Beyond Hosting WordPress: The Essential Guide to Hosting Your Own Website
WordPress is the world’s #1 content management system (CMS) and one of the most popular choices for websites. It’s easy to use and has a massive community behind it, making it an ideal platform for building your own website.
But sometimes, you want more control than what you get with WordPress. You might want to host your own website and take advantage of all the features that a premium host offers. Or perhaps, you’re looking for a self-hosted solution that doesn’t require you to hire a full-time web developer to set up. If so, you might want to consider investigating beyond hosting WordPress.
With beyond hosting WordPress, you get a fully-featured content management system that you can use to build your site exactly how you want it. And best of all, you don’t have to worry about dealing with hosting providers. The software is totally self-sufficient and requires very little maintenance. In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about hosting your own website using beyond WordPress.
The Essentials Of A Website
Before we begin, it’s important to note that there are several different kinds of websites. Some websites are much more complex than others and require a different set of skills to build and maintain. For example, if you’re looking for a basic blog with no e-commerce functionality, you might want to consider using WordPress or another free CMS. But if you’re looking for something more sophisticated, you might want to consider investing in a Content Management System (CMS), otherwise known as a full-blown website builder. And don’t just consider buying such a software package; you can also build a custom website from scratch and use the services of a professional web designer to do it for you. However, the good news is that choosing the right CMS makes the difference between a good and a bad website. A bad website made with WordPress inevitably turns out sloppy and lacking in professionalism. It’s also very difficult to upgrade and maintain because it’s built on such a popular and open-source platform. Having said that, WordPress is undoubtedly one of the most popular and most well-known CMSs around, powering nearly 30% of the websites on the internet today. As a result, if you decide that you want to host your own website, WordPress is the clear choice.
The Pros And Cons Of Using WordPress
Amongst the general public, WordPress is probably the most well-known and most widely-used CMS. It’s easy to use, offering the average person with no technical knowledge the ability to build a professional-looking website in just a few minutes. In other words, anyone can use WordPress to make a website, but it takes a bit of skill to bring it to life.
On the plus side, WordPress is extremely flexible and scalable, allowing you to add as many pages and posts as you want. It also handles all the back-end stuff, like caching, security, and content uploads, so you can sit back and focus on what matters most: developing your site’s content.
But despite all its benefits, WordPress is far from perfect and it has several disadvantages that you need to be aware of before deciding to use it for your website. First of all, since it’s so widely used, it’s not unusual for spammers to try and trick you into filling out a form with your personal information. So keep your wits about you and be sure to check for suspicious emails trying to scam you.
Second, according to web security firm Neuwber, over 7 million websites across the web are currently infected with malware. The vast majority of these websites are built with WordPress, which makes it extremely popular amongst scammers and hackers. So if we assume that your website is one of the 7 million that’s currently infected with malware, just how safe is your information really? Even if you choose to use a reputable web host, things like malware and spam still pose a fundamental threat to your website’s security, no matter what CMS you decide to use.
And what’s more, since WordPress is an open-source project, anyone can theoretically download it, modify it, and use it to spam or scam your website’s visitors. The fear of malware and spam is enough deterring factor for many website owners to decide against using WordPress.
Moving Away From WordPress
If you decide to move away from WordPress, there are several other popular CMSs that you can choose from, all boasting similar functionality and features to WordPress. The major difference is that instead of using a CMS, you’ll need to hire a web developer to set up a custom backend for your website. But if content is what you’re after, not the appearance of your website, you might want to consider paying for a web host that offers specialized services like SEO, content management, and blogging capabilities.
The last thing you want is to go through all the work of building your website and then discover that the platform is completely unprofessional and buggy. Just because WordPress is such a popular and well-known platform doesn’t mean that all its users are professionals. And while it’s true that many people use WordPress to create basic blogs and websites, it’s also quite possible that you’ll discover that the vast majority of the sites and blogs you come across are simply poorly-designed and amateurish.
Choosing A Hosting Provider
If you decide to use WordPress, you’ll need to choose a web host to provide the space for your blog and to store all your files. Just remember that unlike traditional Web hosts, whose only goal is to provide you with a platform for your website, the good news is that a ‘hosting’ provider specialising in WordPress actually provides you with many benefits. Just imagine how much easier your life would be if you could just upload your WordPress site and forget about it. Well, almost as easy as that. Because unlike regular Web hosts, who might ask you to configure a few settings or install plugins to get your site up and running, a WordPress-friendly hosting provider will take care of all that for you, setting up the blog with a few clicks of the mouse.
Now as we mentioned above, not all WordPress-friendly hosting providers are created equal. Some hosts might specialize in WordPress hosting but lack the features needed for a fully-functional website. This is why it’s important to do your research before investing in a hosting plan. Ideally, you’ll want to go for a plan that offers the general public the ability to install and manage a WordPress website. This way, you’ll be sure to get the full advantage of using one of the most popular and well-known software platforms on the internet today.