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Choosing the right kind of hosting for your website is never easy, especially when it comes to running WordPress. When hosting a WordPress-powered website, you essentially have two main choices: host your site on a generic type of non-specialist hosting service (which can be used to run just about any type of software – including WordPress), or host your site on a WordPress-specific hosting service.
In case you’re not yet sure how these two types of hosting differ, and which to choose: here’s a handy video explaining both generic web hosting and WordPress-specific hosting (which, for the purposes of brevity, we’ll call simply ‘WordPress hosting‘).
So what is WordPress hosting? Let’s take a look:
– (note: video credits to Topher DeRosia – creator of HeroPress)
Video Transcript:
Hi! This is Topher with WinningWP. In this video we’re going to talk about WordPress hosting, and how it’s different from other kinds of hosting. You might be familiar with web hosting in general but what makes WordPress hosting special? To answer that question I’m going to use a brief analogy. A few years ago I visited Europe. As an American my plugs did not fit into theirs and so I bought an adapter much like this one. Now this adapter can take any kind of plug from anywhere in the world. The problem is it’s big and it’s ugly. If you’re going someplace where your particular type of electric plug is generally accepted then you don’t need something like that and you end up with sleek systems like this. Single purpose, designed for what you have. That’s what WordPress hosting is like. General hosting needs to work for just about everything imaginable; different programming languages, different methods of publishing, all kinds of different things. Whereas WordPress hosting can be streamlined. So WordPress hosting is specialized just for WordPress. But what does that mean? We’re looking here at a popular WordPress hosting service and right here you can see they have “Essential WordPress Features”. And under essential it comes with “free WordPress install” and a “WordPress auto-updater”. Those two right there are very custom to WordPress you won’t get that for something you’ve built custom. They also offer a WordPress super cacher. And the super cacher is a tool that makes your website go much much faster. The reason they can offer a super cacher is that they know how WordPress is built. WordPress is a tool and they built a tool that goes right next to it and accelerates it. If you had some other kind of website they wouldn’t be able to do that. You’d be on your own for building a tool to make your site go extra fast. They also offer one click WordPress staging. That means with a push of a button you can copy your website to another temporary web address so that you can try things; you can install a new theme, and plugins, and blow it up, and break it down, and delete it and no one cares. Your main website is completely safe. And they’re able to do that because they understand the way WordPress is built. They know exactly how the database structure works, where all your files are, and they know everything about it because it’s standardized. One other great feature of WordPress hosting is support. Because you’re using a specific tool the support staff can be specifically trained in that tool and so they don’t have to handle every possible web question Under the Sun; they handle something that they’ve been trained in. And so you’re more likely to get good support that answers your specific questions rather than being put on hold while they google the answer. So let’s sum up. WordPress hosting is different because it’s specialized. It’s built specifically for one tool; WordPress. And the reason that works is that WordPress follows standards that allow for fine tuning. That site was able to build a cache because WordPress has internal mechanisms that work with that tool. Because the core of every WordPress site is the same the host can easily build a very specialized server just for that. And lastly the support staff are usually WordPress experts. They’re well trained and they can probably anticipate the kinds of questions you’re likely to have. If you’d like to learn more about WordPress check out WinningWP.com.
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