What is WordPress Hosting ?
As explained in our previous article, web hosting is the act of renting an online space in which to store your website files, so that they can be accessed from all over the world upon typing in a specific domain name in to a browser. In the early days of the internet, web developers spent long periods of time, learning different programming languages, as this was the only way through which websites could be built. However, the increase demand for websites and blogs in the late 20th and early 21st centuries caused technological companies to begin thinking of more innovative and easy ways of building a website. This resulted in the development of several Content Management Systems (CMS), the most prominent of which is WordPress.
What then is WordPress Hosting?
WordPress hosting is the act of renting an online space in which to store the files of a website/blog built with the WordPress CMS. Just like other hosting options, WordPress hosting also comes with a variety possibilities: free hosting, shared hosting and dedicated WordPress hosting. We will now explain each of these WordPress hosting options in details.
Free WordPress Hosting
Why in the world will WordPress Hosting be free? To answer this question, we will have to begin from what WordPress is. WordPress is an open source website building technology. This implies that people from all over the world can access and modify it to suit to their specific website design needs. In line with this open source mentality, and in a bid to give more people a foretaste of the platform (in the hope that they will subsequently upgrade to a paid option), WordPress.com gives users the option to build blogs on the platform and host them for free. But there is a catch.
Domain name limitation: When you build and host a website on a wordpress.com, the domain name of the site will have to end with wordpress.com. For example, if you wish for your domain name to be darwin.it, this will be impossible under the free WordPress hosting option. It will have to be darwin.it.wordpress.com, which could be really annoying because most people hate typing in long domain names.
But it is not all bad news. Hosting a website for free on wordpress.com does come with some advantages. To begin with, it gives you access to an extensive library of free website themes and plugins to help you customize your site. Hosting for free on wordpress.com also means you will have unrestricted access to their customer service. Finally, it is a less expensive way through which to have an understanding of how the WordPress CMS works. If you love what you have built under the free hosting, and will like to make it unique, there is always the option to upgrade to paid hosting plan. Once you do this, it will then be possible to take away that annoying wordpress.com extension from your domain name.
Shared WordPress Hosting
Shared WordPress hosting is one of the most common ways through which WordPress websites are hosted. Using this method, you will have to begin by purchasing a domain name from one of the numerous online websites selling them. Next, you will then have to buy some hosting space from an online webhosting solution provider. This stage is important, because you often than not will have a couple of options to chose from (different bandwidths, server space, number of website visitors, etc.). Make sure to chose a plan that is most appropriate for you. Using your hosting login information, sign in to your hosting dashboard and install WordPress CMS. All you have to do now is build your website using the CMS.
Using shared WordPress hosting has a couple of drawbacks.
1. Your website will be hosted on the same server as other websites, which could have a negative impact on your website’s speed.
2. If one of the websites on your shared server has a problem, it could potential affect all the other sites hosted on the server.
3. You will have to manually install any WordPress updates, as well as manually backup your website at regular intervals.
Dedicated WordPress Hosting
As can be derived from its name, this refers to storing the files of your WordPress website on a server that is custom made to use only WordPress websites. Furthermore, each dedicated server is meant to host only the website files of a particular person or institution, which implies that there is no sharing of space with other websites. This is our specialty at https://servers.darwin.it. We build custom made dedicated WordPress servers, that are optimized to meet the specific needs of our clients. Our dedicated servers can either be rented from one of secured server farms in Europe and America. or can be bought to be used at the client’s premises.
Advantages of dedicated WordPress hosting:
1. High server speed due to low congestion of website requests
2. Automatic installation of WordPress upgrades
3. Automatic Website backup
4. State of the art server security
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