Managed WordPress Hosting Gets Cheaper and Easier
Few can dispute that WordPress is a great website and blogging platform. WordPress has also had its critics along the way. Common targets of insults for WordPress have usually been in the areas of speed, security, and concurrent session display-ability, and the need for constant version updating.
To eliminate (or at least reduce) the need for paying staff and helpers to manually manage WordPress to assure optimum performance, developers and web server techs coined a term called Managed WordPress Hosting a couple of years ago.
What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting involves hosting a WordPress website on a web server that has been specially configured for WordPress websites. Once the WordPress website is setup on the web server, managed WordPress hosting allows for five important features that are either rare or not needed with standard websites:
- Configuration for Speed – WordPress is a special type of website software that requires two things—software files and a database. They both work together to display pages and posts to the world through what we call a website. Hosting companies that support standard websites AND WordPress typically will not go through the additional configurations needed to allow WordPress to function at an optimal level.
- Configuration for Concurrent Viewing – Imagine running a webinar with 2,000 people. Suddenly, you tell all of your attendees to visit your website for a special promotion only available for up to 30 minutes after your webinar is complete. Imagine the angry phone calls and emails you would get when only 100 or 200 of those attendees could visit your website at a time. We call this limited concurrent sessions.
Managed WordPress hosting involves adding special configurations to allow for several thousands of concurrent viewers. If you are paying $2-$5 per month for your website hosting, you most likely are not able to have thousands of visitors viewing the pages of your WordPress website at the same time.
Of course, chances are probably pretty good that you get far less than even 500 concurrent visitors. Yet, you have to ask yourself a very important question: “Do I hope to one day get MORE than 500 concurrent visitors to my website?”
Everyone in business should have a big fat “YES!” in answer to that question. So, plan for the future. Start thinking now to accommodate higher amounts of visitation later.
- Daily Backup – Your WordPress website needs to be backed-up every day. There’s no telling when the time might come where you need to revert to a previous version of your website as an attempt to fix WordPress viruses. Standard hosting companies typically offer daily backups for five days. Managed WordPress hosting solutions typically backup your website every day for a period of days ranging from 15 to 30 days. That way, you can reset your website to a variety of days where the website was last functional if an issue arises.
- Updates Occur Automatically – WordPress has been launching version updates every couple of weeks over the past year. The usual process to update a WordPress version is to backup all of your files and database (usually taking 30 minutes to an hour or more for manual backups), then click the update links to install the new WordPress version.
NOTE: Two of the most dangerous things you can do with a WordPress website are:
A) NEVER updating your WordPress version, and
B) Updating your WordPress version without backing up first. - Automatic Page Caching – Since WordPress pulls its content of pages and posts from a database, the idea of “caching” came into play several years ago so that database-driven pages would appear static. Free and low-fee plugins were designed to aid in the caching process. Not only would caching speed up the process of displaying those pages and posts to its visitors, but it would also become instrumental in allowing posts and pages to more easily be indexed on Google search results.
Unfortunately, the caching plugins of today do not work with every WordPress installation and every possible web server configuration. Heck, sometimes cache plugins conflict with other plugins!
Managed WordPress hosting companies eventually learned to include caching from the server level instead of relying on caching plugins to do the job. That way there would be no conflict with other plugins or reliance on custom configurations of WordPress or server settings.
- Security – A high quality managed WordPress website hosting company will include automated security checks and site locks for all the websites it hosts. It is to the hosting company’s advantage to be aware of security breaches just as it is important to protect its individual hosting customer websites. One break-in could result in any or ALL websites on a server to be jeopardized.
If none of the reasons mentioned so far were enough of an argument for a WordPress website owner to purchase managed WordPress hosting, this one would be worth it all by itself! Protect your website and be protected from other peoples’ websites hosted on the same server with managed WordPress hosting!
- Comment Spam Reduction – This one is a bit more rare and might even seem a bit trite to some. But, BestDomainPlace.com’s managed WordPress hosting offers it so I thought I would bring it up as an important component of any managed WordPress hosting package.
WordPress has built-in features for reducing comment spam. But, programmers and scammers are a feisty bunch. They love to circumvent WordPress core programming by getting through the comment spam blockers and getting their automated comments with promotion links to hit your blog. Your greatest defense to prevent comment spam is server-wide prevention, which is only available through managed WordPress hosting.
Why Managed WordPress Hosting is Expensive
The typical managed WordPress hosting company charges $50 to $150 per month. Paying extra is worth it when you don’t have to worry about paying your WordPress developer to update your website every month (or week).
Paying managed WordPress fees are also worthwhile when something goes wrong. Instead of paying emergency fix-it rates to your developer, you would simply call your WordPress managed hosting company and tell them to fix the problem. Quite possibly, the issue is discovered and fixed through 24/7 website monitoring before you even know there is a problem.
Small hosting companies are charging these higher prices because they will usually include the updating of all of your plugins as part of their maintenance package. This one-on-one attention assures your website is compatible with the new plugin versions.
Finally Managed WordPress Hosting is Cheap!
The door has recently opened for high quality, but less expensive managed WordPress hosting. The big hosting companies like GoDaddy and AEG-owned HostGator, BlueHost and 1and1 all have a recently implemented managed hosting for WordPress. BestDomainPlace.com is Marty Dickinson’s reseller site for the same hosting system used by GoDaddy. So, it’s safe to say that BestDomainPlace and GoDaddy promote the same managed WordPress hosting platform.
3 Things I Like About BestDomainPlace.com Managed WordPress Hosting
I (Marty Dickinson) have been a reseller for this domain name registrar system for the past 11 years. When WordPress became my recommended and endorsed website platform, I was literally forced to get a dedicated server so that I could offer quality WordPress hosting for my web marketing clients.
I would stand in front of hundreds of people from stage and say “Register your domain name at BestDomainPlace.com!” But, when it came to website hosting, I would always suggest they would call me directly to get website hosting on my dedicated server.
Today, that is all changed! BestDomainPlace.com is a GREAT place to host your WordPress website…as long as you get the managed WordPress website hosting option.
Here are three things I personally like about BestDomainPlace.com managed WordPress hosting:
- 30-Day Rollback – Since our system backs-up your WordPress website EVERY day for 30 straight days, you can quickly and easily press a few buttons to restore your website from any previous day where your website was last functional. There are numerous reasons you would want to do this…and they’re not all related to hosting or hacking. Yes, “user error” could be a reason to need a backup restore. That’s all included with our managed WordPress hosting package.
- 2,000 Concurrent Connections Tested – Our system has been tested and certified to be capable of serving 2,000 concurrent connections from website visitors. The actual capability number of concurrent visitors is probably more, but very rarely will you discover a hosting company that has actually tested their own capability for deliverability. Even MORE rare would you find this on a cheap hosting system that does not have special configurations for WordPress!
- FREE Migration!! – This is the best of all. Once you purchase the managed WordPress hosting level of your liking, all you need to do is call the 24/7 support number and they will either walk you through the process of migrating your website to the new managed platform…or, they’ll just do it for you while you’re on the phone! And, there’s NO CHARGE for this migration!
Next Steps
To sum it all up, here’s my recommendation…
- Click Here Now >> to get to the managed WordPress hosting options.
- Select the managed WordPress option that’s right for you.
- Login to your existing account if you have domain names registered at BestDomainPlace.com or start a new account after you have selected your preferred hosting type.
- Complete the hosting transaction.
- Follow the steps provided after purchase to migrate your website to the managed WordPress platform.
- Call support for free help to answer any questions or to guide you through the process…or to just DO the migration process for you.
It really is just that simple. Your website is the most important component of your entire web marketing process. Don’t let it go un-managed.
Having your WordPress website managed is a necessity today because of all the reasons described above. Don’t let another day go by with a slow WordPress website that requires manual maintenance. Spend your time building your business instead of troubleshooting website issues and you’ll enjoy even more benefits of the great content management system we all know to be WordPress.
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Marty Dickinson is a two-time co-author of Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and is a 20-year marketer and web marketing services provider under the company HereNextYear.com in Denver, CO.