How to Buy a WordPress Hosting Package with Godaddy
Do you have a blog that you have worked on for years, but never managed to grow into a successful business? Wanting to finally put your talent to good use and make money from a hobby, you decide to see what Amazon’s affiliate program has to offer? You could become a digital marketing affiliate and sell and promote popular products on your blog. You could also integrate affiliate products into your blog’s content in a variety of ways, like displays for retail products, highlighted reviews, and more. You might consider whether or not to jump into the world of digital marketing and become a made-for-affiliate blogger, but first you will need to learn a little bit about WordPress hosting.
What is WordPress Hosting?
If you’ve never heard of WordPress hosting, you’re in for a treat. The following will teach you the basics of what it is and how it works so you can start your blog right away and begin reaping the benefits of this amazingly flexible and powerful platform.
What is Flexibility / Performance?
These are two very important factors to consider when shopping for a WordPress hosting plan. While most web hosts will tell you that their service is ultra-reliable and highly performant, the true test is how well the platform handles massive amounts of traffic. At any given moment, a popular blog may have tens of thousands of people visiting it, and if that blog’s performance is unsatisfactory, then his or her visitors may be experiencing a poor user experience because of it. With that in mind, here are some important points to make about performance and flexibility when choosing a WordPress hosting plan.
Flexibility
Flexibility is, in a word, incredible when it comes to WordPress hosting. This hosting platform allows you to effortlessly scale your site up and down as you see fit, and it does this with minimal effort. Not all web hosts are created equal, and many of them don’t provide the same level of flexibility that WordPress does. For example, when I checked out Bluehost’s website, I was immediately taken aback by how they pitched their service. According to Bluehost, your site will run smoothly because their servers are well-equipped with solid-state drives and other high-end hardware, which provides exceptional performance. While it’s great to have a strong static performance base to fall back on, having the ability to scale your hosting up or down as needed is something else entirely.
When comparing flexibility, you will need to consider how much you are willing to spend. While Bluehost offers a free level of hosting with very limited features, this price is completely worth it if you are looking for a reliable, highly functional, and secure environment. Otherwise, you should consider paying a little bit more for a less restrictive hosting plan.
Performance
Performance is, likewise, an important consideration when choosing a WordPress hosting plan. Just like with flexibility, performance varies from host to host, and it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what constitutes a satisfactory level of performance. When shopping for a WordPress hosting plan, make sure that the company you choose is dedicated to providing a fast and stable platform for websites. In addition to fast speeds, you should look for a web host that provides a lot of storage, backups, and security features. With that in mind, here are some important points to make about performance when choosing a WordPress hosting plan.
First off, make sure to compare apples to apples when it comes to performance. Just because one company boasts faster speeds than another, it does not mean that their service is worth your time or money. While it’s great to have a fast server, you will not get the best performance out of it unless it is served by a reputable company that knows how to manage these high-powered machines effectively.
I always like to compare performance on a site’s first load, because this is the time when you’re experiencing the most delay as a result of the traffic being routed to your server from somewhere else. As a general rule of thumb, look for a company that has multiple data centers, so if one center goes down due to a natural disaster or some other unforeseen event, then your site will not be affected. This is a distinct advantage of having a geographically diverse data collection team.
Now, let’s say that your site does suffer a performance issue due to a glitch in the company’s software. As a result of this glitch, your site loads slowly for a couple of days, and this obviously causes you some anxiety about your business’ viability. In this scenario, the best course of action is to contact the company’s support and express your concerns. From there, they will be able to troubleshoot the problem and get your site back up and running optimally again. This is why it’s so important to do your research before buying anything, including web hosting.
Reliability
Finally, you will need to consider the reliability of the web host when choosing a WordPress hosting plan. Like performance, reliability varies from company to company, and it’s difficult to determine what constitutes an acceptable level of reliability. When shopping for a WordPress hosting plan, look for a company that is committed to providing a reliable service, even if this means sacrificing some speed or performance in order to do so. As long as you’re not experiencing an unacceptably high level of downtime, it’s usually a worthwhile trade-off.
As I mentioned above, performance, flexibility, and reliability are all important factors to consider when choosing a WordPress hosting plan. Unfortunately, these three factors are difficult to quantify, especially since performance and reliability can vary from bad to good, and it’s hard to tell exactly how flexible a host truly is until you’ve used it. Still, at the end of the day, you will not be happy with any host that does not meet your needs, and this will inevitably result in unsatisfactory user experience. So, as you can see, there is a lot to think about when choosing a WordPress hosting plan, and this is why it’s important to do your research before buying anything.