WordPress Hosting FAQs
Quick answers to your burning questions…
What is WordPress Hosting?
When people refer to WordPress hosting they are talking about any web hosting service that supports the open source WordPress content management system. In other words, WordPress is a platform for managing the content on your website, but your website (and WordPress) needs to be hosted on a web server connected to the internet. The specific hosting requirements for WordPress are covered here, and our recommendations for WordPress host are listed here.
What is Managed WordPress hosting?
The term “managed WordPress hosting” is used to describe the new breed of hosting companies and services which are focused purely on WordPress. Unlike a traditional hosting company these services don’t allow you to run just any CMS, they only support WordPress which will typically come pre-installed and tuned for performance. For example WPX Hosting. These new WordPress specialists only run the one CMS and arguably provide a better more specialist service as a result.
What is Word Press Engine?
“Word Press engine” is long hand for ‘WP Engine’ which is the largest and best known managed WordPress hosting provider. Based in Austin, Texas, WP Engine were one of the earliest to recognize the accelerating demand for specialist WordPress hosting services and support.
WP Engine’s plans are more expensive that your standard shared plans, so are typically used by larger, more established sites and businesses with more budget. We use WP Engine to host this site because we are happy to pay the extra cost to rest easy knowing our site is in really good hands at all times.
Why WordPress hosting?
Why use WordPress hosting? Managed WordPress hosting plans are typically more expensive, but they offer a few extras which are worth the expense…First, they deal in nothing but WordPress so you know all the staff and support are experts. They live and breathe it day in and day out. Second, they will usually offer advanced services standard, including automated backups and updates for the core CMS, themes and plugins. And lastly, their platform is optimized to run WordPress fast and securely.
What is the best WordPress hosting?
The answer to this question must be based on a balanced view of performance, service, price and reputation. We’ve done the testing and in our opinion Siteground is the best shared provider while we recommend WPX Hosting as the best managed option. If you are still keen to shop around check out our reviews here.
How to choose WordPress web hosting?
We’ve tried to answer this in the section above on comparing the best WordPress hosting providers. You can also watch the Beginners Guide to WordPress Hosting video above too.
Is there any SEO benefit to hosting on WordPress.com?
In short, no. If you use WordPress.com you’ll have a domain like mysite.wordpress.com and that doesn’t infer any benefit from the undoubted strength of the WordPress.com domain, as it is technically a different domain. If the parent domain did pass on benefit then all free hosted domains would rank like crazy (they don’t). And if you use the paid option from WordPress.com, with your own domain (mysite.com) then there is no more or less SEO benefit compared to any other host.
Which host is good for a blog with up to 1000 daily visitors?
Any of the shared hosting plans ranked above will comfortably handle 1000, or even 2000 visitors a day as long as your site is well optimized. Where things get tricky is if all those visitors arrive at the same time. If you expect big spikes in traffic then you would be well advised to go with a managed service capable of handling more concurrent traffic.
How much does WP hosting cost?
Good quality hosting starts around USD$5/mth, though you can sometimes get better pricing when the big hosts are offering special deals. This price level is for a standard shared plan. Do not be tempted by the $1/mth hosts, you get what you pay for. Pricing for managed services usually start around $20/mth for the entry level plans. $25-30 is pretty typical. From there you start getting into VPS and dedicated server territory and here the price really depends on how much capacity you need. We’re on the $99/mth Professional Plan with WP Engine, but we also have a dedicated server for other projects which costs us $165/mth.
How to secure WordPress web hosting?
This is a great question and we could write alot more on this than we have space for here, indeed we already have. Check out these articles from the blog on essential WordPress security.
How to install WordPress?
If you are using a regular shared WordPress hosting provider they will almost certainly provide a website control panel with one of the popular script installers such as Installatron, Fantastico, Scriptaculous or possibly the newer Mojo Marketplace option which seems to be increasingly popular. Each of these options works in much the same way…login to your control panel and locate the installer tool. Click on the icon and follow the prompts to install WordPress. These tools all let you install a wide variety of web applications, but WordPress will always be top of the list as the most popular of all. You’ll be asked a few questions such as what directory you want to install in (usually it should go in the root directory, i.e yourdomain.com/) and what title to give your site, but once you have answered these you literally click install and wait a few minutes for the tool to do it’s job once installed you will be able to login and start managing your themes, plugins and content. I’m assuming here of course that you have already configured your domain name to point to your account. Check out our post on domains and DNS basics if you need help with this.
Which hosting is best for WordPress, Linux or Windows?
Linux is the best hosting for WordPress. You can install WordPress on a Windows server, but it usually requires additional configuration and in our experience is usually a bit of a hassle. We always recommend hosting your sites on a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP set up, commonly known as a LAMP stack. Web hosts offering a PHP and MySQL service will usually have simple one click installations of WordPress as well which makes life much easier.
How to upload WordPress to your host?
Long gone are the days of having to manually upload and install WordPress on your hosting account. WordPress was famous for it’s 5min install, but these days it can be done in less than a minute using one of the common installers as described above. Don’t bother with a hosting provider that doesn’t take care of this for you…unless of course you are managing your own dedicated server, in which case you don’t need our help
Do I need CPanel to host WordPress
No, but it sure makes everything a lot easier in terms of installation and then managing email accounts on your domain etc. If you are looking at a shared hosting plan for your site I would go with a host that offers CPanel.
