There are many reasons why you may want to set up a website, but before you do, you need to decide on a hosting solution for that site. Hosting gives your website a place to exist on the web. Here’s a great explanation for what website hosting is, according to HostGator.com: “The web-hosting or server is much like the space that you rent out to have your business in. It’s merely the space itself. It does not include furnishings like shelves for your products, just as the web-hosting account doesn’t include a site for you to sell your products…Without the hosting services, you won’t have a place for your files to reside, so your domain would then become like a disconnected phone number in the phone directory, and your site files would have nowhere to stay.”
Picking a hosting company might seem like a minor choice, but to me, it is one of the most important decisions you can make with your company. To some extent it is your entire presence as your site is the gateway to the business. I always recommend WP Engine to my clients who work with WordPress sites, and there are many reasons why.
What is WP Engine?
WP Engine is a hosting platform for WordPress sites. They only work with WordPress, so that means that all their software and hardware is designed specifically for these sites. They offer managed hosting, which means that they are involved in the back end of your hosting, protecting you from hacks, offering high speed for your site, as well as backing up your site daily, just in case.
Reasons Why WP Engine is the Best WordPress Hosting Solution
1. Security – One of the most important things a hosting company needs to offer is security from hacks. I have spent days restoring and fixing the websites of clients who chose to go with a cheaper hosting company. The best part is they will handle all security issues for you if a security issue occurs, so you don’t have to do anything. At no cost to you, they will work on restoring your site.
2. Speed – WP Engine claims that their new WordPress architecture, EverCache, will allow thousands of users to visit your site at the same time without your website experiencing slow speed or being taken offline. If you know that your site will experience heavy traffic, you can contact them to provide temporary measures to accommodate the traffic. Furthermore, Google tracks site speed with WP Engine. Google will penalize sites that can’t handle many visitors, and will not always recommend that website high in its search results. If your speed is fast, that’s much better for your search engine optimization (SEO), and will allow more visitors to find your site.
3. Backups – You don’t have to pay extra to backup your site in case a hack or a malfunction occurs. WP Engine offers time machine based backups so you can easily restore a previous version in case hacking occurs, and they have one click restore points. And the best part is that they backup your site every single day with a backup formula that they create nightly.
4. Development – Whether you will do this yourself, or turn to a professional, WP Engine is great for development. WP Engine has all of their sites on SSD drives (no moving parts) and is very tech heavy. One great feature is that they offer a clone button of your live site that copies your site to staging environment. This is great for development as it create a “sandbox” site for development and testing without effecting your current, live site. They also have a staging environment (temp URL) to test the site before going live. These are some of the options they offer to developers, according to the WP Engine site:
“Having trouble running down a performance problem? We’ll do code-level PHP profiling to identify the issue and suggest code changes to address it, especially if there’s something inside our own architecture that you can take advantage of.
A PHP bug causing the white screen of death? We provide error logs to help you out.
Use direct SFTP access to your blog’s wp-content directory, so you can use your favorite HTML, CSS, and PHP editor on your laptop to customize your blog. No more editing code in little web fields!”
5. Support – The best part of a managed hosting company is the support they offer! Every single person who works at WP Engine is a WordPress expert, so if you’re having problems with a plugin, or have a question about updating a theme, you just need to contact them to hear their free, expert opinions!
The team at Behla Design is dedicated to creating visual experiences that effectively tell our clients’ stories while engaging, exciting, and enticing their customers. Our firm consists of the top web design and development, WordPress, search engine optimization (SEO), and copy writing professionals. Our founder, Andrew Behla, has worked in the graphic, print and web design industry for over twenty years.
If you’d like to discuss the best hosting options for your WordPress site, contact Behla Design.
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