#Hosting Archives

5 Essential Hosting Features for WordPress e-Commerce Site

Posted on 30/12/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

New eCommerce sites are launching all the time. These include online-only retail stores, existing bricks and mortar stores expanding their horizons, membership sites and various other kinds of business. One thing all these companies need is a website and the most popular platform used to create them, indeed it is used by 29% of the worldâ€™s websites, is WordPress. To get a WordPress website to perform at its best, however, you also need great hosting and in this post, we’ll explain some of the essential hosting features that WordPress e-commerce site owners need to look for.

1. High availability

One of the biggest advantages of launching an eCommerce store is that it is always online. It doesnâ€™t matters what time of day a visitor arrives or which time zone they live in, business can always be done.

Well, that’s the theory.

In practice, it doesn’t always work out like that. Some hosting providers cannot guarantee that your store will always be available and this can impact both your sales and your online reputation.

To ensure that your site stays online, one of your primary tasks is to choose high availability hosting. High availability is a specific term in hosting jargon, it means that your provider will guarantee your site will be available for 99.99% of the time or more. In other words, any essential server maintenance carried out by your host will be kept to a maximum of 52. 56 minutes a year. Thatâ€™s an average of a minute a week. In comparison, if you opt for a host that offers 99.5% uptime, you can expect your site to be offline for around 1.8 days a year, or 3.6 hours a month.

What’s the impact of downtime? Every minute your site is offline, there is a chance that you are losing custom. It is estimated that if Amazon.com went offline today, it would lose Â£140,000 ($200,000) in revenue every minute. If it opted for hosting at 99.5%, it could, potentially, lose Â£30 million per month. Thatâ€™s a third of a billion pounds a year.

2. High-Performance WordPress hosting

Besides availability, another key factor is the performance of the hardware on which your eCommerce site runs. The speed at which your site loads on usersâ€™ browsers affects both your Google ranking and customer engagement. Slow websites show up less well in search results and have lower conversion rates.

Before choosing a web host out the platform on which it runs its WordPress hosting. You want it to be fast, reliable and secure. Look for the state of the art technology, such as the latest-generation Xeon processors, superfast memory and enterprise-class SSDs.

You should also look for a software platform that is optimised especially for WordPress and which provides super-fast loading through the use of the latest caching technology.

3. Tight security

Security is a big issue for online businesses. The risk of hacking, infection and ransomware can have devastating effects on your business. With over 70% of cyber attack victims going out of business within six months and the risk of heavy fines if you donâ€™t comply with stringent regulations, it has never been more important to choose a web hosting that help keep your eCommerce site robustly protected.

Ideally, you need to look for hosting which provides the following services:

Advanced anti-hacking technology: A good web host will provide a solid firewall to protect you around the clock. This will monitor your site for hacking attacks, malware infection and other threats. Ideally, the firewall should be specially configured for WordPress.

Automatic updates: Cyber attackers use specialized tools to scan the internet looking for websites with outdated, vulnerable software. Once they find them, they target them for the attack. For this reason, it is very important that all software is updated automatically as soon as a new version is released so that vulnerabilities are eradicated. Good hosting will provide the means to automatically update WordPress core and your plugins.

Remote backups: Should you accidentally delete your data or have it stolen through hacking, the crucial step to your businessâ€™ survival is how quickly you can recover from the disaster. If your host provides you with the means to remotely back up your data, as and when you need, bringing your site back online can be done very quickly. Not having that data can put an end to your venture. Some hosting providers will automatically backup your site for you and even restore the data on your behalf if you need it.

4. Developer Features

As your business grows you will want to make additions and modifications to your site. In the past, this has proven to be problematic for many eCommerce sites as they have not had the capacity to test their updated sites before going live with the changes.

To prevent yourself falling into the same trap, look for WordPress hosting that provides you with developer-friendly tools in your control panel. These will include the ability to clone your site, as well as features like WP-CLI, Git version control and phpMyAdmin. Having these will provide the resources you need for developing your website.

5. 24/7 technical support

There are a lot of things that can go wrong with an eCommerce website. If you know what you are doing, most of these are simple and easy fixes. However, if IT is not your specialism, it can be a daunting and sometimes stressful time â€“ especially if your site is unavailable or critical elements are not working correctly.

It is times like these that you need expert technical support: someone easily accessible that has the skills to solve your WordPress specific problems. For this reason, you should always choose web hosting that comes with 24/7 technical support and which can be reached through a variety of means: live chat, telephone, email and ticket.

Do note that technical support is not the same as customer service. 24/7 customer service might just put you through to call centre where your issue will be logged. You may have to wait until the next working day before an IT expert responds. With technical support, that expert is available there and then.

Conclusion

When it comes to eCommerce, your hosting service is the foundation on which your venture is built. If your hosting is poor, then those weak foundations can cause your business to suffer or even fail. For a secure and profitable future, make sure you choose the right hosting service for your needs. Hopefully, the five points we have discussed above will help you make an informed choice.

5 Signs Your Web Hosting is Holding You Back

Posted on 22/12/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

One of the biggest misconceptions about web hosting is that all hosting services are the same. Whilst it might seem like that from the way many hosting packages are advertised, there’s much more to consider than choosing a certain amount of disk space, RAM or bandwidth. For example, you should ask about the hardware being used and the way a server is configured. You also need to think about the providerâ€™s in-house expertise, the quality of its technical support and the amount of uptime they guarantee.

Whilst on the surface it might look like the only difference between hosting packages is the price, it can be a mistake to put the cost of hosting as your main priority. All hosting is relatively affordable these days, so saving a few pounds a month could be a false economy that can cause problems further down the line.

Here are five signs that will help you know if your web hosting is hindering your business and if it’s time to move on or upgrade.

1. Your site has slow loading times

The loading time is the speed at which your website takes to load on a visitors’ browser. It’s important because Google uses it as a ranking factor and because visitors abandon slow loading websites. It is estimated that a one-second delay in loading time can reduce sales conversions by 7%.

You can measure the speed of your site by typing your URL into Googleâ€™s PageSpeed Insights tool. This will give you the results for your sites’ performance on both desktop and mobile. It’s important that the site loads quickly on both types of devices, especially now that 66% of all UK browsing is done on smartphones and tablets.

While there are many things that can affect your loading times, such as your choice of theme and the number of plugins your website uses, one of the primary factors is the type of web hosting you choose. Well configured, high-performance servers can dramatically improve speed, as can upgrading from shared to VPS hosting.

2. Other users drain your resources

If you use shared hosting, every website hosted on a server shares the resources that the server provides. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem; there’s usually enough processing capacity and memory for everyone. However, there can be issues. Greedy hosts can put too many users on one server in the belief that most of them will underuse the resources available. All it takes is for a couple of websites to start using resource-heavy applications, perhaps sending out several thousand marketing emails or importing thousands of product descriptions and images, and this can negatively affect the performance of every other site on the server.

A good host will employ tools that limit the resources any one customer can use; ensuring that its activities do not impinge on others. This is a little like the fair use policy that some broadband companies impose. If you opt for shared hosting, make sure this happens. Alternatively, use a different form of hosting.

3. You have a poor performance during peaks

Unfortunately, the website draining all the shared resources could be yours. If your site has grown and you have lots of visitors carrying out resource-heavy actions, such as using the shopping cart, it could be your site hitting the resource limits set by the host – especially at peak times or during busy seasonal periods.

If this happens, the slow performance of your site can cause customers to abandon their shopping carts and spend their money elsewhere. Your Google Analytics data will tell you if this is the case.

The issue here is not really the fault of your web host. As mentioned above, it is trying to give everyone a fair share of the serverâ€™s resources. Actually, itâ€™s a sign of success: itâ€™s time to move on to a hosting package that provides the increased resources your site now needs. Your host may have bigger shared hosting packages or, for a few extra pounds per month, you could opt for the significantly better VPS hosting, where youâ€™ll have a virtual server all to yourself.

4. Your server has a bad IP reputation

The server you use will have its own IP address. If one of the other tenants on that server is carrying out inappropriate actions, such as sending spam or hosting malware, then that IP address can get blacklisted. This is bad news for every other website hosted on that server as it can affect search engine ranking and lead to emails being blocked.

What makes this particularly problematic is that the owner of that site might not even be aware of what is happening. They might have been hacked or infected without their knowledge. This is likely a result of them having poor security measures in place, such as not updating their software or having easy to crack passwords.

A good host will provide a range of security features to prevent an IP address from getting blacklisted. These include firewalls, intrusion monitoring, email monitoring, server monitoring and dedicated IP addresses. Make sure your host provides these.

5. You cannot use the software you want

Shared hosting is where one server is shared by lots of users. As itâ€™s a single server, everyone uses the same operating system and this is configured in a way that enables the majority of websites to run optimally.

One of the issues with this is that you cannot use programs that are incompatible with that operating system or ask to have the server configured differently just to accommodate a specific requirement.

If you have a critical need to run incompatible software, the only alternative is to have a server of your own. The most affordable way to do this is to opt for a VPS. By doing this, you have the freedom to use an operating system that is compatible, such as a legacy version of Linux or Windows OS.

Conclusion

Web hosting plays a crucial part in the way your website performs. Choosing the right package and understanding when it is time to change hosts or move to a different type of hosting is vital if for the long-term health of your site and business. Hopefully, from reading this post, you’ll now have a better understanding of the signs to look out for.

All About Managed Hosting That You Must Know

Posted on 01/10/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

Businesses that need to expand or upgrade their IT infrastructure have a range of possible choices. One of the most popular is managed hosting. In this post, we’ll explain what managed hosting is, the benefits it can bring and what to look for in a managed services provider.

What is managed hosting?

Managed hosting is a type of service in which a business hires IT hardware from a service provider, such as Anteelo. All managed hardware, i.e. servers, storage and network, has single tenant occupancy, in other words, no other customer will be using the same hardware. This provides the company with all the computing resources that the hardware provides: bandwidth, performance, RAM, storage, etc., and gives the customer complete control of the hardware, OS, software and system security.

With managed hosting, the hardware is securely housed in the service providersâ€™ datacentre and the service provider takes care of its management, admin and technical support. The alternative is unmanaged hosting, where companies still hire hardware and datacentre space but choose to manage it themselves. Whilst some companies still opt for this, most find it easier and more economical to let the service provider undertake management on their behalf.

What is included in a managed hosting service?

The range of services included in a managed hosting package will depend on the individual service provider. Most hosts will provide and manage the datacentre (space, power, building maintenance, physical security, IT engineers, etc.), hardware, networking, operating system (Windows, Linux, etc.) and application infrastructure. It is also possible to extend services even more by adding application management, too. At Anteelo, we even offer bespoke IT solutions.

The list above covers a wide range of management and administrative tasks which are done on your behalf. These can include real-time server monitoring, performance optimisation, server patching, backups, intrusion prevention, application installation and so forth. Using these services means companies do not need to worry about hardware or other issues and can let their IT teams focus on more business-related projects.

Which IT uses are best suited to managed hosting?

Managed hosting is suitable for a wide range of IT uses. This includes hosting websites, as a means for extending in-house architecture and for running custom or legacy apps. Single tenancy hosting is also ideal for those who require exceptional computing performance, large-scale storage and Big Data analytics. It is also being increasingly used for backing up data and for disaster recovery.

With increasing regulation, such as the implementation of GDPR, managed hosting also offers compliance benefits for those companies that require tight data security. If you are an organisation that has a statutory requirement to have a Data Protection Officer (DPO), for example, if you process or store sensitive information or large amounts of personal data, single tenant hosting can offer increased security and help ensure compliance.

What to look for in a managed hosting service provider

It is not only the range of services mentioned above that you would need to consider if you were looking for a managed hosting service provider. Here are a range of other factors you would need to look at:

1. Technical support: Make sure your service provider offers 24/7, 365 days a year technical support. That way, if you have any issue, youâ€™ll know there is an IT expert there to help.

2. Firewall security: All managed hosting should provide strong firewall protection. Look for technology, such as Fortinetâ€™s Fortigate firewalls, which protect against a wide range of security risks.

3. Port speed: Network performance is crucial for todayâ€™s websites. Look for a 1Gbit port speed.

4. High–availability: If you are paying for a managed service, you want it to be available all the time. Make sure your service provider guarantees 100% uptime.

5. High–performance hardware: You should be provided with exceptional hardware such as Intel Xeon CPUs and SSD hard drives.

6. Full root access: If you are leasing a server, you should have full control over it. Ensure the provider you choose enables full root SSH / RDP access.

7. Control panel: the quality of the control panel you are provided with can make a huge difference in taking care of the tasks which are not part of the managed service. The best available is Pleskâ€™s Web Pro.

Is managed hosting the right choice for you?

There is a number of important questions that companies will need to ask before making the decision to opt for a managed hosting package. These include:

1) In what ways will using managed services improve your IT capabilities?

2) What are the financial implications of using a managed service?

3) If you are migrating to a managed service, how can you best manage the move to have the least impact on your business? Will your service provider help you migrate?

4) If you were to opt for unmanaged services, does your company have the in-house expertise needed to manage its own infrastructure?

Conclusion

Managed hosting isnâ€™t the cheapest hosting option available, however, it can bring enormous benefits. It can cut down significantly on the in-house IT resources you dedicate to server management, freeing up your staff for more profitable tasks. It can enhance your security and compliance and, with the right infrastructure, can improve your systemâ€™s performance and IT capabilities.

Which is Better for You: Managed or Unmanaged Hosting?

Posted on 22/04/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

If you have been looking for a hosting plan, you’ll no doubt have seen some packages described as ‘managed hosting’. If you are unsure what managed hosting is, how it differs from unmanaged hosting and whether it’s the right choice for you, this post will hopefully provide the answers you need.

The difference between managed and unmanaged hosting

Web hosting is the act of installing your website software and content on a web server so that it can be found and accessed over the internet. The web servers belong to your web host and are housed in a datacentre. Keeping your website or applications online is, therefore, a joint venture between the host and the website owner. The host takes care of the physical hardware and infrastructure and the website owner looks after the website software and content.

There is, however, a middle ground that can either be undertaken by the host or the site owner. This includes actions such as making backups, monitoring and optimising the performance of the server, installing and updating the server’s operating system and setting up and maintaining server security software, such as firewalls and malware and intrusion detection.

Managed hosting is when these things are carried out by the web host. Unmanaged hosting is when they are carried out by the customer.

It needs to be understood, however, that not all managed services are the same. Web hosts can offer different managed hosting solutions to each other and provide different managed services for different types of hosting. At the same time, some of these managed services are included in the basic price of a package while others can be purchased as an add-on service. Some enterprises even choose to work with their hosts to create bespoke managed services that are tailored around their specific needs.

When to choose unmanaged hosting

Choosing unmanaged hosting can be less expensive than managed hosting, but its biggest attraction for businesses is that it gives them far more control over their hosting. Apart from keeping the machines running, they take responsibility for everything else. Companies that have very complex IT infrastructures and which often rely on legacy software can find it easier to manage their applications when they have this level of oversight and control.

Of course, to do this, these companies need to have the extensive IT expertise to undertake all these management tasks themselves. This is usually achieved through a combination of employing experts and buying in third-party technical support.

When to choose managed hosting

The vast majority of companies choose managed hosting because it is more convenient and because they lack specific server management skills. While running a website has got easier, thanks to the development of user-friendly admin panels in platforms like WordPress and through the wide range of functions offered in control panels like cPanel and Plesk, the workings of a web server have, for many companies, remained an area over which they have little knowledge. If you have never had an in-house server and employed someone who can run it, unmanaged hosting can cause real problems.

With managed hosting, you can forget all about the more complex issues, such as installing PHP modules, load balancing, database optimisation or troubleshooting a server issue when something goes awry.

Indeed, today, even companies that have the in-house expertise in place to manage their own hosting choose to opt for a managed hosting solution. With a shortage of IT expertise available in the recruitment market and those that work in the sector demanding high salaries, it is far more cost-effective, productive and convenient to hand server management to the web host so that IT staff are freed up to work on more business-focused projects.

What to look for in a managed hosting plan

What you need to look for depends upon the type of hosting you choose. If you have shared hosting, for example, the simple fact that multiple customers share space on a single server means no individual customer could be responsible for server management – it’s always carried out by the web host. However, even with shared hosting, you should look for other server management solutions being included in a managed package – these include website backups and 24/7 technical support.

For more advanced forms of hosting where users have their own operating system, you’ll need to look for automated backup solutions, real-time performance monitoring, updating of OS, control panel and other server software and security software management.

Conclusion

Today, the advantages and convenience of managed hosting make it the number one choice for businesses. It removes all the burdens of managing your server and the calamities that can happen when a lack of know-how causes issues. At the same time, it allows smaller companies to get on with running their websites and larger organisations to put their IT expertise to more productive use.

The “YOU MUST KNOW” of IT Companies

Posted on 07/08/201814/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

The “YOU MUST KNOW” of IT Companies

IT outsourcing is notoriously known for false promises, sub-standard quality of software and an inability to deliver products that can actually be used.

We discovered that more than half of our clients have burnt their fingers with such IT companies before choosing Anteelo and finally getting software delivered in the way it should have always been.

This post is based on true stories and is a compilation of the most common and shocking stories and experiences we have heard from our clients over the past few years.

1. False promises by sales teams

Often, the first meeting with any IT company will be with people from their sales team, who are usually non-technical and may not understand your business problem, vision, and product at all. However, they have been trained and groomed to say the right set of words which sound convincing and make you decide in their favor.

In such meetings, the sales team also tends to commit and agree to many terms which are then rarely delivered in practice. Most of the times, the complexity and understanding of what is being committed to being completely missing.

2. Deep organizational hierarchies

Most companies will never get you in touch with the set of developers and designers who are going to ultimately work on your project. That communication is often forced to go through product managers, project managers, team leads and various such roles where everyone adds their own subjective interpretation leading to a lot of important decisions just getting lost in translation.

The reason for this obfuscation is that most companies would hire very junior or young developers with incompetent design and software development skills and provide them with zero training. Often they are learning on the job as they are building your product, which means that the code quality being delivered is poor and the product is riddled with a large number of bugs and issues, often leading to an unsatisfactory and unusable project.

Another common scam is further outsourcing your work to another company without your permission. That means that the quality of work goes down even further since the communication gap widens. Also, it can be assumed that in most cases, the second company will be even cheaper and that will reflect in their hiring and quality standards as well.

3. Not sharing source code with clients

Since most clients of IT companies are non-technical, IT companies would often take advantage of the fact that the client’s entire source code is under their control. The unsuspecting client is also unaware of the importance of this ownership until things turn sour in the relationship. Source code transfer often becomes the hostage before the scores are settled.

4. Charging exorbitant hosting fees

Taking advantage of the nontech awareness of their clients, many IT companies would charge a hefty monthly fee in the name of server hosting, etc. even if the same can be done at a much cheaper cost. Most clients will simply give-in because they will not understand the correct facts and have no option left but to believe what they chose IT company is suggesting.

5. Fake claims about skills and clientele

Websites of most IT companies claim to have great competencies, skills and clients listed. While most of them may be true, but most people get fooled into believing that the company has built the whole product for the clients they have listed.

As a client, always ask for the details of what the company did for that client. Did they work on their whole product or a part of it? What exactly was their role and how long was their engagement? Demand for answers to be explained to you in a simple non-technical way.

6. Delivering software as per spec, but not as per common sense

Most companies will ask their clients to create a product spec or requirements document to define exactly what they are trying to build. And the IT company will share a time and cost estimate accordingly. But no company will bother to improve the spec or explain the shortcomings in the document to the client. Often there would be features in the spec which may not be that important to the client but would take significant development time. Nobody in the team (sales or development) would take the initiative of asking the client whether such features are important or can be skipped.

Eventually, a combination of a vague product spec and a team of incompetent developers means that the product will never be completed. Most companies will just get into a never-ending cycle of bug fixing where one bug fix leads to another and months go by and nothing is ever ready to ship.

Even in the rare case that the product is actually completed, it may tally to the spec document on a point by point level, but the overall product will be unstable and practically unusable.

7. Delivering software which will crash as soon as actual workloads start

Lack of proper testing across a variety of devices and platforms leads to issues which can be hard to detect until it’s too late. Often the developers and sales teams will be smart enough to show you a product demo in a very limited and controlled environment but the moment the product will go live, everything will begin to fall apart. Your users will complain of your app crashing on their phones or not working as expected.

Such issues are even more devastating since by then you would have already announced your product to your connections and damage control would be nearly impossible.

It’s important to evaluate your IT company on multiple factors, not just the final price. Making a good choice could lead to an association that could last for years and helps you with your product and startup vision for a long time. A bad choice could mean that your startup ambition could fail even before it lifts off from the ground.

1. High availability

2. High-Performance WordPress hosting

3. Tight security

4. Developer Features

5. 24/7 technical support

Conclusion

1. Your site has slow loading times

2. Other users drain your resources

3. You have a poor performance during peaks

4. Your server has a bad IP reputation

5. You cannot use the software you want

Conclusion

What is managed hosting?

What is included in a managed hosting service?

Which IT uses are best suited to managed hosting?

What to look for in a managed hosting service provider

Is managed hosting the right choice for you?

Conclusion

The difference between managed and unmanaged hosting

When to choose unmanaged hosting

When to choose managed hosting

What to look for in a managed hosting plan

Conclusion

1. False promises by sales teams

2. Deep organizational hierarchies

3. Not sharing source code with clients

4. Charging exorbitant hosting fees

5. Fake claims about skills and clientele

6. Delivering software as per spec, but not as per common sense

7. Delivering software which will crash as soon as actual workloads start

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