Web Development

What Is WordPress Hosting?

WordPress (WP) is a free and open-source content management system based on PHP & MySQL and is the most prevalent online publishing system currently dominating over 32% of the web. Overall, the network of such websites welcomes in excess of 400 million people viewing more than 15 billion individual web pages each month. Some of those websites are hosted on standard shared servers, along with hundreds of other websites, utilizing the same processes and resources, allowing for possible server system overload and downtime. 

It comes as no big surprise to find some web hosting providers have concentrated on dedicating their systems to WordPress only. 

Why Dedicated WP Hosting?

How does Dedicated or Managed WP Hosting differ from the other types of hosting available? 

There are three typical types of hosting setups:

1. Shared Hosting. 

Shared hosting is one of the most commonly used WP hosting packages, but the name itself should give you a clue as to what you will be receiving for your money. Your website may possibly be on a server shared with hundreds of other clients’ websites leading to server overcrowding and lower performance.

2. Self-Managed VPS Hosting.

With a VPS or Virtual Private Server, even though certain resources are still shared, like overall CPU time and RAM, other portions of the server resources are account dedicated. On the plus side, the number of websites stored on these servers is considerably less than with a shared server. On the other hand, you are nonetheless still going to have to maintain your site and all the WP portions of it, keeping an eye on any possible security loopholes, and performing your daily backups and so on. 

3. Managed WP Hosting.

Managed hosting is where all the technicalities of running a WordPress website are handled by the hosting provider. These include security issues, speed, updates, backups and website uptime. Support is also at an optimum with managed hosting, because the support staff are experts in CMS and can take care of any problems or errors almost immediately. Plugins for functions like backups, caching and security can be done away with, reducing potential security breaches. Everything is handled for you by your hosting provider.

Two companies who are at the top of any Managed Hosting provider list are WPEngine and Raidboxes.

WPEngine — Austin, Texas.

This is a top-rated WP web hosting provider based in Austin, Texas and has been concentrating on hosting WP websites since 2010. They place extremely high importance on the speed of page loading. They have a tailor-made, WP-optimized, caching system which makes your website really fast. Discounted pricing is not offered, but the features included are well worth the cost. Plans start at $35 per month for their starter plan, ideal for one small website or personal blog, rising to $290 per month for their Scale plan, which has higher limits, capacity and allows for up to 15 websites included. With all their hosting plans you have 60 days risk-free and if you prepay for a year, you save by receiving two months free. The savings range from $70 up to $580 depending on your choice of plan. All hosting plans come with Genesis Framework, 35+ themes by StudioPress, 24/7 chat and phone support plus much more.

WPEngine does not allow all WP plugins. Out of the thousands of available plugins the list of those prohibited is relatively small. For example, any caching plugins are banned. The reason for this is due to the fact that these plugins have proved to be a problem with their software environment, and if the system maintenance script runs and finds any of them in the file structure, they are automatically removed. Some backup plugins are also on the “black list” as they are really superfluous to requirements, because they are handled by their system automatically. They also handle all security related items such as regular scans to ensure your site is free of SQL injections. 

Although they have certain restrictions on usage within your WP site, they obviously know what they are doing and are definitely one of the most reliable and secure managed web hosting companies.

RaidBoxes — Münster, Germany.

The concept was the brainchild of Torben Meier and Johannes Benz in 2015. After being joined by Marcel Gleis the company was established in 2016 to provide convenient, fast and secure managed WP hosting based in Germany and Europe. Their clients are proficient in internet use who value good creativity and high functionality. They take responsibility for the mundane, critical tasks such as security updates and backups, leaving their customers more time to concentrate on creating websites and marketing and selling their products. Their hosting plans range in price from €15 per month for the Starter plan to €300 per month for the Business XXL plan and all include free SSL certificates, and free 14 day trials. All prices they quote are in Euros and are subject to an additional 19% Value Added Tax (VAT). They also offer a Mini Plan for €9/month for small sites, but this is not managed hosting so resources are shared with other websites.

Raidboxes offer something which could be somewhat unique. For all your WP installations the user interface is clear and simple with the usual numerous subpages being omitted. Each installation has its own settings and dashboard. Daily automatic backups are handled by the host and from within the settings area, you can restore from a previous backup in minutes. With their Single Sign-on (SSO) feature, one login and you are automatically logged into all your WP websites admin panels. This feature can save valuable time, especially when you manage more than one project. They also offer free site migration should you wish to change providers, either via a migrator plugin or let them migrate it for you within two working days. Customer support is also one of their strong assets, offering live chat 08am – 10pm daily, with reaction time within minutes.

New Web-Development Trends

Users need their experiences to be unique, intriguing and engaging. They need the content to be easily available and accessible in all the available formats, real time as well as mobile. Many new programming languages like Hello Vue JS! are being introduced to facilitate improved user experience. There is increase in number of frameworks available. Extensions and real time web apps are increasing in popularity. In the field of Web Development, the only thing constant is “Change”. Web development is changing all the time. It is important to stay in touch with these changes and make the best use of latest resources available. It helps to know about latest trends and start incorporating them at the earliest in your work in order to avoid becoming obsolete due to inability to apply latest updates.

Top Trends of Web Development

Web development is taking place in a fast manner and there are new updates in every few months. These updates help in improving user experiences and decrease errors.

Few important noteworthy trends include…

1. Progressive Web Apps
These web applications started development process in 2015. It has taken two years to develop these applications into latest trend. These are the web applications which resemble mobile applications on the basis of how they feel and according to user experience. These work reliably and increase user engagement. They provide many advantages like offline work ability, easy loading and these are able to receive push notifications. Much of the data is stored in cache form which helps in quick loading of web page and decrease frustrating wait time for the user.

2. Motion User Interface, Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence
Motion user interface, bots and conversational interface are few development trends which are becoming popular. Motion UI works through flexible CSS. These features can help in improving online support and provide 24-hr customer service to users. Chatbots are computer programs which can have online conversation and provide answer to common questions and help with search features or online transactions. In recent future, it will become a common feature and every website will be expected to have one. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helping amateurs in making creative websites by using program named Molly. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and Wikipedia have already started using AI.

3. Vue JS
It is a lightweight framework which was created in 2014 and is getting popular. It is independent unlike other frameworks like React or Angular. React has a major company Facebook and Angular has Google but Vue JS does not has such similar background. It was developed by Evan You. He explained about it in his blogs as an open source project. It is being used by many big companies and becoming more popular.

4. Functional Programming
It describes the whole process of constructing software on the basis of fundamental principles. In it, software is built by composition of pure functions. Things being avoided in functional programming include shared state, mutable data and side effects. Functional code is simpler to work with and makes it better to work on a program by decomposing it into small functions. Recent improvements in Javascript help in functional programming which include arrow functions, object/ array spread and async/ await.

5. Extensions
These are becoming more compatible. These are basically bits of code which improve web browser functions and can change content or appearance of websites.

6. Real-time Web Apps
These are based on websockets. These apps help in fast interactions as they facilitate instant information transfer. In these type of apps, connection between user and server is left open and server sends in all the new information the moment it is available thereby decreasing their manual effort of finding out about recent developments.

7. Mobile Web Development
For better user experience, web content needs to be easily searched by one hand. For this, it is important that navigation is streamlined to allow the thumb to do the required work.

8. Material Design
It is an attempt at combining visual material with the motion. It was first developed by Google. It works on Materialize CSS framework and contains Materialize and Sass. It helps in improving user experience and can be used with many browsers.

9. JavaScript
It is most popular among web developers and it helps to learn this language in order to be successful as web developer.

10. Static Site Generators
Hugo is an open source static site generator. These can help in creating websites. These generators help in decreasing loading time of the website and improving security.

11. Ruby on Rails 5
It has many features like Turbolinks 5 and ActionCable which make it appealing to web developers.

12. Internet of things
The household appliances can be controlled by internet through apps on the smartphones. Few examples include turning heat on, light timers or timing kettle settings to get warm tea or coffee, everything done remotely through apps.

13. Angular JS
New updates keep on coming which help web developers with creating websites with videos and animation.

Discussion

Web development tools are constantly improving. New trends in web development keep on coming and it becomes important for web developers to learn and implement these trends in order to ensure satisfying user experience. These developments are making it easier to work and communicate in real time, wherever we are. The improvements in framework and mobile development designs help in meeting or exceeding user expectations. So, it is very important to know about the recent developmental trends. This can help in getting comfortable with these updates and increase overall productivity.