processes through a very simple and convenient interface.

One of the most popular control panel solutions is called cPanel. However, some hosting companies will offer you alternative options such as Webmin, Virtualmin, Zpanel, or a special control panel they’ve customized themselves (which may not always end up as such a great solution as it sounds at first).

Control panels mostly have some pre-installed add-ons and apps. That means you can easily switch important features on with just one click. For instance, you can manage some ecommerce functions like shopping carts or payment instruments.

5. Uptime

Uptime is time when a computer — or in this case, your website — operates online and when visitors can access it without any technical issues. It’s mostly listed in percentages from the overall expected uptime, which is 24/7. If your web project is not so big that it requires 100% uptime, you may be fine with the level of 98%.

Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting

Pros

  • It’s cheap. When you share a server with other users, you pay for a small portion of the entire server cost. This is why shared hosting costs less. Small to medium-sized businesses looking for low-cost solutions may opt for shared hosting. It’s also for those lacking a strong technical background to deal with dedicated servers.
  • No administration difficulties. If you’re struggling with the administration work for your server, a shared hosting plan could be a good solution because in most cases the web host takes the responsibility for that part as well as maintaining the hardware.
  • You can easily set up and manage multiple sites. Shared hosting is a simple and easy-to-use solution. Even beginners that are new to the hosting world can immediately start with it. The host company will set up the shared server as well as install all the software features you need. That way, you don’t have to configure the server or do any other complicated work by yourself. The company will monitor the servers, deal with security issues, and cover many other technical features or issues that occur along the way.

Cons

  • Slow on busy days. Shared hosting providers put restrictions on the server resources to avoid a single site overuse. That means if your site suddenly starts getting much more traffic and becomes popular, it can go down. That’s bad news if your site experiences an influx of traffic — such as on Black Friday or if your site suddenly goes viral.
  • It’s vulnerable to security questions. If someone hacks a single site on a server, that potentially threatens other websites that share it too. If the server gets hacked, every website goes down with it too. That means you don’t have to do anything wrong, but you can still end up at risk. Of course, shared hosting companies try to prevent this from happening by isolating websites, but it’s not 100% protection.

Shared Hosting vs Managed Hosting

Shared hosting is a setup where you share resources with other users on the same server. Since more clients use one physical server, the costs of shared hosting are pretty low.

Managed hosting is when you’re the only one using a single server. It costs more than shared hosting because the hosting company takes care of all specific requirements of your website and covers the technical side of it.

What to Look for When Choosing a Shared Hosting Provider

  • Efficient communication. You need a support team that will always be there to help with your questions and technical problems. They need to provide you with experts that are able to quickly fix any hosting issue that may occur along the way. Because after all, hosting support is important.
  • The hosting provider has to understand your needs. There are numerous host companies out there, but not each of them will provide you with what you want. Before you start considering any of them, try to set the budget, goals, and other components of your plan to understand which type of hosting would fit you best.
  • You need to be able to upgrade your server. Even if you take a pretty good shared hosting plan, you will still have limits to resource availability. When your site grows bigger and you start getting more traffic, a shared hosting plan will not be enough. In that case, it’s better to have a host that will allow you to upgrade your plan rather than finding a new host and migrating your website.

Extra tip: It’s better to go with a trusted company, especially if you’re a beginner. Shared hosting is an easy-to-maintain and cheap solution for new and small websites. Companies that have been on a market for a longer period of time have scalable hosting plans — starting from cheaper shared hosting to more expensive solutions.

Consider Hosting With Hostdedi

What is web hosting with Hostdedi and what benefits does it provide?

  • Scalable hosting plans. That means you can start with a basic option and upgrade it in the future due to the requirements of your business.
  • 100% uptime guarantee. With Hostdedi, your website will work 100% of the time without interruptions. Of course, there are always unpredictable exceptions such as malicious attacks or cPanel problems that can cause disruptions. However, Hostdedi will make up for the downtime you experience. If your website is down for 2 hours, you’ll get a 20-hour hosting credit.
  • Fast servers. Hostdedi owns over 25,000 servers in 3 data centers which is why they provide excellent performance and server speed. They also use advanced technologies that allow them to lower the memory consumption of the server, provide better security, and improve load balancing. 
  • Free domain and free migrations. The Hostdedi support team is there to help you with the whole migration process, no matter the reason.
  • Professional support team. If you have any questions or technical difficulties, feel free to contact Hostdedi’ award-winning expert support team that’s available 24/7/365.

The Hostdedi support team is also there to advise you on further steps when your business gets bigger. They’ll help and direct you when you decide to take a step further and get another hosting package that will allow you to get the most out of your website.

Try Fully Managed Hosting with Hostdedi

When your business becomes more popular and gets more traffic, running a website can be quite demanding and time consuming — which is why you’ll want to consider a managed hosting plan.

Managed hosting includes many different options, including WordPress (the most popular), Managed WooCommerce, and Managed Magento. Unlike shared hosting, here you get a whole server to yourself. The hosting provider is there to handle all the technical issues and backend aspects of your site, so you can focus on content and core business.

Hostdedi managed hosting provides numerous benefits, including:

  • Even better speed. When you’re on your own server, you don’t share resources with anyone, which speeds up your website.
  • Easy-to-use and simple control panel. Managed WordPress hosting packages allow you to approach the control panel with a simple interface as well as manage multiple WordPress sites from one place.
  • Additional applications & features. SaaS systems, rich media eCommerce — amongst plenty of additions, Hostdedi is also the only company that gives a user the source code to fully customize their layouts and designs.

Start Your Hostdedi Hosting Today

For the limitless potential for your website and 24/7/365 support, explore Hostdedi hosting plans today. You get a free 2-week trial of fully managed hosting and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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Why Do You Need Hosting for WordPress? Advantages & Features

You’re ready to take the leap and launch your new website, but you keep hearing that you need to choose a hosting service first. So why do you need hosting for WordPress? Quite simply, because your site can’t function without it. 

Who you choose to host your site is as important as why you need a host. This post explains why you need a host with WordPress.

Why Do You Need Hosting for WordPress?

WordPress is software. It runs additional software to bring your content, images, and products to the browser. 

WordPress stores your content in a database. The application server queries the database and formats your content, then pushes it to a visitor’s browser. The person can then read and interact with your content from their mobile device or desktop computer. 

That’s a semi-technical way of saying that you need a service to hold the software and your content to get it online. You need a company to connect your WordPress to the internet pipes. The service listens to calls for your site’s domain from anywhere in the world and delivers the website to the visitor’s browser. 

The solution to making all of those steps happen is a WordPress host. There are many forms of hosting. They come at different price points, offering various levels of services and competencies.

With all the pieces mentioned above, you can imagine multiple points of potential failure and hundreds of ways things can go wrong. Making sure your website works properly for your customers is why you need managed WordPress hosting. 

Advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur C. Clarke, British science fiction writer.

You could rely on magic or work with a managed WordPress hosting company. A managed hosting company makes the internet magic happen for you.

With fully managed WordPress hosting from Hostdedi, you have the advantage of:

  • Speed. Your site is guaranteed to load quickly for visitors. 
  • Scalability. You can build out your site’s features as much as you desire. You also can have as many visitors as you want. Neither will slow your site down.
  • Security. You don’t have to worry about hacks or anyone stealing your customer’s private information.
  • Support. We don’t just launch your site, then leave you. We’re here to help whenever you need it.

With other shared hosting services, you get what you pay for. You might encounter slow site performance, which is detrimental to the success of your website. You might have to deal with an underpowered system, resulting in connection errors. 

The support technicians might not be WordPress experts and can’t help you when problems arise. You’ll end up asking yourself when it’s time to leave shared hosting and upgrade to managed WordPress. 

It’s better to start in the right place from the beginning and save yourself the hassle.

Features of Hostdedi Fully Managed WordPress Hosting

You can count on various features with fully managed WordPress hosting that you don’t get with shared hosting services. These features make the internet magic happen without you needing to think more about it.

As a result, you can focus on building your business instead of worrying about why your website isn’t functioning.

Hostdedi Fully Managed WordPress Hosting includes the following features.

Scalability 

What if you have a special discount sale or you offer something for Cyber Monday or Black Friday? You’ll have a short period with more traffic, more orders, and therefore a need for more server power.

Hostdedi WordPress hosting provides you with a seamless, scalable server configuration. It expands and subtracts according to your site’s traffic and bypasses the capacity limits. In other words, your site won’t crash because of increased traffic.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Auto Scaling >>

Security 

Hostdedi’s security services are essential for the safety of your business and your customers’ information. They provide you with ongoing malware monitoring, automatics SSL, PHP optimization, and automatic plugin updates.

In addition, instant backups secure your work and keep your data from getting lost or corrupted. In other words, Hostdedi protects you and your customers from hacks. 

Speed

Google considers the speed at which visitors receive your content when determining whether your site ranks for a good user experience. Core Web Vitals are now ranking factors for search engine results. 

With a multi-layered caching service built on the latest PHP version, and server caching with Varnish, Hostdedi answers powerfully to your need for speed. It integrates with the content delivery network across its owned data centers and with premium image compression. Hostdedi optimizes your site for fast delivery.

It’s a fancy way of saying that visitors won’t have to wait for your site to load. And Google rewards you for having a fast site.

5 Advanced Techniques to Speed Up Your WordPress Site >>

Support 

Hostdedi provides tools that help with an optimized rollout and configuration of the servers. They provide you with separate staging and production servers. These servers allow you to test new features or a new layout on the staging server.

This server means the trial is out of sight from the public and doesn’t interrupt the existing site’s business. You can use the staging server with the one-click staging or cloning of your site. You can test your new tool or design using all the data from your live site. 

With Hostdedi hosting, you have access to a team of WordPress experts who have experience working with thousands of sites. Put simply; you aren’t alone. We’re always here to help.

Why Hosting Support Is Important >>

Choose Fully Managed Hosting from Hostdedi

Your website contributes to your business’s bottom line, so signing up for managed WordPress hosting is a prudent decision. It optimizes your site’s visibility on the net. It’s kept secure from hacking and corrupted data. And, when something goes wrong, you have a team of experts at your fingertips.

To learn more about Hostdedi fully managed hosting or to host your site with us, contact us today. Or start a free trial of Fully Managed WordPress hosting.

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