What is web hosting and what are its features?

A website hosting is hiring a company with servers that make it possible to make your content available on the internet to be accessed by anyone who knows the domain or finds the website through search engines like Google.

In these companies, there are different types of hosting. “Website hosting” is the most common among them, and is even considered the standard plan with very affordable prices.

This plan, taking into account specifics such as storage, traffic and emails, is ideal for any type of website, from those that work based on WordPress, to those that are just static HTML files available on the server .

Depending on the company, the performance of the hosted sites is stable and supports a good amount of visitors without a drop in performance.

However, unlike a simple website, WordPress consumes some extra server resources due to its great functionality . With that, several providers decided to create an extra plan, focused on giving more speed and power to WordPress, optimizing what was possible for it.

What is WordPress hosting?

A WordPress hosting, as the name already indicates, is a hosting plan aimed exclusively at WordPress and its need for optimization . Because it is a well-built CMS, but relatively heavy compared to a static HTML website, the servers optimize for it to work optimally.

This plan is perfect for websites that use WordPress by default. In it, several features are pre-installed in order to save you time.

For example, instead of:

Advantages of using WordPress hosting

WordPress hosting brings automatic installers and, together with them, advanced caching, performance and security systems , as well as more specialized support. We will go into detail on each of these items below:

1. Cache system on the server

A caching system or plugin is a method of optimizing the speed of loading content on the internet , in which an algorithm evaluates the most used files and creates a copy of them on the hosting server.

As a result, pages tend to load much faster than usual, which guarantees a good experience for those who access.

After all, it's nothing new that websites need to load almost instantly . Because this values ​​the content and makes it have more results in search engines.

However, a caching system on the server, and not via a plugin, can cause problems for inexperienced users, depending on the construction of the theme used in WordPress.

Some themes, either because they have more than one image per file or because their script chain is poorly designed, may have some bugs. These can easily be resolved by configuring the server's cache , as long as you know what you're doing.

2. Automatic Updates

WordPress, being the most used CMS in the world, is certainly the most targeted for interception and theft of data over the internet. Make no mistake, it is extremely secure as long as it is up to date.

The problem is that this update often depends on the user and, due to carelessness or lack of knowledge, many end up leaving previous versions on the server, which cooperates for problems involving incompatibility of themes and plugins or even attacks by cybercriminals .

Thinking about solving the problem of lack of security due to lack of updates, WordPress hosting plans usually have automatic updates features.

Whenever a new version of the official repository comes out, the hosting company will update WordPress. That simple.

3. Regular backups

Depending on the chosen plan, you may be entitled to regular backups. Something extremely useful, since WordPress sites work with constant content production.

If your site has problems and you only have a backup copy of the previous two months available, for example, if you lost two months of:

It's something very serious. However, fortunately, with regular backups, in case unexpected situations happen, it is enough to recover the backup of the week or the previous day . Thus, the problem is solved immediately and without loss of data.

Of course, it is possible to make backups manually through plugins or technical knowledge in the hosting panel. The issue is that this takes time and storage. If done directly on the server, there is complete peace of mind not to worry about any problems.

4. Expert support

Regardless of the hosting company, problems can occur. Whether caused by the customer or the company itself. In these moments, it is remarkable how good support makes a total difference.

However, when you have a WordPress hosting plan, its support is already fully trained to resolve WordPress demands . Which makes it much easier when it comes to solving unpleasant situations, since in normal hosting plans, the problems generated can be of many types, from involving other CMSs or resources.

What does this mean in practice? More speed of response and solution . Of course, there are other indirect factors that alter the performance of the support. The company's commitment is extremely important in this sense.

5. Testing area

Speaking of issues that make it necessary to demand support, WordPress hosts are also known to have a versioning system. In other words: a staging area to do what you want and then go back if something doesn't work as planned , something much more practical than using local copies of the CMS .

6. Simplicity

As the WordPress hosting control panel tends to be different from traditional hosting, there is a huge gain in simplicity and ease of use, since one does not have to deal with so many confusing options and features that cPanel presents.

7. Additional Resources

Although it is not a rule and even uncommon, some WordPress hosting companies offer paid features for free. With them, you can get an interesting range of premium themes and professional plugins or even powerful CDNs for free.

Published on: 2/19/23, 9:07 AM