A fast loading website has many benefits for both you as a website owner and your visitors. Slow site speeds have been shown to not only hamper the user experience, resulting in reduced conversion rates and higher bounce rates, but it can also negatively affect the position of your website in the search engines results pages. While upgrading to a high-performance web host is a quick and effective way to improve website loading times, there’s also a free plugin you can install on your WordPress website which can help your pages load faster. That plugin is Smush, and in this post, we’ll be discussing how it can help you effortlessly optimize your images to avoid frustrating your visitors with slow loading content. Why Use Smush to Automatically Optimize Your Images As mentioned, Smush is a free image compression and optimization plugin for WordPress. This plugin is maintained by the good folks over at WPMU DEV and is loaded with nifty features, including lossless compression, bulk smush (not to be confused with ‘Hulk smash’), incorrect size image detection, and automated optimization, to name a few. All of these features combine to help web pages that load faster, without any reduction in image quality – the only thing you have to do is install the free plugin. Now each time you add a new image to the WordPress media library, it will automatically run through the Smush service, reducing the file size – without any visible loss in image quality. One of the other great things about this plugin is that it can optimize all of the existing images on your site without you having to re-upload them (limit of 50 without a WPMU DEV subscription.) How to Use Smush on Your Website As the Smush plugin is free to use, it can be installed on your site directly from the WordPress plugin directory To do so, log into your site’s admin area and then navigate to Plugins > Add New using the sidebar menu. From the Add Plugins screen, enter ‘smush’ in the search field and then install the first item listed in the results. Once the plugin has been installed and activated it will run in the background and whenever a new image file is added to your website, it will be optimized to load as fast as possible, without any loss in quality. The settings for the plugin can be found in the Smush link in the main menu of the WordPress admin dashboard. From there, you have the following options: Bulk Smush: Optimization of existing images in your media library (limit 50 on the free version) Directory Smush: Optimizing images outside of your uploads directory Integrations: Integrates with Gutenberg, Amazon S3 and photo galleries CDN: A premium feature that utilizes WPMU DEV’s CDN for multi-pass lossy compression and auto resize features Lazyload: This feature defers the loading of below the fold imagery until the page has loaded, adjustable by page/image type. Settings: General plugin settings Conclusion By using this free plugin and image optimization service, you can ensure that all existing and future images that you use on your website will load as fast as possible. This will not only help your website load faster, but can also help reduce the amount of bandwidth your site uses and how much data your visitors need to transfer in order to view your content. Note that there are more advanced features that require a WPMU DEV subscription, like bulk updating more than 50 images, updating the original image on the server, and more. Loving Smush? Have an alternative to suggest? Comment below.
The internet and social media have turned advertising on its head leading to some truly innovative advertising trends in 2019. Nowadays, Facebook and Google remind you over and over about that beautiful bag you saw last month, you know, the one that got away (i.e. you put it in your shopping cart and decided not to splurge after all). Meanwhile, Instagram (aka Facebook) makes it ridiculously easy to buy the clothes that Insta models are wearing in between photos of your friends on vacation thanks to its “Shop now” feature. Oh yeah, advertising is everywhere — and it’s both annoying and not annoying at the same time. It was only 60 years ago that Don Draper (I know Mad Men’s not real, but come on, humor me) was using playful magazine ads to persuade women to wash the dishes in Playtex gloves and that we would get lucky if we smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes. As effective as those ads were at the time, they would be gauche at best today. I don’t know about you, but the last time I recall reading a magazine was around 2014, probably while waiting to see my doctor. And the last time I saw a TV ad? I dunno, I watch Netflix. This year, global digital advertising is expected to top TV, according to IPG Mediabrands’ Magna. If your brand’s advertising isn’t all over the internet and on every social platform, then your competitor’s ads most definitely are. And yes, your brand’s advertising — Millennials don’t care about the product you’re selling, they want to know how your brand makes them feel and whether other people are talking about it. So, what’s an advertiser to do? How do you keep up with the ever-changing advertising landscape with each new technological advance? Well, if you’re aren’t an innovator, you can at least learn from the best. So in this article, I’ll walk you through the trends we’re seeing in digital advertising and how the top advertising agencies are nailing ads in an era where they’re competing with — and feeding — Google and Facebook, the unmistakable kings of online advertising. Digital Advertising Trends in 2019 Once upon a time, advertisers only had to worry about magazine and newspaper ads (what’s a newspaper…?) and 30-second television commercials to capture our undivided attention and sell us products. Nowadays, ads are so ubiquitous that we’ve tuned out. Ads have to really stand out to grab our attention. Successive generations have caught on to advertising tactics because we’ve seen just about every trick in the book. This has resulted in a lack of brand loyalty, particularly as competing offers make it easy for overwhelmed consumers to jump from brand to brand when the best deal appears in their social feeds. So as a result, advertisers have had to find new ways to speak to consumers with ever more personalized messages. The reality is that advertising isn’t dead. Just bad advertising. So here are some of the popular trends we’re seeing from advertisers and examples of ads that prove great — and even entertaining — advertising is very much alive. Brand Over Product Advertising has become more focused on brand than the product. Take WordPress’s recent foray into advertising: So what do we learn from this ad? Right at the end, we’re told that “more sites run on WordPress than any other platform. Build your site at WordPress.com.” Not once does the ad mention a single feature or benefit of the product, or even fully explain what WordPress is. Why? Because it’s not about how easy it is to build websites on the platform, it’s about building a personal connection with the brand. WordPress wants you to identify with the everyday people — the little guys and gals — featured in the campaign. The ad is about how the brand makes you feel. And if you feel good, then mission accomplished — you’ll remember WordPress as a warm and friendly brand worth checking out the next time you want to create a new website. Likewise, competitor Squarespace employed a similar approach with its 2017 SuperBowl featuring actor John Malkovich. Squarespace worked with creative agency John x Hannes on the ad, which is an extension of a short film chronicling Malkovich as he embarks on a career in fashion. Squarespace worked with the actor turned fashion designer to redesign his website JohnMalkovich.com to display his new fashion collection. In the ad, Malkovich gets frustrated that another John Malkovich has already taken his domain name. Like the WordPress ad, we don’t learn much about Squarespace, only that it offers domain names. Again, the ad puts the brand first, encouraging viewers to get online to find out more about what the platform actually offers. Connect Authentically or Don’t Bother at All Old-school advertising tricks don’t work anymore. The reality is that we now live in a social media and consumer-run world where brands are welcome to drop by, but only if they ditch the sales pitch and behave like regular people. Consumers want brands to be accessible — and accommodating — when they have a problem. But, as Ad Week puts it, the rest of the time, they want brands to just “be cool” and not try so hard to win over their audience. A surprising example of authenticity from a big brand is Nike’s Unlimited campaign, which aired during last year’s Olympic Games. One of the campaign’s two ads features duathlete Chris Mosier, the first transgender athlete to compete as part of the U.S. Men’s Olympic team. <span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span> Nike – Chris Mosier – Unlimited Courage from Ross Haines on Vimeo. Advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy worked on the ad, which tells Mosier’s story in a lighthearted way. It works because it cleverly calls attention to his achievement without being over the top or trying to pull on your heartstrings. Agents for Social Change While advertising influences our behavior as consumers, it also has the power to shape our aspirations and reinforce our values. As account strategist Charly Jaffe points out, social media has prompted companies to shift away from delivering monologues to engaging in conversation, transforming the relationship between brand and buyer. This dynamic has made brands more human in the process as they focus on creating conversations about shared values. Jaffe highlights Always’ as an example of how a brand has brought social change. The SuperBowl ad, which went viral before it even aired, doesn’t reference feminine hygiene once. Instead, it focuses on the issue of female empowerment and the question “What does it mean to do something ‘like a girl’?” This values-based advertising is both for-profit and good and gets people talking and, more importantly, sharing. In another example of promoting social change, YouTube Music launched its national marketing campaign “It’s Who We Are” with provocative ads that highlighted how music can be a lifeline for diverse, and sometimes marginalized, people. The campaign’s ads include a hijab-wearing Muslim student and a small town teenage boy who comes home from work and dresses as a woman. One of my favorite examples of advertising that influences social change is Sandy Hook Promise’s PSA “Evan.” The non-profit organization worked with advertising agency BBDO on the ad, which has a terrifying twist. According to Sandy Hook Promise, 80% of school shooters and 70% of individuals who took their lives told someone of their violent plans prior to taking action, yet no interventions were made. The ad thoroughly exposes how unaware we can be and raises our awareness to better look out for potential warning signs. Advertising That Gets Personal Shared experiences can shape our perception of a product. Our opinion of a product and the enjoyment and value we get from it doesn’t just come from our personal contact with it. How we perceive an iPhone, for example, is influenced by what we know about a brand — in this case, Apple — and how others feel about it. Spotify’s internal creative team’s “Thanks, 2016. It’s been weird.” campaign played on the idea of shared experience. If you’re a Spotify user, you’ve no doubt listened to a song on repeat or created a playlist, so you’re familiar with how the streaming service works. The Spotify team used the enormous trove of user data at its disposal to generate funny headlines for the campaign, including: “Dear person who played ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentine’s Day, what did you do?” “Dear person who made a playlist called ‘One Night Stand with Jeb Bush Like He’s a Bond Girl in a European Casino,’ We have so many questions.” Spotify advertising in the UK. In another example, R/ GA took getting personal to a whole new level with Through The Dark for its client Google Play. The agency worked with Australian band Hilltop Hoods to bring their song, also called Through The Dark, to life. The deeply personal track, written by band member Dan Smith, is about his son Liam’s battle with leukemia. R/ GA used the song as the basis for an interactive film where users navigate through two simultaneous 3D worlds, The Dark and The Light, by rotating their mobile device. Agency R/GA worked with Google Play and Hilltop Hoods to create an interactive film. Social Validation and Influencer Marketing Social validation is a psychological behavior where, basically, people copy others. While most people like to think of themselves as individuals and independent thinkers who aren’t influenced by external forces, we ultimately want to feel like we belong. So when buying products online, consumers often try to get the opinions of others before making their purchase. This idea fuels Adobe’s Project 1324 initiative, which enlists relevant creative influencers to reinforce the brand through authenticity. The company worked with advertising agency Laundry Service, teaming up with the Malala Fund on #WithMalala to give artists the opportunity to promote education equality using Adobe’s apps, and with the Sundance Institute on #SundanceIgnite to launch the careers of emerging filmmakers focused on social justice. Adobe worked with ad agency Laundry Service on Project 1324, a mostly social media campaign. In a completely different example, Wanted Shoes uses user-generated content on its product pages to show customers shoes worn by other customers in real life scenarios. This “social proof” on product pages has helped drive website conversions by 30%. Why? Because it helps consumers put themselves in other people’s shoes, so to speak. Wanted Shoes uses user-generated photos as social proof to influence buying decisions. Omni-Channel Marketing Not too long ago, we would make buying decisions in-store. You know, actually decide to buy something we could physically touch and even try on for size. Now, we have the internet, phones, TV and physical stores to contend with. Purchases that used to be a one-stop buy are now decided ahead of time after we’ve interacted with businesses in a variety of ways first. This is known as “omnichannel” marketing. It focuses on providing a seamless purchasing experience across as many channels as possible to reach the target audience. For example, you might see a new fridge you like in a television commercial, research it on your mobile phone while sitting on your couch, order it on your laptop, and then pick it up in-store. Take LG, for instance. The multinational company partnered with Laundry Service to create a multi-channel, “always-on” approach to digital designed to resonate with its target audience, and also appeal to new key communities in photography, travel, fashion, and culture. The result was a stream of engaging, entertaining and useful social content. The result? LG’s monthly reach on Facebook increased 3,273% and post engagement increased 1,652%. The ad agency also launched the brand’s Instagram account, working with social media influencers to publish and engaging content mostly shot on LG devices. LG works across social channels with social media influencers to reinforce its brand. According to AdWeek, 62% of companies have, or plan to have an omnichannel marketing strategy. On top of that, 70% of businesses say that omnichannel strategies are important, very important, or critical to their success. Advertising is Dead; Long Live Advertising Advertisers are navigating treacherous waters, attempting to win consumers’ attention amid a swiftly changing technology landscape and a backlash against a perceived overload of advertising. And for the most part, they’re winning. At least, the creative ones are. The examples above show just how hard the top advertising agencies are working for your consumer dollars, using various channels from television to mobile to laptops to billboards, reminding you every time you switch devices that there’s a beautiful bag out there with your name on it. You know, I might just buy that bag after all — Facebook says it’s just gone on sale.
WordPress is an open-source content management system with a secure core and large support community with nearly 60% of the market share for content systems; the closest competitor is Joomla at 6.3%. A large portion of that market is made up of enterprise users, like Visa, Disney, and Time Inc. and as a result, new enterprise WordPress plugins are constantly being developed to streamline processes for large brands. Courtesy of https://w3techs.com With over 47,000 plugins available, this post will help you cut through the clutter and is a great follow on to 5 key elements to a successful enterprise WordPress site. We are here to talk about the top WordPress plugins for enterprise business sites in 2019. To narrow the prospects, we concentrate on plugins for security, SEO, and performance optimization. Security Plugins for Enterprise Malware attacks continue to make headlines; the most recent is about hackers who take information for ransom. Hackers have been a factor in the last presidential race and continue to wreak havoc as our lives migrate online. Security is a big deal and requires more attention than we’ve been paying to it. Here are three security plugins to handle different areas of vulnerability and give you back control of your website. Plus, 3 simple WordPress security tips here. Akismet Akismet is the most downloaded WordPress security plugin out there. It is an anti-spam application developed to allow you to approve, trash, and report comments as spam and prevent your website from being overloaded with spammy comments. When you have too many comments, your website performance suffers. Spammy comments rarely add anything of value to the conversation. Beyond helping you block spam, Akismet provides a status history for each comment so you can determine which ones were considered to be spam by Akismet or your moderator. Moderators have the power to: View the number of approved comments per user See the URLs in the comment body Remove suspicious links The Enterprise version is $50/month for unlimited websites. Akismet premium includes advanced statistics and priority support. Sucuri Sucuri provides a firewall and protects your website from: DDoS attacks Malware threats XSS attacks Brute force attacks Sucuri protects against almost any online attack. It includes a content delivery network and adds Layer 7 DDoS protection. Available additions to the monthly subscriptions include security monitoring and malware detection and cleanup. The Business version is about $42 per month per site and provides security scanning and brand reputation monitoring every 30 minutes and quick response for malware and hack repair, blacklisting warning removal. WordFence WordFence provides a firewall as does Akismet but it provides more blocking options along with website monitoring, scanning for malware, and login security. Premium security features include: Country blocking Password auditing Scheduled scans Real time updates to the Threat Defense Feed Two Factor Authentication Checks for the IP address of any website being used for spam. Password auditing is a critical element of securing your website. This feature helps users develop strong passwords that are less likely to be cracked. Your website is only as safe as your users allow it to be; password auditing lets you find user passwords that are already known by the hacker community and which accounts are using easily guessed passwords. WordFence is highly flexible and allows you to block a range of IP addresses, specific browsers, and web browser patterns. A premium license maxes out at $8.25 per month, and they offer volume discounts. SEO Plugins for Enterprise Once your site is secured, you can turn your attention to optimizing your site for search engines and perform an SEO audit on your website; here’s how to do that. There are several steps to creating an SEO friendly page and the following plugins prompt you to perform the right steps and can help you determine the best options. Yoast SEO Yoast SEO began as SEO for WordPress by Yoast; it is the number one downloaded plugin for the platform. It’s bulging with features to up your SEO game along with prompting you to determine and place a focus keyword in the relevant areas for every content piece. It does a page analysis to make sure you have your keyword in the image alt tags, meta descriptions, headings, and throughout the post without stuffing. Other features include: Readability checking Content analysis Permalink cleanup RSS enhancements Yoast SEO helps users toward what it calls sustainable SEO by improving text and image setup for better search engine usability and visibility. The premium version is sold as an annual subscription with tiered per-site pricing for multiple sites. A single site is $69 for one year of updates and support which comes down to about $5.75 per month. The SEO Framework The SEO Framework is a plugin with a broad set of features to improve SEO. It can automatically generate: Titles Descriptions Canonical URLs Built-in site maps Once downloaded, The SEO Framework places a display bar next to posts and pages so you can see the SEO status of each at a glance. The SEO Framework is a free download. If you wish to purchase the extension manager, it starts at $30 per month for their business version which supports up to 50 sites. Performance Plugins for Enterprise It isn’t enough for search engines to find your website, your site must perform brilliantly, or your visitor will jump ship. Is your site slow? Here’s what to do. You need your pages to load quickly and flawlessly, which is where the next set of plugins shines. WP Smush Freely available from the WordPress site, WP Smush provides image compression to optimize image load time without sacrificing quality. It optimizes all images in JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats and saves you a ton of storage space. WP Smush will “auto-smush” attachments upon upload, and you can manually smush attachments in your media library. There is also Bulk Data Smush that compresses up to 50 attachments at once. Jetpack Jetpack is a package of features for security and optimization on your WordPress site. It offers: Site security Website performance optimization Traffic growth optimization Image optimization Website appearance optimization Jetpack also enhances distribution to automatically share published content to third party services including search engines. It helps your site increase its reach and traffic volume while preventing brute force hack attacks. Also, it creates a sitemap so search engines can easily index your site. One nice feature is that it monitors your site every five minutes for downtime issues and immediately notifies you when something goes wrong. The premium package is about $3.50 per month and provides spam filtering, backup, archiving, and premium support. WordPress is the most popular and well-established content management system on the internet today with a healthy economy of businesses, developers and plugin creators all working together to keep the ecosystem running smoothly. It is used for personal blogs all the way up to enterprise content management. New plugins are developed every day, but we think these will give you the most bang for your enterprise buck. Pagely is The World’s Most Scalable Enterprise Solution For WordPress. Nicole Letendre is the marketing coordinator for gobonafide.com, a digital marketing agency in Houston, Texas. She loves writing, social media and keeping up with the latest marketing trends.
Announcing NorthStack by Pagely Every now and then we get to do something really big and impactful — something that leaves an enduring mark by changing the way things are done in an industry. This is not an incremental update to a product or the gradual evolution of a solution, but is a revolutionary approach that upends the status quo. The last launch this big was in 2009 when we created Pagely. We’ve done amazing things since then, but nothing as innovative as what I’m announcing right now. Today, again, we’re changing the world of hosting. We’re proud to announce a revolution in Managed WordPress Hosting: NorthStack Serverless — an elastic, autoscaling, serverless platform for hosting WordPress, Node, and static sites. WordPress users can now build and run dynamic, interactive websites with plugins in a scalable, pay-as-you-go environment. Let’s break that down a bit. Pay-as-you-go and only pay for what you use Users of traditional hosting plans may face a lose-lose proposition. If the site’s demand is high, the performance of the site suffers. If demand is low, the hosting company pockets the extra from the unused resources. NorthStack frees clients to pay for only what they use in terms of compute resources, database, bandwidth, storage, and other essential elements of a successful WordPress site. For the first time, WordPress users are free to choose their overhead instead of being beholden to the whims of the host. Of course, traditional hosting plans from top-tier providers still have their place. NorthStack is not an attempt to put an end to that pricing model. The pricing model we use at Pagely, one that aligns with the needs of annual budget minded enterprises, isn’t going anywhere because it’s what allows us to provide the unparalleled support experience that differentiates us from other solutions. What NorthStack offers is better suited to a wider swath of the marketplace. Agencies, developers, and sites big or small with unpredictable traffic will know exactly what resources they are consuming, have complete budgeting control over them, and be billed only for what they actually use. Support is a la carte as well – allowing customers to scale their infrastructure, without scaling support costs. Serverless hosting NorthStack is a brand-new containerized (Docker) hosting stack that integrates a spectrum of serverless functions and serverless infrastructure components, including the AWS Aurora Serverless database service. The resulting combination allows NorthStack to provision, measure, and elastically autoscale hosting resources to customers on a metered-consumption billing model. “Serverless still uses servers!” the snarky among you are screaming — and cloud hosting has nothing to do with a rainy day. Just as cloud hosting saved consumers from having to worry about physical servers, Serverless will save customers from having to worry about virtual machines. Think of it as an infinite ocean of hosting resources that you can pull from as needed, without any of the hassles or limitations of a dedicated server or virtual machine. For several years, Pagely has provisioned Managed Hosting on individual Amazon EC2 instances which provide the security, performance, and privacy our Enterprise customers demand. A downside of the static nature of a VPS is having to stop and restart the instance to scale it up or down. Another drawback is the inherent waste of over provisioned resources, which also applies to the database backends. NorthStack maintains the security and performance benefits of VPS by isolating customers to unique containers while allowing these containers to elastically grow and shrink in a real-time, nearly seamless way, always right-sizing allocated resources based on demand. The platform goes beyond the limits of traditional hosting plans by providing CPU, memory, disk, and data transfer as individually metered resource streams. WordPress… and more! We are expanding from our core focus on WordPress to also provide managed hosting for headless WordPress sites with React/Vue front-ends, static sites and forthcoming support of Node.js, Laravel, and generic PHP sites. This will combine all the benefits of a managed environment with the flexibility to run the software of your choice. So if you’re running a WordPress site, you’re going to benefit from our expertise in high-demand Managed WordPress Hosting. We put everything we’ve learned about WordPress security, speed, and optimization to work for you with NorthStack. The path to NorthStack has been a fantastic and rewarding journey for us. We started as the first-to-market Managed WordPress host. And almost since launch, we’ve been consistently recognized as the leader in the now-mature channel we defined. NorthStack will be run as a bit of a separate entity from Pagely with its own account, support, and billing systems. Today we take the next step in delivering a new, powerful, genre-defining solution to address customers’ hosting needs. Since NorthStack is a Pagely product, you know you’ll be in a good hands. Regardless of whether you’re a Pagely Enterprise customer or a new NorthStack customer, you’ll experience the care, integrity, and professionalism that has made us successful. NorthStack is now available in a limited Beta program that tech savvy users are welcome to join. A special ‘thank you’ to a few WordPress community members that assisted with alpha testing and sanity checking this idea: Aaron Jorbin Scott Bolinger Gabor Javorszky Craig Martin Zachary Brown, Phil Crumm, and Vasken Hauri of 10up. Pippin Williamson Mario Peshev and Brian Krogsgard Press Release Pagely Announces NorthStack, the World’s First Truly Serverless WordPress Environment Disrupts WordPress Application Hosting With Instant Scaling, Unlimited Sites and Pay-As-You-Use Pricing AWS-Based Environment Provides Boundless Scaling with No Plans or Start-up Fees Full, Interactive Serverless Feature Set for Dynamic Sites Liberates WordPress Users from the Burden of the Webhost TUCSON, Ariz. — October 16, 2018 — Pagely, the flexible managed hosting service for business-critical WordPress projects, today announced NorthStack™, its new managed serverless application platform built on the AWS stack. In an unprecedented first, WordPress users can now build and run dynamic, interactive websites with plugins in a serverless, pay-as-you-go environment. NorthStack is available immediately in early beta on a limited basis. General availability of NorthStack will be announced in the first quarter of 2019. “Traditional hosting plans stick users with a lose-lose proposition,” said Pagely CEO Joshua Strebel. “If demand is high, performance suffers. If demand is low, the hosting company pockets the extra. NorthStack frees clients to pay only for what they use in regards to compute resources, database, bandwidth, storage, and all other essential elements of a successful WordPress site. For the first time, WordPress users are free to choose their overhead, instead of being beholden to the whims of the host.” Dynamic, Serverless and Elasticity Scalable NorthStack features boundless scalability with no plan change, restart or customer intervention required. Instead of relegating the serverless environment to static WordPress sites, a common trade-off for automated scaling, NorthStack retains all of the dynamic features that make WordPress such an effective site platform. Users can see their resource consumption via real-time usage metrics and decide for themselves whether to serve the site more slowly and pay less, or serve it faster and pay more. Additional features include: The ability to deploy WordPress, Headless WordPress with React/Vue front-ends, or static sites with ease. Independently metered CPU, database, storage and data transfer High availability [HA] with a multi-availability zone, globally distributed network routing and best practice “Blue-Green” deployment process Clients will be able to decide on the maximum number of PHP workers to control their spend Many of the existing benefits of Pagely’s full-service VPS offering Pagely is a safe, full-featured hosting environment backed by decades of expertise. An entire hosting tech stack built and monitored by one of the industry’s most experienced WordPress teams, NorthStack will live alongside Pagely’s full-service VPS offerings. “NorthStack removes some of WordPress’s biggest obstacles,” said Pagely CTO Joshua Eichorn. “Security-wise NorthStack has the privacy of a VPS without the wasted spend of over-provisioning and having to spin up your own instances of AWS. It truly is the north star of the future of WordPress.” For more information, or to apply for early access to the platform, please visit NorthStack.com. About Pagely Pagely is the leading managed WordPress hosting provider for high-demand websites. Founded in 2009, Pagely offers premium, service-oriented hosting that can accommodate even the most complex and sophisticated high-traffic WordPress websites. Pagely clients range from growing tech companies and creative agencies to universities, non-profits, and governmental institutions. For more information, please visit: https://pagely.com/ or follow us at: https://twitter.com/Pagely or https://www.facebook.com/Pagely. Media Contact Treble Michael Kellner treblepr.com Marks “northstack” is a pending registered trademark with the USPTO.
It’s critical that your website provides a solid foundation for running and scaling your business. Rather than hiring Devops engineers with WordPress experience to manage your site and infrastructure, you may consider using a Managed WordPress Hosting solution. Your company will save money and have a team of hosting experts ensuring your WordPress website remains available, secure, and fast. Read on to discover how Managed WordPress Hosting can help your company. TABLE OF CONTENTS What is Managed WordPress Hosting? The Advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting High Availability and Uptime Expert Technical Support A Modern High-Performing Hosting Stack Updates Data Retention and Recovery Mission-Critical Security Premium DNS Developer-Friendly Tools Scalability Global Reach Conclusion WHAT IS MANAGED WORDPRESS HOSTING? Managed WordPress Hosting is a specific type of web hosting solution that is tailor-made and optimized specifically for supporting WordPress sites and users. Managed WordPress hosting is like having a team of WordPress and hosting experts working on your website, removing the cost and burden of managing your site’s hosting in-house. Managed WordPress Hosting exists as a separate option from other types of hosting because WordPress websites have unique needs. They have different server resource footprints than other types of websites, have unique security concerns, and properly supporting them requires WordPress expertise. Managed WordPress Hosting solutions are typically defined by: Managed WordPress security Automatic WordPress theme, plugin, and core updates Managed server resources that compliment WordPress’s technical needs Experienced WordPress experts on staff to handle support It’s hosting designed from the ground up to serve WordPress. Let’s take a look at how Managed WordPress Hosting services compare to other hosting options, like shared hosting and VPS hosting, to see which offers the best WordPress hosting solution. WHAT IS SHARED HOSTING? Many small businesses are attracted to the affordable pricing of shared hosting, which can be as little as $3-20 a month. It’s important to understand what shared hosting offers and what it doesn’t. For a hosting company to be profitable at those prices they depend on volume and corners must be cut. A shared host charging $5 a month simply cannot profitably offer quality support and adequate server resources to every customer. Instead, this business model relies on minimizing support interactions and upselling. When someone complains that their site has gone down or is running slow, these hosts generally recommend that the website owner move up to a more expensive hosting plan to fix the problem. Basically, these rock bottom prices are a way to get people onto their hosting solution with the goal of getting them onto more profitable plans as they outgrow their shared hosting service. They do not expect that a business would run an important, high-traffic website on a shared plan. Shared hosting is defined by: Low prices Minimal support Minimal server resources No WordPress expertise, solutions, or specialized support Popular shared hosting companies are GoDaddy, A2Hosting, and HostGator. However, that isn’t to say that shared hosting doesn’t ever make sense. If you have a hobby blog or a side business, shared hosting may be adequate. But, if you’re an established business that depends on your website being available, fast, and secure, shared hosting probably isn’t the best option. Shared hosting simply can’t offer the same quality of hosting service that more expensive options do. Here, the age-old maxim, “you get what you pay for,” applies. What is VPS HOSTING? VPS hosting, or Virtual Private Server hosting, is like shared hosting because your site shares a server with other sites. However, there are fewer sites on the same server compared to the shared hosting option. The server is also partitioned into different virtualized server environments. Unlike shared hosting, WordPress VPS Hosting usually provides baseline guaranteed resources eliminating the “noisy neighbors” problem. VPS hosting is a huge step up from shared hosting but has a major disadvantage for many people — managing a VPS requires technical skills most businesses don’t possess. If your VPS server goes down for whatever reason, you’ll need to know how to troubleshoot and fix it. VPS hosting is defined by: Fewer sites per server Virtualized containers give sites separate resources The need for technical skills to manage the VPS Popular VPS providers are Digital Ocean, Linode, and InMotion. MANAGED WORDPRESS HOSTING Managed WordPress Hosting is designed specifically to handle WordPress. It provides optimal technology and resources to support WordPress websites. Partnering with a managed WordPress hosting company takes care of all the technical aspects of hosting for you – including security, performance, and other factors. Managed WordPress Hosting is particularly well-suited to large and enterprise-level businesses due to its superior security, reliability, and high performance. Any company that relies on their WordPress site is going to want a host that specializes in that CMS. Managed WordPress Hosting prices vary, with plans ranging from $25 to $2,000 per month depending on the resources and level of support they offer. Businesses invest in this because they understand that the benefits of the service far outweigh its costs. These companies save time and money because they do not have to pay for dedicated engineers to manage their sites. Partnering with an experienced WordPress host also improves site performance, further bolstering the bottom line via key metrics like conversion rate, time on site, and more. THE ADVANTAGES OF MANAGED WORDPRESS HOSTING There are some fundamental benefits only managed WordPress hosts can deliver. 1. HIGH AVAILABILITY AND UPTIME Site availability and server uptime are crucial for any online business. If your company’s website generates revenue, downtime means lost revenue. Also, it can damage your brand’s reputation and negatively impact your site’s visibility to search engines (also known as Search Engine Optimization). Typically, web hosts guarantee at least 99% uptime. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean you’ll actually get 99% uptime. High traffic to a WordPress website can put a lot of strain on server resources because of WordPress’s dynamic functionality. A host that is optimized for WordPress hosting can use intelligent caching and robust database solutions to ensure your site stays functional and responsive when you need it most. To ensure maximum uptime, here at Pagely we provide two different layers of uptime monitoring. If anything is detected that could potentially lead to downtime, the entire support team is notified. In the vast majority of cases, we identify issues and fix them before downtime can occur, so issues are corrected before customers are even aware of them. This proactive support is what separates great hosts from the rest. We also receive proactive notifications if you get close to your resource limits, and run tests after updates to check that all sites are still up. If a problem from a plugin update is found, we automatically rolls back the update. For enterprise websites that need maximum uptime, it might be best to choose a host that provides high-availability architecture that spreads the workload over two or more servers in different zones. This approach reduces the risk of an outage during maintenance events, unforeseen outages, or traffic spikes. 2. EXPERT SUPPORT A web hosting company that does not specialize in WordPress will have a more difficult time addressing WordPress-specific technical concerns. When you speak to customer support about an issue with your website, you want to talk to someone who has the WordPress expertise and experience to solve your problem immediately. Shared and VPS hosts may offer more affordable services than Managed WordPress Hosting, but when you run into an issue such as an attack on your WordPress site or uptime issues, it could take several days of emailing back and forth just to get your support request escalated to someone with the WordPress familiarity and expertise to address the issue. Meanwhile, you could be losing thousands of dollars in sales. Expert WordPress technical support starts with the people manning the support lines. Look for a host that employs a passionate and exceptionally skilled group of engineers who know how to apply technology to solve big problems. Typically, on the company’s About Us page, you can get a feel for the types of employees you’ll run into when you contact support. Inquire about things like level-one phone operators reading a script, some hosting companies direct you to unskilled operators as a cost-saving measure. It’s always best to speak immediately with bona fide engineers to help you manage your site and solve your problem the first time. 3. A MODERN HIGH-PERFORMANCE HOSTING STACK A reputable and experienced Managed WordPress Hosting company continually tests the latest hardware and software to find the optimum hosting environment specifically for WordPress. They use a modern hosting tech stack and fine-tune it to handle the unique demands of WordPress. Most modern hosts leverage a public cloud provider because cloud platforms, like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, provide hosting infrastructure advantages over traditional options. At Pagely, our hosting stack is built on AWS. This allows our customers to leverage a nearly infinite amount of server resources and the vast ecosystem of cloud hosting services AWS has created. These resources and tools allow us to support and scale WordPress applications as needed and without constraint. With such a vast and flexible pool of server resources available, we can use everything from a pair of nodes to a cluster of 10+ machines to ensure hardware is never a limiting factor on your site’s growth and reliability. This allows your host to carry massive amounts of web traffic without sacrificing performance. In addition, with access to AWS customers can leverage 13 global data centers around the globe. What you’re looking for are the fastest, most flexible hosting environments leveraging intelligent caching/acceleration, security, and configuration flexibility. Along with technologies like PHP7, HTTP/2, and free SSL certificates, at Pagely we use proprietary NGINX/OpenResty HyperProxies. It delivers unmatched speed and Redis to further accelerate the WordPress experience. The following is the suite of other in-house services and a great example of the type of stack you should inquire about when shopping around with different hosts. If for nothing else, consider this a point to reference for comparison sake: PressDNS: Premium DNS powered with Amazon’s route 53 service that takes advantage of geo-balancing and geo-routing PressCACHE: A global WordPress acceleration system that works much like a CDN, but is specifically designed to cache and serve WordPress page output PressARMOR: Pagely’s security architecture, including a web application firewall, malware scanning, chroot user separation, and network edge rulesets PressTHUMB: On-demand image optimization and thumbnail creation PressFORMANCE: Performance monitoring analytics and assessments 4. AUTOMATIC UPDATES A Managed WordPress Hosting plan provides an easy way to update the core WordPress application and needed plugins. Keeping the software that powers your site up-to-date is critical for the security, performance, and compatibility of your site. A well-managed WordPress host may handle WordPress updates for you. But an expertly managed WordPress host will keep your software up-to-date and actively monitor how each updates impacts your site through automated tests that ensure your site is still running smoothly. In the event an issue is detected, the update can be automatically rolled back, restoring your site to functioning condition. 5. WORDPRESS SPECIFIC SECURITY Shared hosting packages typically don’t offer any assistance if your site falls victim to a cyber attack or if you encounter malware problems. Secure WordPress hosting is perhaps the biggest incentive for moving to Managed WordPress Hosting. When you partner with a managed WordPress host, routine software updates and a specialized hosting environment mean your site is better guarded against hackers, bots, and other security concerns. And you can expect regular security checks and malware removal. A good hosting reputation will prove outstanding security for its clients. If a host can boast that they’ve experienced a single serious security incident, you’re in good hands. A robust suite of security services is a comprehensive security architecture that hardens and protects a network, hardware, and WordPress applications with a focus on prevention and the mitigation of risk to clients. For base-level security, your host should use a dynamic web application firewall (WAF) that blocks code injection attacks, known exploits, and rate limits access attempts. This greatly reduces the success of a distributed denial of service attack or a brute force attack. They should also practice real-time system malware scanning of every WordPress installation, constantly looking for things like trojan horses, viruses, worms, keyloggers, spyware, and adware. In the event that security defenses fail, your host should have a daily backup of your site to restore from. These automatic backups become invaluable should your site become compromised. 6. PREMIUM DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is, essentially, the phone book of the internet. When you enter a domain name like pagely.com into a web browser, the browser uses DNS to translate the domain name into an Internet Protocol (IP) address, which tells the browser where to get the desired webpage. When you’ve invested so much in your site, you don’t ever want your domain names to go offline. This is why investing in a premium DNS provider is a must. But typical shared or VPS hosting packages, and even most Managed WordPress hosts, don’t offer premium DNS. However, there are options where you’ll enjoy the benefits of a DNS system backed by Amazon’s Route53 service. This service answers DNS queries faster by using a global network of DNS servers and uses infrastructure redundancy to ensure availability. 7. DEVELOPER-FRIENDLY TOOLS If your team wants to be hands-on with your server environment, Managed WordPress Hosting provides developer-friendly tools that you’re unlikely to get with most shared hosting plans. You get tools like SSH, staging, GIT and WP-CLI, in addition to basics like SFTP, database access, and error/access logs. In addition, you receive support for customer PHP extensions including New Relic, system crontab access, and more. If it’s important to you, look for integration with the WordPress REST API. A Partner API would be useful for customers who want to integrate their host into their workflows to quickly spin up new sites under their hosting account. The ability to quickly clone your live site and test your changes is hugely beneficial so you can also push updates back to your production site using your own workflows. 8. SCALABILITY WordPress scalability, the ability to quickly handle and adapt to sudden traffic increases, is critical for any online enterprise. If a celebrity endorsement drives more customers to your site, the unexpected increase in pageviews will require more resources. WordPress is highly scalable as long as its hosting platform is configured to keep up with the increase in database requests caused by high traffic. As your business grows and your site gains more traction, you’ll require additional website resources to keep things running smoothly. You’ll also to need to be able to collect customer data efficiently. If you haven’t equipped your site to scale fluidly, it could crash. And any unexpected downtime could lead to lost sales and damage to your brand reputation. Choosing the right Managed WordPress Hosting plan can help safeguard your business against this kind of catastrophe. Strongly consider choosing a market leader in providing scalable solutions for WordPress. We recommend choosing a host who has built its hosting stack and solutions-oriented services specifically to address the complex scaling, security, and performance needs of the world’s biggest brands. 9. FAST PAGE LOADS AROUND THE WORLD Small businesses using shared or VPS hosting typically use caching plugins and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to optimize page speed. This provides faster loading times for international visitors. Managed WordPress Hosting can take care of all that for you. For example, PressCACHE technology is a global WordPress acceleration system. It works much like a CDN, but was designed specifically for WordPress page output. It handles the server-level caching of your site content to speed up the delivery of your pages. All you need to do is turn it on, then sit back and enjoy the speed. PressCACHE is also responsible for globally serving your content from one of Amazon’s data centers in the United States, Asia, and Europe. It routes the requests for your website to the global Point of Presence (PoPs) servers closest to the user. This shortens the distance between visitors and your website, speeding the load time of your site to a global audience. Related: Optimizing Your WordPress Site Managed WordPress Hosting Provider Options The following sites are near 100% WordPress focused, and offer varying levels of ‘managed’ service. Which is the best managed wordpress hosting for your needs? That really depends on the level of support you’re looking for and your budget. As you get more support and better infrastructure, the cost of your hosting will go up. MANAGED WORDPRESS HOSTING IS CRITICAL FOR HIGH-DEMAND WEBSITES To summarize, anyone responsible for managing a high-traffic WordPress site should seek out an experienced Managed WordPress Hosting Provider if they do not have WordPress experts on staff. WordPress has unique resource demands, security concerns, and support needs that only a host that specializes in WordPress can deliver. Interested in Managed WordPress Hosting? As the world’s first WordPress host and the only provider with a decade of experience, we’re pros. Get in touch to learn more about how Pagely can help your business. We offer in-depth sales consultation and free migration.
