Three reasons why you need managed WordPress hosting for Divi.
WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, and whether you are running a website for a small business or enterprise, there are a variety of considerations and concerns. We wanted to share some of our insights on managed WordPress hosting.
Over the past couple of years, there are a few key reasons that someone ended up at your virtual door for managed WordPress hosting; from major errors to slow response or lack of attention. And, they can all be contributed to a lack of WordPress maintenance.
#1 WordPress Rescue
One way or another, WordPress has been compromised and you need help. There are various tools and techniques to analyze and resolve issues. The main reason a website needs rescuing is the lack of security. Well, poor or no security comes from a couple of different root causes.
A. No WordPress security
Installing a security plugin and doing a basic configuration will help a lot. iThemes and WordFence are both great plugins to guard your WordPress website from security attacks. Some hosting companies provide a server level of security as well. The combination of server-level and WordPress-level security will make hosting your WordPress website easy.
B. Outdated themes and plugins
The next and probably the most predominant reason WordPress websites need to be rescued, out of date themes and plugins. Always update everything. This is the first key aspect of WordPress management.
Not upgrading your WordPress website is far more dangerous than running an upgrade and breaking the website. Keeping your WordPress website updated is essential to protecting it against virus attacks and being compatible with other components. Running all your WordPress upgrades together keeps things in sync and prolongs the life of your WordPress website. This means that you can keep that theme a little longer, just be sure to give it a design refresher every so often.
#2 Slow WordPress Speed
The WordPress website isn’t optimized. It’s running on old technology or isn’t leveraging CDN or Caching. This is the most popular issue that I see right now related to managed WordPress hosting. WordPress websites take a little extra care than other websites, meaning you have to intentionally make an effort to speed them up. It’s super easy to get in there, start building a website or a page and loaded it down with large images.
Another cause of slow website speed is adding youtube and other embed widgets from third parties sources. These are banners and feeds from social media sources. The additional javascript call statements and file downloads take up a lot of your download speed. Good WordPress management will include a speed report each week or month, so you can keep tabs on how you are doing.
#3 Lack of Website Maintenance
Most everyone abhors maintenance. You don’t want to have to manage a website if you are running a business. You want to build something shiny and move on. But shiny things tarnish without maintenance. When we say maintenance we are not talking about upgrading plugins and backups. We are talking about adding new content, changing or updating existing content and re-designing existing pages to be more optimized.
If you have good WordPress management for your website then they can easily help you with change requests and additions. Lack of updates doesn’t contribute directly to the failure of your website but the lack of maintenance keeps you from being relevant and increasing sales leads. Good WordPress management provides suggestions and reporting.
The bottom Line for WordPress management.
In all three cases above, it boils down to one root cause, lack of WordPress management. You might not have know all this was happening or needed to be done. If you did then you shouldn’t procrastinate :). While WordPress management is not a key goal, it is one of many things that go into having a great web presence.
Keeping a complex WordPress site up to date is not a trivial undertaking. You will need a partner to manage your WordPress environment for you – or to help set up internal operations to support your installation. After a few hundred web sites, we know a little about this platform. It isn’t the right choice for everyone, but if it is for you, we can take it as far as you want.
There is a good chance that you current hosting provider doesn’t care about their sever environment or didn’t advise you about the needs outside of the website build (security, speed, etc.). In any case, we eat our own dog food and host our own site on our own platforms.
We think you’ll appreciate our more personal approach to manage WordPress hosting
