Answering Your Web Hosting Questions!
– So, you're looking at web hosting and your head is spinning. What is web hosting? Does every website need it? What should you look for in a web host? Today, I'm clearing up
these questions and more, and I'll give you some expert
tips and tricks on web hosting to help you supercharge
your hosting experience. When you're new to the
website building world, you're left to figure
out so many unknowns. I wanna clear those up today, starting with the basic
breakdown of what web hosting is. A web hosting account is
simply a section of a server or a beefy computer that holds the website
files that you create or the files that a website
builder creates for you.
Web hosting in its basic form is like having a Dropbox
or Google Drive account. You're paying for file
storage on a cloud platform. So, does everyone need web hosting? If you load a page on the internet, it's hosted on a server somewhere. So, while every website needs web hosting, you might not need to purchase
web hosting for your website. If you're using a platform like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify,
these are hosted platforms. This means you can just
pay one monthly fee to access the website builder and they will automatically
host it for you on their own in-house hosting. If you're using a self-hosted
platform like wordpress.org, this is when you need to
purchase your own web hosting. One of the most common
questions I get asked is, "Christian, does server location matter?" "If I'm located in the UK, should my web server also
be located in the UK?" As a general rule, yes, but
there are a few factors.
First, you ideally want
your server located as close to your target
audience as possible. If you're a local business, having your server located
in the same country and same region, if possible, makes sense. This is because the farther
a server is from your viewer, the longer it takes for the files to be transferred across the world via the internet to the
viewers' local device. But if you're starting a
blog with a global reach, server location becomes less important. I generally would recommend
getting a web host that offers servers in your country. But if that's difficult to find, make sure to prioritize other features of the web hosting as well.
And speaking of other features, your hosting experience will vary greatly depending on the hosting
product you choose. Hosts have different plans
and product features, but there are generally two types of web hosting to consider: managed and unmanaged. Most basic web hosting is unmanaged. This means you'll be
responsible for the management, speed, and security of your own website. Your web host will make
sure the server itself is reliable and stays up, but you are responsible for
keeping your website backed up, secure, and safe from hackers. With managed web hosting, your web hosting provider will also help with the speed and
security of your website. This is typically done
through automatic backups, automatic updates, and
continuous security scanning for any vulnerabilities. So, in addition to maintaining
the web server itself, they will also take steps to ensure your individual website is optimized as best as possible on the server.
Managed hosting is most commonly seen in the context of WordPress. Now, a great benefit to purchasing
managed WordPress hosting is an uncommon but helpful feature. These hosts offer staging capabilities, which will supercharge
your development process. If you've ever worked
with WordPress before, you know the struggle when
you're trying to redo a page or maybe even redo the entire site, and you have to publish the page publicly, and overwrite the live version
in order to view changes. A simple fix to this is
using a staging environment.
This is where the entire WordPress site gets duplicated to a subdomain like staging.yourdomain.com. You can make as many changes
to the WordPress site as you want without
affecting the live site. When you're ready to publish,
you can just click a button, and the staging version is
swapped to the live site. A staging environment isn't
an absolutely necessary for WordPress if you're just starting out, but many starter web hosting
plans are starting to offer it and it's becoming more common to see.
At this point, you might feel overwhelmed about what to look for in a web host. How can you be sure you're
picking the right plan? There are a few priorities. I like to look forward to ensure a quality hosting experience. First, make sure your web
host has automatic backups. You never wanna be in a position of needing to restore a
backup if something goes wrong and realizing you don't have one. At a minimum, I like to see
automatic, weekly backups, but I recommend finding the
host that takes backups daily. You'll also need to make the call of whether you want managed
or unmanaged hosting. Unmanaged can be fine if you're tech-savvy and don't mind maintaining your website. But if you want an it-just-works solution that's simple to use,
go for managed hosting. This would be a host like
Flywheel or WP Engine. I also like to look for a free SSL to be included in web hosting. An SSL certificate is what gives you that lock icon in your browser
next to your domain name.
Without SSL, Google Chrome
displays a Not Secure warning that's troubling for visitors. At this point, it's become the
industry standard for hosts to offer free SSL certificates. I wouldn't say to avoid a web host if they don't offer SSL, but it's a bonus if you're
able to find a match that does offer it. Lastly, much of your web hosting decision comes down to personal needs. Do you need budget hosting
that's as cheap as possible while being passable to get you started? Are you willing to spend
more money on hosting that's smooth and offers
a luxury experience? You can find decent, reliable
hosting from many sources, but the setup experience,
management panel, and customer support will
vary widely based on the host.
Now, I'd like to address a
few things I get asked often, "What is DNS and what is CloudFlare?" DNS stands for Domain Name System and you can think of it like
the phone book of the internet. Whatever someone types yourdomain.com, the DNS system looks it up and
determines which web server to grab the website files from. There are a number of ways to handle DNS. You could use your web host's name servers if they offer them and this is the easiest way
to set up your web hosting.
However, if you opt
for a managed web hosts like Flywheel, Cloudways, or WP Engine, these hosts do not provide named servers. This means you need to use
an external DNS platform like CloudFlare. Instead of your web host
managing site traffic, CloudFlare acts as the
mediator to route traffic, to its final destination. CloudFlare, brings some extra benefits, like a security firewall
and faster speeds. CloudFlare stores parts
of your website files on hundreds of servers across the world. This means when a user
types in your website, CloudFlare finds the
closest geographic server in their network to begin
serving the website files, then, it only has to go to
your web server for a few files that the content delivery
network doesn't save. Some of the top companies in
the world trust CloudFlare to be an extra layer of speed and security for their website. I want to clarify that
CloudFlare is not a web host. You still need to provide
a web hosting account, but it's a free power up to any website that is worth the extra
few minutes to set up. So, hopefully, you now
have a better understanding of web hosting and what to look for.
If you're wondering which
web hosts I recommend, click here to watch my
video on my top web hosts for any budget. With that being said, I'll
catch you guys next time..
