How to Manage Your Managed WordPress Hosting
WordPress is the world’s number one content management system. While there are free versions available, most people opt to pay for hosting in order to have a reliable online space where they can put their content.
Paying for hosting is a necessity, but it’s also a barrier to entry. You have to pay for the basic plan, which offers limited resources, or you have to opt for a premium plan at a much higher cost. However, there is an alternative: Managed WordPress hosting. Put simply, managed WordPress hosting is a type of hosting where the technical maintenance and optimization of your website is handled by specially-trained professionals.
The following article will provide you with the information you need to know about managing your managed WordPress hosting.
Is Managed WordPress Hosting Right for You?
Let’s be honest, no one likes spending their free time messing around with web servers and hacking code forever. When you opt for managed WordPress hosting, you’re sparing your precious time for other things.
If you’re looking for a free blogging platform or you just want to try out the WordPress community, you might want to check out the free WordPress hosting platforms such as WordPress.com or WordPress.org. While these are free, they can also be super slow and unresponsive. Even if you pay for premium services, you can still encounter these kinds of problems.
However, if you want a secure, reliable, and optimised platform for launching your online business or portfolio, you should opt for managed WordPress hosting. When you pay for this kind of hosting, you’re not only getting the server space and bandwidth, but you’re also getting expert support via email should you encounter any issues.
There are different levels of managed WordPress hosting, so you can opt for a basic plan to get started, or you can go for the full-blown gold package. Each plan comes with a free domain and you can install up to three websites on the server. When you go for the gold package, you’re also eligible for free backups, which enable you to restore your site in case of accidents or data loss. If you install WordPress on your own server or use a free platform like GitHub or Google Cloud Storage, you have to remember to take care of backups yourself.
How Do You Manage Your Managed WordPress Hosting?
Once you’ve made the decision to go with managed WordPress hosting, the next step is to choose a provider. You have a variety of options when it comes to managed WordPress hosting, so take your time in choosing the right one for you. If you’re looking for a one-stop-shop for all your hosting needs, Bluehost is a popular choice amongst bloggers and business owners. Not only do they provide a managed WordPress hosting platform, but they also offer a free domain, a free content management system (CMS) with 11 pre-installed themes, free backups, and free security features.
If you’re looking for a more hands-off experience with your hosting, take a look at HubSpot’s hosting plan. With this plan, you get a free domain, hosting, and an email address. You can install WordPress, Joomla, or another CMS and integrate it with your email marketing software like HubSpot.”
Once you’ve launched your website, the next step is to work on increasing its visibility. To do this, you need to follow the proper procedures for SEO. When Googlebot visits your site, it will examine your content and assign a unique ranking score based on its complexity and how well you use SEO techniques. This allows your website to stand out among the hundreds of millions of other websites in the search engine.
Is there a specific niche you’re trying to target with your blog? If so, you can use the blog platform itself to aid you in SEO. Each blog post that you create will have a variety of advantages. Create helpful content that offers advice to your target audience and you’ll see your website’s ranking soar.
Pro-Tip: Create Multiple Blogs On One Site
If you’ve decided that managed WordPress hosting is the right choice for you and you only have one site, you can create multiple blogs by using WordPress’ multi-author feature. With this feature, you can give your contributors access to separate blog platforms which you can then connect to your existing site. Using a tool like Multifamo, you can take care of all the technicalities of setting up multiple blogs on your site. Once you’ve done that, you can jump into each individual blog and begin using it to your advantage.
For those of you who want to kick the tires of the WordPress platform before you make a decision, you can use one of its famous beta versions. With these versions, you get the opportunity to try out the latest WordPress features before they’re officially released to the public. Once you opt for a beta version of WordPress, you’ll see an additional menu item along with the blog icon on your dashboard. From here, you can access your site’s beta version, which will allow you to try out the latest features and improvements.
Why Should You Backup Your Data?
When you launch a website, its appearance is only the beginning. Behind each beautifully designed scene lies a complex array of data and settings. The more you publish, the more you’ll realize the potential risk of losing your blog or website’s content due to accidents, hacks, or plain old human error. Keeping a backup of your site is crucial in case you do encounter any problems.
There are different ways to back up your site. If you go for a paid plan from a web host, they’ll automatically take care of backing up your site for you. However, if you use a free option like Google’s Cloud Storage or GitHub, you have to remember to back up your data yourself. Luckily, these platforms make it easy to do so. Simply visit the Files section within your Google Cloud Storage account and you’ll see a list of all your recently uploaded files. From here, you can click on any one of them and download a.zip file which you can then unpack and upload to your GitHub account to keep a local copy.
What About Themes And Plugins?
The WordPress community is incredibly generous when it comes to creating and sharing themes and plugins. If you decide that you don’t like the default look of your site, you can go ahead and download a theme from the WordPress repository or try out a different one from the community. Themes are very helpful in giving your blog a branded look while also spicing it up with a little something different. If you want, you can download and install a plugin to give your site additional functionality.
However, plugins can be an additional layer of coding you don’t need to deal with. Some plugins require a specific theme to be activated alongside them, so if you use a different theme, you might not be able to get the plugins you need to have a fully-functional site.
Keep Your Content Legal
When you use content management systems and other online platforms to quickly and easily publish your work, you’re opening yourself up to a whole new world of legal issues. As a content creator, you have the ability to write about any topic you choose and then distribute that content to the public. While there are ways to legally protect your intellectual property, it’s still up to you to be aware of potential liabilities you might encounter. As a blogger at Legal Zoom, Caroline Shapiro provides this priceless piece of advice: “Anyone who publishes content online knows that they are opening themselves to potential legal liability and damage to their brand. In the same way that you would be responsible for the content that appears on your blog, so too does the content you post online become your responsibility. This content may be under the umbrella of your personal brand, but you still bear legal responsibility for it as you would say in a court of law.”
Final Takeaway
Working with a content management system to publish your work doesn’t have to be difficult. Thanks to services like WordPress, which is the world’s most popular CMS, you can have a fully-functional blog in no time at all. If you follow a few simple steps, you’ll be able to install WordPress to your liking and then begin using it to its advantage.