Question 1

Is WordPress Hosting Right For Me?

Accepted Answer

As WordPress is the CMS (content management system) behind around a third of the world’s websites, it has proved its potential for website building and management. In terms of design and functionality, you can expect the sky to be the limit with WordPress, if you know how to use it.

WordPress can be tailored to the user by utilising the code writing, installing and changing features. If you know how to code websites and are good at it, there is no stopping the website's quality if using WordPress. Even if you're not able to code, you can still build a world class website, but it might cost you. Some templates with WordPress aren't free, unlike other website builders you may have used. To bag yourself a top quality template you are looking north of $100 (standard premium templates will set you back $50 - $75).

WordPress lives on plugins and thanks to them you can develop your website without touching the code once. With 40,000 plugins (with more being added on a daily basis) you can make your site look and feel like you paid thousands for it to be built.

Most hosts will include WordPress as part of their hosting package. Some hosts will offer specific WordPress Hosting packages which tend to cost a little more so keep an eye out for this. From a standard WordPress hosting plan you can expect:

A free domain - Every website needs a domain, and even if you already have one, it's quite nice to be able to pick up another free. This is usually offered with hosting services anyway, but I thought it would be worth mentioning so when you see a bad deal you know it. Any plans not including a free domain are worth steering away from, as it is likely you can't buy a domain through the service the plan is from, meaning you will have to buy one elsewhere and port it in. This is a lot of hassle, hassle which you can easily avoid by buying WordPress hosting from a company which provides domains, specifically free ones.

Email accounts - WordPress has a version of this functionality inherently, you can set up 5 forwarders to capture emails sent to 'example@yourdomain.com'. Good WordPress hosting packages will include 5 or more actual email accounts from which you can send email.

Question 2

What is WordPress?

Accepted Answer

WordPress is an open source website management and building tool. Open source means that it wasn’t just made by a specific group of developers, it can be added to by anyone who has a good idea and knows how to build it. That’s partly what’s great about WordPress, because it’s constantly evolving with new and better features.

WordPress is unique with it’s wealth of plugins to choose from, all built to help make your website look better or be more functional. To understand the scale of customisation with WordPress, as of November 2019, there were over 55,000 plugins available for users. The most popular plugins help with SEO, analytics, selling (ecommerce) and page speed, with new and better plugins being developed daily. This makes WordPress a great place to build a website, not only will your website look great today and in the future, but it doesn't cost any extra on top of hosting.

The above being said, Wordpress can be slightly confusing if you're not familiar with the process of building a website yourself. You can find yourself somewhat overwhelmed with the options and tools, it's certainly a lot more confusing than a drag and drop website builder, due to the fact that it's WYSIWYG based (what you see is what you get). Your changes can't necessarily be seen in real time, making it slower to work and progress with.

Unlike other types of website building software, WordPress’ theme mostly come at a fee, certainly if you want a good looking, original design you should expect to pay. If you opt for a free template, it can be quite obvious that you have held back on expenses whilst building the site, painting it in a worse light, especially if you stick with the default options.

If you are computing inclined, you can edit the HTML of the website you are building, which allows for impressive customizability, if you know what you are doing!. WordPress is special in this aspect because on the majority of other website building services, it isn't possible to edit the root code of the website, which is sometimes a vital feature for the more serious webmasters.

Top 10 Best WordPress Hosting 2022

Best for WordPress 2022

What is WordPress Hosting?

What is WordPress?

Top 10 Best WordPress Hosting 2022

How Hosting Providers are Ranked

Best for WordPress 2022

What is WordPress Hosting?

What is WordPress?