Let’s see. What makes a website successful? Fast speed, minimized downtime, good design, target audience optimized content, and well, quality products and services.
I know you are excited to run your website, but before launching a WordPress website, you must follow a checklist. This checklist includes finding the right web hosting server, getting a CDN service, and adding the right plugins to optimize your website for search engines.
Let me help you tick items off your website launch checklist one by one:
What Is Web Hosting?
Creating a website needs a host server. This server is responsible for storing all your website’s data, from codes to images. Every single website you have ever visited is hosted on a server. You can use a shared or dedicated server as a web hosting solution, but the best option is to host your website on a VPS.
A virtual private server is a virtual segment of a powerful server that is entirely dedicated to you with your own chosen pack of resources. A VPS is somewhat like a shared server but is way more secure and works like a dedicated server while being much more affordable.
Web hosting on a VPS means that you can scale your resources like RAM, CPU, and storage based on your website’s traffic and needs. Now, many companies offer web hosting servers and services. The question is, how to choose the right one?
What to Look for in a Hosting Provider?
So many different factors determine which hosting provider is the best one for hosting your website. But, when looking for a hosting provider, the most crucial factors you have to consider are uptime guarantee, server locations, payment methods and privacy.
Let me break these factors down for you:
Uptime Guarantee
Imagine wanting to buy a product from an e-commerce website, and the website is down. How frustrating can that get? The key to running a successful website is to maximize online time. If we factor out reasons like maintenance and updates for a website to be down, the reason why a website would not load is that the hosting server is down.
Of course, no hosting provider can guarantee that their servers are up and running 24/7. That’s why providers offer uptime guarantee in 99.95% values. A 99.95% SLA (Service Level Agreement) means that your website would be down for 43 seconds daily, which is a perfect downtime amount. Hosting providers offering uptime guarantee values closer to 100% are the best services to choose from.
Server Location
Since VPS is a remote service, you can use it from anywhere. That means that you can host your website on a server that is closest to where your target audience is located. The closer your web server is to your users, the faster and better your website will perform.
Once you have decided on your target market and its location, look for hosting providers with servers running in that location. Also, look for hosting providers that offer servers in different locations. When hosting providers expand their business to more locations, you can be sure that they run a reliable company.
Payment Method and Privacy
Just like any other financial aspect of your business, you have to choose a hosting provider that offers payment privacy. This is done by offering different methods of payment. One way to know your transaction is secure is by choosing a crypto VPS provider because payments that are done through cryptocurrency are fast, secure, and reliable. Hosting providers that can offer cryptocurrency payment methods prove that they value your comfort and security.
Is a VPS Hosting Solution Worth the Investment?
If you are newly deciding on running your website, I understand if prices matter to you. Most new businesses host their websites on shared servers. They are cheap and get the job done. But, once your website grows, and you see more traffic coming in monthly, your website will be at risk of performance bugs and downtime. Let’s not forget that other websites on the same shared server can actually affect your website’s performance and security.
Is it worth it to invest a little bit more in a VPS? The security, uptime guarantee, and scalability are absolutely worth it. Plus, not all VPS providers are expensive. Affordable VPS hosting providers offer plans that are truly a good investment for running an ideal, growing website.
Content Delivery Network — CDN
If you want your website to be super fast loading, then a CDN is a must-have. But, speed is not the only factor a CDN improves for a WordPress website:
What is CDN?
A Content Delivery Network is a collection of multiple servers in different locations. CDNs work alongside web hosting servers to ensure that WordPress websites are running smoothly and fast. They do so by taking some load of web servers and speeding up content delivery.
How CDN Speeds Up WordPress
WordPress CDNs reduce latency by minimizing the physical distance of data traveling between the host server and the website. But that’s not all. Here are some ways CDNs speed up WordPress websites:
- Reducing TTFB (time to first byte)
- Faster delivery by caching
- Huge data savings using GZIP compression
- Utilizing HTTP/2
Best CDN for WordPress
Now that you know you need CDN to speed up your WordPress website, let me introduce you to the top 5 CDN providers:
- Cloudflare
- StackPath
- MetaCDN
- Google Cloud CDN
- Microsoft Azure CDN
SEO-Friendly Plugins
I love WordPress plugins. They massively help create an awesome website. Now, I’m sure you know how important optimizing your website for search engines is. SEO-friendly WordPress plugins can help boost website traffic and drive organic leads. To have a successful website, you have to invest in design, content, and a good SEO plugin. You can choose one of these SEO-friendly plugins to boost your website’s performance:
- Yoast SEO
- MonsterInsights
- Ahrefs
- Schema
- SEMrush
WordPress Website Launch Checklist — Wrap up
Okay, so let’s review.
To launch a money-making website, first invest in a web hosting VPS that guarantees a 99.95% uptime, is close to your target market’s location, can pay for it with cryptocurrency, and is affordable. Then get a CDN up and running to jet-speed your website, and lastly, add an SEO-friendly WordPress plugin to optimize your website and start selling!
It’s a lot of work, but it’s super easy!
