This week I agreed to work on a WordPress site that immediately proved to have significant problems. The client had seen the results I obtained on other sites and then asked me to work on optimizing his own. I immediately did a screening of the site and I clearly told him that, despite my skills, I would never be able to achieve those results. I could improve his site a lot, for sure, but not make it to the top. It is important to clarify that, however much it can be done, there are multiple factors that affect the possibility of optimizing and making WP sites fast and performing, so I decided to write a series of articles that will certainly clarify and make the choices more aware. of those who decide to launch their website. The main problem in the site in question was of the hardware type, but not only, but even the plugins and the theme in fact also had considerable criticalities that prevented me to optimize more.
HOW TO CHOSE THE RIGHT HOSTING
When you have to choose what type of hosting to use you are making a fundamental choice on which the speed and also the good management of your site may depend or not. There are thousands of hosting with as many proposals, at this stage, my advice is to carefully evaluate the choice also according to the traffic that your site will have to support, the type of framework that we will install but not only.
Having a fast hosting with dedicated hardware features is a choice that will pay off in the future as well. There are hosting that offer an optimized service for WordPress such as A2HOSTING which dedicates ample space in this sense to optimizations dedicated to this platform.
Or you can choose a VPS with high-quality servers like VULTR with a really competitive cost, and you get guaranteed resources to be able to launch your own website. Note, however, that you will have to take into account that in addition to the price of the machine you will also have to manage the server with a control panel that you will have to install, buy separately and know how to manage, and this is an extra cost.
I advise you to always choose a hosting that has 24 × 7 support or in any case reachable through ticketing and with fast response times. PLEASE NOTE: Forget being able to “call” at all hours because your site has an image that loads “slowly” or does not “work” after you have installed the 101 th plugin. This type of services and support are not part of hosting and are specific tasks for a developer, which has a cost. Even if your site is hacked, although there are several server-level settings that can “protect you”, it’s also your responsibilities when installing a plugin or theme or when not keeping your site tidy and well updated.
“But I don’t need a developer, that costs each and every month! I can update the site myself, two clicks are enough “- Then when that update hangs the site and you are unable to access, you will have 2 ways to fix it:
- Attempt DIY with all the associated risks
- -Call the developer and pay him double if not triple the monthly subscription cost
Having someone who, while you sleep, checks that everything is fine is one of the best investments you can make for your site, especially if your professional activity is directly involved in it.
In this case, the proverb “WHO SPENDS LESS, THE MORE SPENDS” really fits well.
