I’ve been prompted to write this article by the number of questions I get from our clients about hosting their WordPress websites.
For custom designed, compelling, credible, and professional websites, WordPress is by far the leading platform for building a website these days.
But with the modern technologies needed and available for creating a mobile friendly website with large images and video, along with the liabilities involved in this day and age of phishing, spamming, viruses, and hacking, inexpensive hosting is, quite frankly, dangerous.
THE NEED FOR SPEED:
Large, browser wide images and backgrounds, video backgrounds, embedded video, additional functionality such as eCommerce, memberships, e- learning, scheduling, chats, social media feeds, newsletter optins, popups (etc., etc.) mean the files needed to display your webpages are much larger and take more time to load (be fully visible).
On top of that, mobile-friendly websites are essentially three versions of the same site: one for desktop/laptop, one for tablet, and one for phone.
If the server which houses your website isn’t as fast as can be, you’re in trouble.
THE JUNGLE:
Nowadays, there is an industry built around hacking websites. Some do it for fun, many do it for profit. The WordPress “coin” is that it is built on an open-source core of programming which invites thousands of contributors to make add-ons that create the freedom of expression and depth of functionality that is the State of the Art today. The flip side of the coin is that if you can figure out a way to hack WordPress, you can hack a LOT of websites. This makes it worthwhile for hackers to invest time into finding backdoors into your site.
In short, it’s a jungle out there for website owners, so security is a MAJOR concern.
WOH! BACK UP!
There are many solutions for securing your website that include both internal and external safeguards, but just as a car with an alarm, steering wheel lock, GPS locator and 5 other safeguards can still be stolen if someone really wants to, your site is never truly safe.
The answer to this is backups. Without a system in place that automatically backs up your website daily and provides a means of restoring it to its pre-hacked state with one or two clicks, you are really playing with fire.
THE HARD WAY:
Believe me, I’ve learned all the above the hard way with my own and my clients’ websites. In our next article I’ll get into some more specifics, but in the meantime my heartfelt advice is please don’t try to save money on hosting your website at the expense of speed and safety.
If you want to learn more please, reach out to us at hello@21thirteen.com or call 646 808 0249.
