How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting

WordPress is the one of the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. At the time of writing, just under half of all websites on the Internet are run using WordPress, including 22% of the world’s most successful e-commerce sites.

Content management systems, as the name suggests, are used to manage website content. The pages on your website, the posts on a blog and the products you sell in your e-commerce store ate all content that can be managed using a content management system such as WordPress.

WordPress is an open platform, which means that anyone can develop WordPress plugins (which add functionality) or WordPress themes (which are used to customise appearance), and make these available in WordPress’ repository.

A lot of people have made plugins that provide varying functionality, and themes that vary widely in appearance. This means that WordPress can be customised to function in many different ways, or have widely differing appearance.

If you’d like an e-commerce website with a skater look and feel to appeal to people who might buy the skateboards you sell, you can make WordPress do that. If you’d like to run a beauty blog with a feminine appeal, you can make WordPress do that too. If you’d like to run a members website for your local darts team with leagues, and results, WordPress can do that, or if you’d like to run a learning environment to publish courses, WordPress can also do that.

WordPress’ rich plugin and theme ecosystem provides website owners with a massive array of appearance and functionality customisation options. This wide choice, is the main reason that it’s so popular.

As WordPress is a versatile and customisable platform it can be used for many different types of websites. The type of website that you intend to operate will often dictate the type of hosting you’ll need. But what should you be looking for when it comes WordPress hosting, and how do you know what type of hosting you’ll need?

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting provides cheap hosting for WordPress site. Shared hosting is a way of hosting multiple websites, all belonging to different people on the same server. Due to the shared aspect, this makes the hosting cheaper and therefore a more cost effective web hosting option.

Should the website you intend to run not have a high resource overhead, shared hosting will most likely be fine. Websites that don’t tend to have a high resource overhead tend to consist of:

• Websites with mostly static content (advertising a small business for example)
• Websites that don’t have high numbers of pages or blog posts
• Websites that aren’t generating revenue based on visitors (such as advertising on a blog)
• E-commerce based websites selling a smaller amount of products

Shared hosting can be a popular choice for beginners, small businesses, portfolio websites and smaller e-commerce shops and blogs.

The shared hosting provider often has to apply usage restrictions to prevent the server from being overloaded. It’s a great solution for individuals or small businesses but, as your brand grows, you may find yourself outgrowing it.

Shared packages targeted to hosting WordPress websites include features that make the sites easy to set up such as one click WordPress installation, unlimited databases, built in daily backups, free SSL certificates, PHP version selectors and PHP ini management. Netnerd build these facilities in to all shared hosting packages by default. In addition, Netnerd also provide object caching, opcache and the litespeed web server, for all shared hosting packages, to provide blazing fast load times, even if you’re using our cheapest web hosting.

High Resource Shared Hosting

Shared hosting that provides a greater amount of RAM and CPU can still be a cost effective web hosting option. Although hosting of this nature does cost a bit more, you can use this to gain enough resources to run a more intensive site, without paying an excessive amount.

As with all our shared hosting packages, free SSL certificates, daily backups, object caching, opcache and the litespeed web server are all included by default.

The advantage that additional RAM and CPU provides is the ability to operate a website with a higher resource overhead. Examples of websites of this nature are:

• E-commerce websites with a wider product range and more customers
• High traffic blogs with a medium amount of content, aimed at generating revenue based on traffic
• Websites with a large amount of pages or blog posts
• Websites that involve more processing, such as online learning websites

Using high resource shared hosting provides all the benefits of more RAM and CPU without the additional cost of operating your own server. While the RAM and CPU of the underlying server are still shared, servers used in this manner tend to hold a fewer number of hosting accounts, so each can use a greater amount of RAM and CPU.

Managed VPS Hosting

Managed VPS (Virtual Private Server) provide your own server with a resource set that’s dedicated to the operation of your site alone (rather than RAM and CPU being shared, which is what takes place in shared hosting). The managed aspect means that you don’t need to administer the VPS yourself, you can instead continue to operate your site as you have been doing. Your hosting provider will take care of the server administration as you’re paying for a managed service.

The main benefit that a VPS provides is a dedicated amount of RAM and CPU resources that are used for your site, and your site alone. This means that a VPS is a suitable solution for websites that have a much higher resource usage overhead. A VPS would be suitable for websites such as:

• High traffic blogs with a large amount of content
• E-commerce stores selling lots of products with a large customer base
• E-learning environments with lots of users
• Bespoke applications such as project management or customer relationship management applications

In many cases VPS aren’t as powerful as shared hosting servers, but they do have the benefit of being more resilient. This is because the VPS is housed on a virtual platform, comprised of multiple physical systems:

If one of the physical servers in the cluster fails, the other servers in the cluster maintain it’s operation and the VPS continue to function:

So while managed VPS are more expensive, they provide a dedicated resource set used for the operation of your website alone, and they’re also resilient in nature, reducing the chance of your website being offline.

Here at NetNerd, we offer a range of web hosting options all of which are compatible with WordPress websites; suitable for any business or individual. View the packages on our website for more information, or call us on 0333 222 4080 and a member of our team will help you find the right hosting package for your requirements.