Hosting your website is not always a consideration when setting up a WordPress site. However, if you want your site to be somewhat future proof and scalable, it’s best to have a hosting service on board from the beginning to help make sure your site stays up for longer. Providing a number of hosting services from WordPress to Woo Commerce hosting and Web or Cloud hosting options, SiteGround is our pick for hosting your WordPress or Woo Commerce site. Read on to find out why
What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting in its simplest form is the service of providing storage and access for websites. Essentially, the service you sign up to provides the technology, in this case servers, to store your site and its content on. Not only that, some providers will also host your emails. It’s all about the space you need for your site to run optimally. You cannot have a website, WordPress or otherwise, on the internet without it being hosted, whether that is something you have done internally or by contracting a service like SiteGround to keep your site up and running without interruption. A necessity for any and all websites, the only choice you have to make is who will do the best job of supporting you by hosting your site and maintaining uptime as well as the server where your site sits. The WPEzi team can’t go past SiteGround as the premium web hosting service for WordPress sites. We are pretty happy with their service, and we think you might be too.
What or Who is SiteGround?
SiteGround is a web hosting service provider started by a few university students in 2004. Now SiteGround services their 1.7 million plus customers and their two thousand plus enquiries every single day. SiteGround has established themselves as a major hosting service across the globe and show no signs of slowing down. In addition to their tutorials and online webinars, SiteGround provide instant support services through Live Chat and Phone as well as speedy resolution of support tickets. SiteGround also employee specialist teams to improve their servers and service, in May of 2015, SiteGround launched a Bot to block brute-force attempts on their servers. Not only does that innovation show a willingness to constantly improve their services, but it should also give SiteGround customers comfort in the knowledge their site is in safe hands with a guaranteed 99.9% uptime promise as well. As if that wasn’t enough, take a look at their customer satisfaction rating, at 99.7% it’s not hard to understand how SiteGround became the most popular hosting service.
Cost
SiteGround has three packages, StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek, and they range from $14.95 for the StartUp package to $39.95 for the Go Geek premium package, per month. The StartUp package only covers one site which is great for small businesses and personal blogs. The GoGeek package suits a business with multiple sites that require a lot of space and receive around 100,000 visitors per month.
SiteGround offers contracts for one, two and three years and doesn’t offer a month to month plan, this would be something to factor into your decision if you are not comfortable with a long term contract. Good news though, you can get a free one month trial.
Each package is loaded with features and you can decide on the best package for your WordPress site needs here.
Pros and Cons
SiteGround boasts a lot of pros, but that doesn’t mean there are no cons. SiteGround has a well established reputation for high uptime percentages, up at 99.99% average consistently; speedy and consistent load times, meaning your site loads quickly every time. Not to mention their high level support team and high performance hosting of WordPress sites across all of their plans, which is promising for us. Coupled with free security add-ons, e-commerce installs, free transfers for your existing site, free SSL and CDN Certificates and all topped off with a 30 day money back guarantee. The positives are hard to miss.
As with everything in the web service industry, there are cons; and whilst SiteGround are no exception, their cons are almost insignificant. A setup fee is charged if you want to take up their month to month option however it is about $15 so almost like they are charging a month in advance for the basic StartUp package. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a con but it’s still not well advertised on their site until you go to pay. The only other con we have found is that the plans offer limited storage space compared to other hosts. So if you can look past the minor issues, SiteGround is perfect for you.
How to Get Started
So now you have decided on SiteGround, you have picked and paid for your plan, what next? Depending on your current situation, you will need to either build your site from scratch by installing WordPress on your new server, or you can take up the transfer service for your current website. Read below the instructions for each of your options.
SiteGround Wizard
One of the other pros of SiteGround are their awesome tutorials, videos and user guides. One of the tools on offer is the SiteGround Wizard for installing WordPress. To do this you will need to have signed up and into your WordPress Hosting account.
When you login for the first time a pop up will display, select the setup option that best suits you and then click the WordPress button. You will then be prompted in a second window to enter the login information, enter the details and select confirm. So the same with the Enhancements section and then select Complete Setup. That’s it, super simple and easy to go through. Your site has now been installed and you are good to go.
Manually Installing WordPress
Manually installing WordPress is not a long process, but it can be complicated, if you are not confident with your skills, we recommend you give us a shout and we can help you through it. Your first port of call is the WordPress official download site, once the file has downloaded you will need to locate that folder and extract the installation package to a new folder.
Now you will need to decide if your whole site will run on WordPress. If so upload your installation files to the public_html folder using the FTP. If you only want parts of your site to run on WordPress, then create a sub-folder under the public_html folder and upload your files there.
Next step is to create the MySQL Database and assign a user with full permissions to it. Record your Database name, username and password as you will need these for the installation process. To do that, navigate to your site, select your preferred languages and select continue. The next window prompts you to have the information you need at the ready. Once you have all of that select Let’s Go and enter the details of you MySQL Database and click the submit button. Once WordPress has confirmed the settings are correct, you will be prompted to Run the Install.
The next screen will prompt you for the information about your administrator username and the title for the site. Once you have completed that screen, including the strong password, press Install WordPress. Now you are ready to start posting and amending your site.
The Migrator Plugin
The Migrator plugin is the perfect tool for those who are not technology savvy, or who maybe are not comfortable with the more technical side of site migrations; or perhaps would just rather a software developer or experienced tech support officer do it. Good news is the Migrator Plugin eliminates all of that hard work. Simply grab a token from your Control Panel in your SiteGround account, download and install the plugin and enter the token code; sit back and relax because your site has already begun migrating and you don’t have to lift another finger. The Migrator moves all of your folders, files and content securely as well as your configuration settings. It’s a free service, and you can use it as many times as you like. What’s not to love about that!
SiteGround are continuing to grow and only look to get bigger and bigger, their support teams are next level and their commitment to their customers is unparalleled. Having a reliable hosting provider helps keep your site operational and your customers happy; keeping your business running. If you run into any trouble, please let us know, the WPEZI team are happy to provide WordPress support, whether you are a regular customer or it’s a one-off issue. Contact us via live chat today, it’s just in the bottom corner.
Check out SiteGround For Your WordPress Site
