Blogging represents a unique way for your voice to be heard online. You can write whatever you like and create your own audience from the ground up. But, like any other website, a blog requires web hosting. Before we go through things you should look for with your next hosting provider, we should point out the advantages and disadvantages of different types of hosting.
Shared, VPS, Dedicated and Cloud hosting
If you are starting your first blog, shared hosting is enough. You get shared resources with a lot of other websites on the same server (CPU and RAM). With low starting prices shared hosting is the ideal starting point, up until your traffic surpasses the resources that shared hosting can provide. Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting. VPS provides its own space on the server, but it still shared a physical server with other users. It can provide more control compared to shared hosting and offer an affordable price.
Read: Everything You Need to Know About Web Hosting for Your Blog
Dedicated hosting gives you total control over the server that their website is stored on. You practically own the server and make the rules: from OS, security to storage space and its type. Dedicated hosting is one of the most expensive hosting options, and it is used mostly for websites with high traffic.
One step up is Cloud hosting where you pay for what you use. Simply think of computing resources like a utility that you can use when you have a need for it. Resources can spread through multiple servers and is perfect for websites with a high growth rate.
WordPress hosting
This is a specific type of hosting intended for WordPress. Optimisation often offers advanced efficiency, performance, and resources. WordPress caching plugins can help you gain the speed and performance everyone is looking for, and there are features like WP-CLI, GIT and SSH that are usually integrated within your website. Look for One-Click Installers that can help you start your blog on a new hosting server with literally one click.
As we mentioned, shared hosting is a great starting point for your first blog, and from there you can upgrade your plan when the time comes. This is why you should always look for hosting providers that offer an easy upgrade option. It is simple – you don’t want to be stuck on shared hosting if your blog gets popular and can’t handle the additional traffic. When you start your journey, you can’t predict the number of visitors that you will have in 6 months, a year or two. On the other hand, you don’t want to pay more than you need to up until the point your blog starts to pay you back.
Security and reliability are very important
Blogs are very sensitive types of websites, and uptime is of utmost importance. Maybe not in the first few months, but as your audience starts growing you can’t allow any downtime. Many hosting providers guarantee uptime, and this should be an item in your “Perfect Hosting Provider Checklist”. Uptime is also important for your SEO performance since you can’t tell Search Engine crawlers when to visit your website and conduct their indexing. Also, your visitors will tolerate one or two times that they can’t access your time, but anything more than that and you will effectively start losing your visitors.
With security being one of the biggest issues on the Internet, try to find a hosting provider which offers SSL and DDOS protection. Regular backup should be a part of the plan that you chose. This way you won’t worry too much even if your blog goes down because you have a backup that you can use for recovery in no time.
In this case, good support is one of the key factors that can make or break your website. In case something goes wrong with your blog, you’ll want to resolve the issue as soon as possible. This is where we can differentiate professional from average support. Don’t forget to look for a provider that offers multiple channels of communication with support, which can be very helpful in certain situations.
One thing we should mention – don’t expect to have all these goodies with the cheapest shared hosting. These resources require a bit of investment, but it is money well spent since it can help you sleep well at night knowing your blog is in good hands.
Focus on the important part
Start with basics. Choose between shared or WordPress hosting, look for an easy upgrade option, and hope you’ll need it soon. Once you choose a provider that suits your needs you can get down to the important part – great content you want to share with the world.
