How Much Hosting Space Do I Need for WordPress?
WordPress is the most popular content platform in the world, and for good reason. It’s flexible, free, and open-source, which means it’s available to everyone. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good ol’ word of mouth marketing campaign?
The fact is, WordPress is extremely flexible, which can be both a blessing and a curse. While it may be easy to underestimate the power of a well-crafted blog, WordPress users can easily underestimate the resource requirements for keeping up with demand. Luckily, we have you covered on this front. In this article, we’ll lay out everything you need to know about WordPress hosting, including why it’s so much more than you might think.
Features & Platform Overview
WordPress features a massive ecosystem surrounding the platform itself. From hosting to security to custom APIs, WordPress has you covered. To get a sense of what’s available to you, take a look at the features page for WordPress. In it, you’ll see an overview of all the platform’s features, as well as detailed descriptions of each one. It may feel like a lot to take in, but trust us, you’ll feel like a pro in no time.
Hosting
Speaking of pros, let’s chat about hosting. When it comes to building a business blog or an authoritative personal site, you’ll most likely end up investing in web hosting. After all, you’ll need a place to store all that content you’re curating. Whether you choose to go with a free or premium web host, you’ll most likely end up paying a subscription fee every month. Why? Hosting providers usually offer different levels of service and features, and as we’ve established, WordPress is extremely flexible when it comes to what it can offer. In the below screenshot, you can see that WordPress can run on multiple servers, using different domains, completely independently of one another. This means you can scale up your resources whenever you need to (with the exception of your content, of course).
What’s more is that the platform offers a variety of hosting solutions. From shared hosting all the way up to dedicated servers, you’re bound to find something that suits your needs. If you do decide to go for dedicated hosting, you can rest assured that you’re getting a secure, stable platform that’s been specifically designed for WordPress.
Security
Last but not least, we have security. If you’re reading this, you’re probably already aware that WordPress is incredibly vulnerable to hacks and data breaches. This is mostly because of its extremely flexible nature and the fact that it’s so widely used. It would be fair to say that WordPress is one of the most insecure large-scale platforms out there. The good news is you don’t have to take our word for it. WordPress itself provides sufficient documentation on how to keep your site’s data secure, including how to use the various hashing functions built into the platform. If you follow these steps, you can be sure that your site will remain secure even if a malicious actor decides to target it.
In an ideal situation, you shouldn’t need to run any kind of server-side software to keep your site secure. However, if you do, then you’ll need to make sure that your web host handles these tasks for you. Otherwise, you’ll need to find a web host that offers this feature.
Custom APIs
Last but not least, we have custom APIs. These are application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow you to integrate specific features and functionality into your WordPress site. For example, you might want to create a calendar feed that automatically refreshes daily, a contact form that emails you when it’s submitted, or a custom background that changes based on the time of day. The API documentation for WordPress provides a complete overview of the various APIs a developer can utilize to modify or enhance their site’s functionality.
You can integrate several different APIs in your site to create distinct features. For example, you could add the daily calendar feed mentioned earlier, and integrate a contact form with the WordPress REST API. The result would be a completely independent contact form that sends emails to your chosen email address whenever a new lead comes in. While this example may seem complex, there are actually a number of APIs available for customizing your WordPress site. If you decide to go down this route, then make sure your web host provides you with the necessary APIs (or asks you to create them) or you’ll end up struggling to figure out the logic behind them all.
Summary
If you’re looking for a robust content platform, then without a doubt, you should check out WordPress. Even if you don’t plan on monetizing your blog, you’ll still benefit from the content you create. It’s already been proven that content drives traffic, and that traffic yields revenue. What’s not to love?