You have already optimized software infrastructure in WordPress blog to maximize performance. Now all you have left to do is optimize hardware infrastructure, in other words hosting environment. This plays an important role to make your WordPress blog highly performance optimized.
Hosting server is doing lots of work to present your blog to its readers. It executes PHP scripts, prepare HTML files, link images and push the web page to browser. In order to make this process faster there are few factors you have to pay attention to.
Web hosting server is a very powerful computer running specific software. Same as any other computer, for faster operations it should have faster and bigger Processor, RAM and Hard Disk Drive. But in practical situation, it’s not that simple
Roadmap
Types of Web Hosting
Web hosting is money making business. Most of the hosting service providers are trying to host as many as web sites in one server. The way you share your hosting server with others decide how much you pay and what sort of service you would get.
Shared Hosting
Here you are getting a control panel to manage your websites in hosting server. You will get specific amount of disk space and bandwidth. In some cases they are unlimited. However, you have no control over processing power and it’s shared with all the websites hosted in same sever.
Generally hosting service providers are hosting many number or web sites in one shared server. The number could be as high as many hundreds. Lesser the number is better.
Most of the bloggers would like to go for shared hosting plan considering cost factor. When you purchase a shared hosting plan, you have to pay attention to uptime, number of sites you can host, disk space and bandwidth. Other than that, security is also an important factor.
Tip: Reading reviews for different shared hosting plan is not a good idea. Most of them are biased and sponsored by different hosting service providers. I am on HostGator and its working fine for me.
Virtual Private Server
If you need more power and control, to handle large web traffic, you need to move to a virtual private server. Here most of the factors are same as shared hosting. But your plan guarantee you a specific amount of processing power and RAM.
Dedicated Server
Here you are getting your own separate web server. You are free to do anything with it. All the computer resources are guaranteed and dedicated. You will need this if you are using advanced web technologies in your web site and handling large web traffic.
What Is The Best Hosting Plan For A WordPress Blog?
There is no single answer for this question. You have to find your own way. In most of the cases shared hosting plan would be enough for a blogger till you get a significantly large traffic. Make sure your hosting service provider is giving you unlimited disk space and bandwidth, or it will be a problem for your growth.
You have to pay attention to number of SQL databases you can have, number of FTP accounts and email facilities. Make sure they are adequate for your requirements. When you are getting a large traffic you might have to move to a VPS (Virtual Private Server). Very few bloggers will need a dedicated server.
Make sure your server is having lesser ping time and near 100% up time. If your server is less responsive, no point of doing all the software optimization we discussed so far. If your site is frequently going down, it will be very bad for your reputation and search engines also will punish you for that.
I believe now you have a clear picture about how to select a good web hosting service provider for your WordPress Blog. However, having a very powerful server in one location is not enough to have a high performance WordPress blog.
All your users around the world will have to access the same server. Of course it will be a performance bottleneck. In order to solve this problem you have to distribute your static content worldwide and deliver only dynamic content from the server. It’s coming up next.
Contact me @MalindaOnline to claim your Free Website Performance Review. I’m giving you a detailed report with identified performance bottlenecks and optimum cost effective solution.
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Tags: #Blog #Performance #SEO