Choose a Web Hosting Company
Once you have your website’s domain name, you need one more thing. You need a place to host your website. This is another foundational decision which will affect your Search Engine Rankings. Recently, Google has said that “site loading time is a factor in search engine rankings.” You also don’t want a web hosting company that has downtimes when your website won’t be available. Therefore, for your business a fast and reliable web hosting company is a necessity.
You are a small business owner and you must decide how much you want to invest in this piece of your online business. The price range and quality of options are enormous. There are even free web hosts, but most website hosting starts at $5/month and can go into the hundreds or thousands per month. Remembering that this is a business and not just a hobby, I would recommend investing into quality website hosting.
I Already Have a Web Host
If you already have a website hosting company, then you have to check with the company to see if they meet the minimum requirements to run WordPress.
To run WordPress your host just needs a couple of things:
* PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
* MySQL version 5.0 or greater
* Recommended are Apache or Nginx, but any server that supports PHP and MySQL will do.
Not required, but recommended for better security:
Hosting is more secure when PHP applications, like WordPress, are run using your account’s username instead of the server’s default shared username. The most common way nowadays for hosting companies to do this is using suPHP. Just ask your potential host if they run suPHP or something similar.
Here’s the source for this information:
http://wordpress.org/about/requirements/
What can I get on my shoestring budget?
For those of you starting your business on a shoestring, I recommend two website hosts: LightningBase or SiteGround. Both offer a great value for what you get. You will pay $5-10/month for one of these companies to host your website. One word of caution: DO NOT be lured by free website hosting. A recent client of mine had me take a look at his site and each page took 30 seconds to load. I thought I had slipped into a torture chamber. Your business will get what you pay for, so invest in a good web host.
Affiliate Links:
I want a high-quality web host
If you have a bigger budget, want better Google seach engine ranking, and a whole lot of extras, then my recommendation is to invest $29/month at wpengine.com. Here’s my shameless affiliate link: http://hiwp.me/gowithwpengine
To help your decision, let me tell you what do you get at WPengine that you don’t get at the other companies? A lot actually.
* Automatic Installation of WordPress
* Excellent Customer Service
* Automatic daily backups (Compare this to $19/month at Vaultpress.com)
* One-Click restore points
* A staging area to test changes before making them public
* Version controlling of files with Git
* Automatic Security updates for WordPress Core files.
* Speed! Automatic caching for speed and better Google rankings
* A Firewall to prevent hackers from getting your business
* Malware scanning to maintain your business’ security (sucuri.net offer this for $89.99/year)
The choice is yours, but in my opinion, if this is a business site and not just a hobby there’s no question which one i would choose.
