What is web hosting and finding a good WordPress website host

Along with your domain name, you’ll also need hosting for your WordPress website.

Your website hosting is where your site ‘lives’, both the content that makes up the website and all the files (like WordPress, your theme etc) that power it.

Recommended hosts

Starting out (‘cheap and cheerful’)

Yes, you’re on a budget but you still need to know that you’re on a solid foundation.

You likely won’t have get the same optimisations in terms of speed (how fast the site loads for every visitor) or capacity (‘if I get 10,000 visitors at once will the site stay up?’) with SiteGround as some of the ‘managed hosting’ providers listed below but if you’re just getting started – or testing an idea – SiteGround is a good option for most people.

• SiteGround

Better (‘managed hosting’)

These guys are two of the best but still affordable options you can find for website hosting. If you’d like to forget all the technical stuff like security, optimising your site for speed etc these are the people to go for.

• WP Engine – recommend as a general, all purpose, fast and secure hosting option
• Pagely – recommended as a good option for e-commerce and membership websites (where some kind of shopping cart is being used or your users need to be logged in to view content)

Note: If you go with either of these options you will need to purchase your domain name and email hosting separately (if you don’t already have either). I recommend Hover for domain names and Google Apps for email. I discuss this more in the hosting section of this guide.

Changing hosts later

You can change hosting companies later on and some will help with the migration but generally it is better pick a good host (that suits your needs) to start with.