Wordpress Hosting Basics

WordPress Hosting Basics

Find a good hosting plan

Basic steps to get your WordPress site up and running

So, you have decided to set up a website on WordPress. It can be a blog, business site or an eCommerce store. How will you get it up and running? What all things you have to take care before getting started?

There are a few essential steps that you need to perform before being able to create the site. These include registering a domain name and finding a hosting service provider, and then installing WordPress on the hosting server.

First, let’s try and understand the process of registering a domain name. The domain name will be the address of your website, which helps users find and reach your site. Basically, you have to decide on a suitable domain name for your website that resonates with your blog topics or products. After selecting a domain name, you have to register it with an organization called ICANN through a domain registrar. You need to pay a certain amount for this process, and then you can use the domain name for one year. Every year, you need to renew it to continue using.

An easier way?

Too complicated to start with? Don’t worry! Thankfully, there is another way.

You will get a domain name free when you sign up with most of the popular commercial hosting service providers. And, most of them will have one-click WordPress installation, which is much simpler than the manual installation we have seen in the previous tutorial.

So, by choosing a good hosting service provider, and signing up for a suitable plan of theirs, you will be able to simply glide through the basic steps of creating a WordPress site. You will find the links to a few recommended service providers at the end of this tutorial.

Find a good hosting plan

Now, how will you find a suitable hosting plan?

There are several different kinds of hosting services available. However, it is important to choose something that is suitable to your site’s requirements. Without saying, you need to ensure good performance, continuous uptime, and reliable security for your website. Choosing a reputed hosting service would provide you with all of this.

In this tutorial, we will look into the several available hosting service types. Once you have a clear idea on the detailed aspects of each, you can choose one that is most appropriate for your website’s requirements.

Free Hosting This might seem to be a straightforward option, but it is not really the recommended one. There are several downsides to free hosting. First, the service provider might ask you to keep banner ads on your store for their financial viability. More importantly, reliability issues might come up and bite you any time. Furthermore, you might find yourself in a soup if the company decides to stop the service one fine day.

Shared Hosting This is the most popular and recommended hosting option when you are just starting out a blog, business, or an online store. Here, there will be a physical server, which will be shared by multiple site

As a beginner, you will find a decent set of options such as unmetered bandwidth, free domain name, email accounts and other essential features with the moderate pricing plan. And, you can easily upgrade to a higher plan whenever you need.

Some of the best hosting service providers for shared hosting include Bluehost, SiteGround, HostGator, etc.

VPS Hosting VPS stands for ‘Virtual Private Server”. This is more or less similar to shared hosting. However, the difference is that there will be a virtual partition that allows you to have an independent server space just for you. This gives you more control, as your site and all files associated with it are kept separate from other sites on the server.

You can look for this option, if yours is a medium sized business. There are good VPS options from reputed hosting companies such as Liquid Web, InMotionHosting, DreamHost, etc.

Dedicated Hosting A dedicated server means you are renting out an entire physical server from the hosting service provider. The advantage here is that you will have total control over this server, which means you can choose the operating system and even the hardware that is used. Getting a dedicated server is not at all required or recommended when you are starting out. It will be really expensive and won’t be easy to manage.

A dedicated server is suitable for a business that has huge traffic on a daily basis. Moreover, you need to put in considerable efforts to maintain the server as well. If you really need dedicated hosting, but can’t put in the time and effort, it is better you opt for managed hosting, which we will discuss next. Some of the popular companies that offer dedicated hosting are, iPage, SiteGround, Bluehost, etc.

Managed WordPress Hosting If you don’t have the resources to manage a dedicated server, you can opt for the managed WordPress hosting service offered by many companies. Basically, in such a scenario, all the technical aspects of your WordPress site such as security, backup, performance, uptime, etc., will be managed by the hosting company. This is a good prospect to avoid technical hassles, but it is considerably expensive compared to other options. When you site really grows in terms of traffic and users, you can think about managed WordPress hosting. Popular options for managed WordPress hosting include WPEngine, PageLy, SiteGround, etc.

Cloud-based hosting All the hosting options that we have discussed till now uses a single physical server. This is where cloud hosting differs, as it uses multiple, interconnected servers to create a single cluster. This means there is improved scope for scalability, performance and availability of resources.

One of the major advantages of cloud based hosting is that your hosting provider can charge you based on the actual usage of resources. And, whenever you need to increase the server capabilities according to the rising traffic, you can achieve that without hassles. Some of the

best examples for cloud based hosting would be Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, Kinsta, A2 Hosting, etc.

Basic steps to get your WordPress site up and running

If you are a beginner, who is just starting out, the most sensible option would be to opt for a shared hosting plan, which will be affordable, safe and reliable. It is quite easy to sign up with any of the popular hosting companies. Even though the signup process will be different for each, you can follow a set of basic steps to get going.

1. Go to the website of the hosting company of your choice. 2. Select a suitable plan. 3. Choose a domain name. 4. Enter the basic details, make payment, and create an account. 5. Go to the control panel of your hosting account, and install WordPress.

Once you have installed WordPress on your hosting server, you need to configure the site and understand the basic functionalities. More on that in the next tutorial.

A list of popular hosting service providers: ● Bluehost ● SiteGround ● Kinsta ● HostGator ● InMotionHosting ● Amazon Web Services ● DreamHost ● Liquid Web ● A2 Hosting ● Digital Ocean ● Cloudways