Welcome to WordPress’s 6.0 “Arturo”

We welcome the latest version of WordPress called 6.0 “Arturo”. The update was inspired by Grammy-award winning Jazz musician Arturo O’Farrill. Based on earlier reports, the update is said to have enhanced features and responsiveness that can further your creative expertise.

“The overall aim is to consolidate and expand the set of customization tools introduced in 5.9 for creating themes with blocks, with a special focus towards usability and refinement,” Ventura said. “This new release could be considered a conceptual wrap for Gutenberg: Phase 2. This doesn’t mean the customization phase would be concluded with it, but that its main features would have been established.”

According to reports, the update has over ‘1000 enhancements and bug fixes’. You can download the update here.

What’s new:

1. Improved writing experience:

There are new and improved features in terms of your written content whether it be creating a new post or editing an existing one to create an overall better user experience when engaging with that said content.

– The select text feature that can now expand across multiple blocks allows for easier copying and pasting.

– A short cut key called the ‘two open bracket’ to access your list of recent posts and pages.

– Create customized buttons and any update or new buttons created will retain it’s specifications automatically.

2. Style switching

The famous Gutenburg blocks received an update which allows one to have multiple style variations. It enables short cuts to switch the theme of your website much quicker within a single theme. Users are now able to change the look and feel of their website with just a few clicks.

3. Extensive template range

There a five new templates to choose from with the updated version 6.0. This can contribute to existing content and by further improving the layout, font style, imagery or just the general aesthetics. Create a new mood for your website by making use of the new tools provided:

– Featured images can be used as a cover block.

– One can switch between stack, row and group variations to position groups of blocks for a much more flexible layout.

4. Block Locking

A new feature has been added to the 6.0 update. A feature called ‘Block Locking’ doesn’t allow an end user to remove an important block in your piece. This feature contributes to the security of your content by identifying authoritative figures on your account.

The latest updated is the pinnacle of the work of over 500 people situated in various countries with a vast array of knowledge to contribute towards. The results are mind blowing and where one can draw the conclusion from the ‘1000 improvements’.

Based on a quote from a spokesperson from WordPress, version 6.0 continues where 5.9 was left off. The focus will be around bringing a full website editing experience while further enhancing the block editor. Version 6.0 is equipped with the design experience that can contribute even further to existing users.

November 23, 2021

If you are self-employed, here’s how you can benefit from a website

Self – employment has its benefits and drawbacks. The fact that one can manage their venture with their own free will requires strict protocols, effort and most importantly – exposure. With majority of operations moving towards a digital trajectory, having an online presence is a no-brainer. A website is one of the backbones of your business’ structure/plan. It’s the virtual version of your physical shop where potential customers or clients can engage with your business. Using the internet is a great initiative to expose your business. On average, the amount of users visiting a business on a monthly basis is around 414. There is a statistic of 50% of that traffic coming from organic search results.

Here’s how self employed individuals can benefit from a website:

Generate more exposure for your business

There has been a strong dependency for users on the internet to make use of search engines as a way to navigate to various businesses. It has become more urgent for marketers to be well versed in the way of digital marketing. Google is the most frequently used search engines throughout the industry. According to statistics, Google accounts for 78% of desktop users and 89% of mobile traffic. Around 93% of all web traffic is via search engines. In order for effective ranking, your website needs to be optimised to SEO standards and making use of the practices. Besides SEO, practices ensure that you leverage other platforms to drive traffic to your website. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are driving quite a following of users. Social media has become a cornerstone in digital marketing. One needs to be well versed in terms of content creation in order to drive those users to your site.

A website would be ideal for a local business

Majority of business’ has an audience in and around the local communities. One of their most important clients comes from local communities. Creating a Google My Business profile with legitimate links are more than likely to show up in search results. By adding your business location or where you operate from, the search engines will rank your site to an audience that’s situated within the same area. Whenever you decide to branch out into new locations, you won’t have to change much. When your business is listed under a My business account, search engines can pick up on the type of products and services that are listed under your account. For example, if you are a business selling kitchen appliances/cookware and someone types in ‘pots for sale’, your business will show up in the search results. A Google My Business account makes it more convenient for visitors to get on board. It is highly recommended.

Create a reputation and trust within your business

Having little to no online presence in the times that we’re living in can raise eyebrows. It has shifted in a way that it seems odd that a business doesn’t have a website to conduct it’s dealing through. “Can I trust this company?” “Is the company professional?” “Can I rely on this business to provide me with the expected products or service?”. Based on recent statistics, 56% of people wouldn’t trust a business without a website. Your site creates a level of trustworthiness in your clients.

Take note of your data

Overtime, your website will gather data from various analytic platforms such Google Analytics. With this data, you can record the purchasing behavior of your website visitors. This can be highly beneficial to you and your business so that you are aware of when to promote your products/services at the right time and right place on your site. Knowing where the most traction on your website is situated, is really important as that is where you’ll gain the most exposure for anything that’s important.

For those that are freelancers or their own boss in this case, a website would be an excellent starting point. Not only does it provide your business with the correct exposure, it also allows you to sell online. Through a website, you can enhance your business’ reputation, trustworthiness and increase sales by focusing on what works and what doesn’t work for your business.

November 5, 2021

HOW TO USE GTMETRIX EFFECTIVELY TO INCREASE SITE SPEED

Site speed is one of the most common factors to monitor when it comes to ranking. It is an important metric that shouldn’t be left behind and constant work has to be done it. Site speed is an important factor not just in terms of SEO but to the visitors that appears on your site. This could lead to a loss in a potential client that could’ve generated some income for your business if it is slow. Keeping your site speed consistent is not an easy overnight task unfortunately.

What is GTmetrix?

GTmetrix is a tool used to analyze page speed and the performance of it. The tool will often generate a score for our pages and gather data in which one can base decisions from. If you are not sure on which solution(s) you will be needing in order to improve your site speed, the tool provides you with recommendations to fix them. The optimization tool is packed with great features and the functionality of it is of great use to users. One can have the option of generating reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can check the tool out via the their web based version if you do not wish to install the plug-in.

How to use GTmetrix effectively

Using GTmetrix is one thing but making use of it effectively is another. The various metrics that one needs to consider when making use of the platform should always have ones attention when analyzing data.

1. The more tests you conduct, the more accurate your pool of data will be:

In order to find out a genuine source of data in order to base a decision on, one has to conduct various tests throughout the day. An ideal time would be every hour for week or more than a week in order to find a pattern. A valid reason behind this would is that your website performs differently throughout the day due various factors such as the condition of the server, visitor traffic amount and whether maintenance or adjustments were done on it etc.

You would want to pick up on the on the amount of visitors that comes onto your site at a particular time which could indicate when to push out most of your marketing material. Your targeting pool during that period would be the widest at that specific point in time.

2. Test locations plays a vital role:

The location that you test your site from makes a big difference. You would want to pick a location that is close to you as possible. Ideally it you would want to pick a test location that is the closest to your targeted visitors. If your website targets one specific location, you would want to test that location only. All you need is results from that specific location. If your website is targeting a global audience, you would want to pick 4 or 5 key locations around the globe. It’s of best practice to spread them as far as possible.

3. Testing pages:

A lot of focus is placed too much on the homepage due to it being the landing page and your first page to appear in front of your visitors. Your homepage may be the least data intensive page due to it highlighting various parts of your website

Your entire website should be taken into consideration due to visitors looking at each and every page. If a particular visitor is only interested in a specific service provided on your website and it falls on a separate page, that page needs to perform at its best. Think of a sales person approaching you in a public setting. The sales person has to convey the product clearly and it also comes down to the way the product is conveyed.

4. Pay attention to mobile devices:

Depending on the width of your target pool, one needs to realize that there are various devices that visitors appear from. It could either be from the desktop, tablet, mobile device or any other platform that one get access to. The performance on each and every device varies and so does the layout, functionality and overall feeling one gets when your website is presented to them.

We hope that this article provided you with some insightful information on how to effectively use GTmetrix to increase loading speeds. Bear in mind, this is only a portion on how to effectively manage your pages performance.

November 4, 2021

WHAT ARE WORDPRESS BLOCKS AND HOW TO USE THEM

WordPress is an excellent content management system that for building your website whether it be a blog or your online hobby.

Writing content for your website can feel repetitive at times due to the duplicate work that one has to churn out continuously. Write, post, and repeat. That seems to be the common ebb and flow of blog content production. To alleviate this, one can duplicate content by using the blocks editor. The blocks editor allows you to duplicate the content that can be posted across pages. This can cut down on your production time in terms of drafting the content. WordPress blocks are the components for adding content in the WordPress block editor.

How to use WordPress block editor:

Whenever you have a new content piece to publish, anything that comes to your mind whether it be in the form of a written piece or an image, will be converted into a block. WordPress has made the layout simple and clean that is extremely user friendly and allows one to make adjustments accordingly to their specific idea in mind. Think of it as your page being broken up into various segments that is packed with content.

As soon as you’re on your blog page, the title display pops up with the option of adding a block. To add a block, navigate towards the right hand side of your page where a ‘+’ sign is situated inside of a black block.

In order to get started with a paragraph, click on the black button as displayed above. You would want to start off with a suitable heading that correlates with your topic. In order to add a heading, click on the heading block and select the style, layout and overall appearance of your heading. You can adjust the size of your heading by clicking on the heading level which will adjust to the size accordingly.

In order to add images to your content block, click on the ‘+’ icon and navigate towards the image button and upload the media that you wish to portray to the public. In order to upload the image, click on the blue button that says ‘upload’. There are various other options to upload your media from such as inserting from URL and your Media Library. You can make edits your image in terms of its shape, orientation and even adding in captions.

Once the content block has been expanded, there are various other sub sets of options to play around with. There are coding blocks to make us of, embeds and other forms of media to integrate into your content.

What are the benefits of using WordPress blocks

There are various benefits that comes with WordPress block that can add great value to your content in terms of productivity, layout and optimization.

– The WordPress blocks are user-friendly with a highly interactive and clean interface.

– Blocks can make add various other forms of media that allows your content to more appealing and engaging.

– WordPress blocks are less prone to the issues related to copy-and-paste especially when it comes to content transferred from Word documents.

– Lastly, the content block editor provides a much more consistent experience in terms of what it looks during the production phases compared to the final. In simple terms, users won’t see the back-end side of the content that you have produced due to the blocks feature.

If you have an interest in WordPress hosting or you would like to change your current plan to a WordPress plan, Hostking has a wide offering.

October 29, 2021

HOW EMAIL MARKETING CAN BE BENEFICIAL TO FREELANCERS

Email marketing is said to have the biggest ROI (Return on Investment) in terms of a digital marketing strategy. Email marketing can be considered as a secondary form of communication to your audience or client base. There’s an estimated email user base of 4.1 billion users by the end of 2021. One shouldn’t dim the power of email marketing based on personal experiences. There are some that becomes annoyed after seeing the same recipient in the inbox informing one about the latest blog posts or newsletters. Some individuals in your audience enjoys hearing from your company believe it not. Freelancers should try not to shy away from email marketing as there are those that keep tabs on your blog or current specials that are up and running.

1. You own your audience:

Organic traffic is a great challenge in today’s day and age where algorithms literally decide your fate. With a favouring more towards paid listings, ranking organically requires a tremendous amount of work to be done to compete with paid listings. The benefit of email marketing is that you can grow and take control of your own audience. There are no gatekeepers holding the cards and deciding who gets a shot at exposure. The ball is literally in your court when it comes to email marketing.

2. Helping your business build a community:

Communities are the building blocks of almost anything. Without people, your business won’t complete its objectives and will be stagnant due to inactivity. Building a community that raves about your offerings can be considered as organic marketing. If one good experience came from one, tend to one they will refer another to join in on the cult of your business. Think of it as a social circle where relationships are fostered with high engagement strategies to keep it active.

3. Create personalized experiences:

One can customize templates to carry out a particular branding message to their audience. Your layout of certain messages can change each and every time in order to keep ones attention. The content that goes into a newsletter needs to constantly be refreshed as you wouldn’t want to bore your audience. In order to create customized experiences, an audience wants to receive something special from the letter. It could be an early formal announcement regarding an upcoming promotion or a special birthday gift to a valued customer of yours. These are some of the ideas that could make your email subscribers listing feel a bit more acknowledged and appreciated for their support towards your business.

4. Cements your branding:

Branding is important especially in the world that we’re currently living in. It gives a business enough room to differentiate form the rest in terms of values and aesthetics. Humans indulge with their eyes which is why your branding shouldn’t be left in the dark. Email marketing can act as the voice of your brand too with carefully constructed messages that were well thought of. This too can add to somewhat of your business’ character if it makes sense. It give one space to play around.

5. Client retention:

Building personal relationships through email marketing is important. Clients will often feel valued and acknowledged. Clients are at the top of your business’ pinnacle and should be treated as such. Informing them of your latest offerings before the public knows, feels as if they’re valued and present since they’re the first to know about your business’s activity. One can even provide subscribers with offers solely just for them to take it up a notch.

October 20, 2021

HOW YOUTUBE HELPS YOU DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE

Running and maintaining a website can be challenging. If the right resources are utilized with consistent monitoring in place, you can generate the results that you desire. The practices involved in website traffic generation is an ongoing process that involves constant adjustments and fresh ideas to be added on a continuous basis. It’s not a one man show at the end of the day to put it quite frankly.

Even if your website has the best of functionality or an appealing aesthetic to grip visitors’ attention, one has to consider a mix of marketing strategies. A marketing mix is a pool of various tactics to achieve a marketing goal. One strategy to drive website traffic to your website would be utilize media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. There are millions of active users on social media platforms that can be a potential visitor to your website. A potential high traffic driving platform is YouTube.

How YouTube content can drive traffic to your site

Each and everything has its pros and cons. YouTube is no exception as it does require hard work and a knack to grow the platform. Video content creation has seen a surge in activity due to the next generation being tech. savvy and well versed with media. If you have a team that’s willing to put in the work to create informative, appealing and appropriate video content, you have one foot in the doorway.

1. YouTube has a high number of active users:

According to statistics, YouTube has 2 billion active users on the platform with a percentage of 42,9% of all global internet users with access to the platform per month, according to statistics. The popular age group within the group of active users are between the age range 15-35. Women are amongst the most popular users of the platform. If your content is good enough, there is an audience of 2 billion where your content can reach in order to extract a portion of it to visit your website.

2. Visitor preferences may vary

Some of your visitors may prefer viewing videos rather than reading text. It depends entirely on the type of visitor. For the avid readers, they might enjoy scrolling through your blog page while others might only enjoy a short video clip. It depends on ones attention span and the time to get to the information that they were looking for. Some individuals might not want to read through hundreds of words to get to a certain piece of information whereas some would not might want to wait 5 to 10 minutes for a certain point in a tutorial video.

On the bright side, if you’re doing video content you don’t have to create entirely new videos from scratch. You can re-purpose your written knowledge base articles and create an on screen recording explaining the steps. The written articles are just your video narrations in text form.

3. Video marketing acts like a charm

If there are users that can find your video content informative, relevant to their requests and has a close match with what your website portrays, tend to one they would want to visit your website. If both of your platforms contain the information that they’re looking for on a consistent basis, they might even be frequent visitors to your site. If both your website and YouTube platform works hand in hand, visitors might even refer others to your site by word of mouth or by sharing content.

4. YouTube can act as a potential source of revenue

If your YouTube channel becomes extremely popular, you could potentially earn another stream of income. Making money off YouTube may be part of your model or not but it does come with pros and cons. The pro, obviously being making money and driving a solid audience whereas the con may be that your channel is restricted by laws and regulations from YouTube or the website/page owner.

Keep in mind that YouTube can change its algorithm which can affect your impressions and audience reach. It may even restrict your page if it wants to which can affect your audience in the long-run. In order to protect your channel from loosing its audience, you would want to think of other platforms to keep them within your targeting pool such as newsletters, blog posts or other social media platforms.

5. Make sure that your YouTube is easily accessible

It’s of best practice to ensure that your YouTube page is easily accessible and highly visible to the public. Ensure that there are links within your website and newsletter that can direct visitors to the YouTube page. Drive your audience from other platforms such as Instagram and Twitter to your YouTube page. Newsletters are highly effective and can be a highly engaging tool that can drive an audience to YouTube. It’s best to optimize your videos by using relevant keywords. Constantly promote new videos in your newsletters in the form of tutorials as a way to keep on driving your audience to the channel.

October 14, 2021

Top 5 checkout plugins for your online store

A checkout plug-in is a software component used to enhance the processing capabilities of a checkout page. A checkout plug-in can simplify the process by making the interface and experience much more easier when a sale occurs. This could either be the way your page is laid out in terms of the elements on the page or the card options used when proceeding with payment. It’s of utmost importance that your checkout page contains the necessary details and is kept as simple as possible. It’s of best practice to try and steer away from any elements that are not needed. Up-selling points are always good to have on a checkout page as it can be a great contributor towards your sales funnels.

1. Bolt checkout:

Bolt checkout is an application software that facilitates and enhances a shopper’s checkout experience. The seamless design of the application allows one to checkout while not re-directing a visitor to another page. The application is responsive to various browsers with a one-click checkout process in place. Not only does the checkout application contributes to the uninterrupted process when checking out, it also contributes to fraud protection. The application prevents BOT attacks without affecting the checkout experience. Bolt has partnered with the Google’s reCAPTCHA to detect card testing attacks. This will assist with blocking bot attacks before fraudsters are able to complete the checkout without adding any unnecessary friction during the process. Bolt supports various platforms such as Apple pay, Mastercard, Visa, American Express and various other payment platforms.

2. YITH WooCommerce plugin:

YITH is an independent platform that is developed by its in-house developers. This acts as a great contributor towards your customer experience with them. YITH’s plugins are developed through a proprietary framework that is constantly improved and strengthened. This contributes to the compatibility of their plugins and unique features that you need for your e-commerce site. When their tools operate together, it can offer a more advanced experience due to their tailoring process in development. In turn, this can create a more powerful operating system for your e-commerce business. Their plugins act as powerful marketing tool that can help your e-commerce site enhance conversions, creating customer loyalty through offers, add-ons and much more.

3. WooCommerce direct checkout:

WooCommerce Direct Checkout is a simplified checkout process that allows a user to reduce the steps taken when processing a checkout. The plugin adds the ‘add to cart’ button on your products that directs you straight to the checkout page. This can be a beneficial factor in UX/UI design for your website. This allows users to shop and checkout much more quicker. The plugin allows developers or whoever is responsible for adjusting the website to remove fields. Unnecessary fields can agitate the checkout process due to information that might not be needed such as policy texts, duplicate shipping address details etc.

4. Square for WooCommerce:

With Square, you can easily synchronize sales, inventory and customer data, manage all of your channels through one centralized platform and use one payment solution across all channels. There are no hidden fees or commitments that can throw you off guard. With Square, you only pay when you make a sale. There is a flat fee involved when making any form of sale whether it be online or in-person. Square can be of great assistance to small businesses by helping them start, run and grow with intuitive powerful tools. With the latest digital wallet feature, it allows users to make payments via Apple or Google Pay. The plugin allows one to perform itemized transaction details through enhanced reporting.

5. Stripe:

The Stripe plugin allows one to accept payments directly on your store whether it be web or mobile. The plugin keeps visitors on your store instead of being redirected to an external checkout page which is said to improve conversion rates. With Stripe, you can accept all major debit and credit card from customers in every country. Stripe is PCI-DSS compliant and supports Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). It is optimized for mobile payments and includes Apple Pay, Google Pay and Payment Request API support. With updates and new innovative functionality at no costs, one can utilize the tools provided without stress.

October 12, 2021

Protecting your e-commerce site from hackers

E-Commerce sites form a large chunk within the web hosting market. As e-commerce sites are widely used by various entrepreneurs, this led to a surge in data theft. A number of data transactions takes place on these websites and contains extremely confidential information. There’s a vast number of users with information relating to their credit cards, email addresses, physical addresses and much more. Without beefing up on security on a website owner’s behalf and the users, it can result in data theft performed by hackers. Data breaches don’t only take place within corporate spaces or financial services, but within small business as well. Breaches are frequently occurring in various news reports with a 43% in total coming from small businesses.

Invest in third party fraud-protection services:

Third party fraud is where an individual or a collective uses or creates accounts in order to clone an account with another’s details. This is associated with identity theft and one can face severe consequences. This can be a challenging and daunting task for businesses to detect and to stop.

An extra layer of protection is without a doubt a no-brainer. When it comes to security, going the extra mile is always worth the effort. The protection offered by e-commerce building platforms serves as a good entry point in terms of security. It can help with identifying potential risks or suspicious activity but going through with next step is entirely up to you.

It is a gamble one has to take. There could be a mistake in terms of the incorrect email address or postal address entered when the user created the account. In a situation like this, security software filters out these user profiles. It could result in an actual hacker or a potential client that could’ve entered their details incorrectly. Visitors that have been rejected before can cost you potential revenue. Taking the time to review risky visitors is costly and requires a certain expertise to filter them out properly. Proper validation is needed when one is faced with such a situation.

Compliance with PCI/DSS standards

PCI/DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. It’s a set of requirements that are used by companies ensuring that the credit card information is stored in a secure manner. The objective of these standards are to improve account security when transactions are performed. The PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) ensures that the security of card holders’ information are secured at all times. It contains informative and practical material with frameworks and tools to help companies maintain the level of security needed. Some requirements for PCI/DSS standards are password protection, firewall set-ups, encryption of transmitted data and protection of card holder data to name a few.

Use HTTP with SSL

For those that aren’t familiar with SSL, it’s an abbreviation for ‘Secure Sockets Layer’. An SSL is a certificate that acts as a protective layer between a website and a browser. An SSL certificate is used to authenticate a website’s identity and to encrypt any information being passed through the website. An SSL certificate is crucial when it comes to considering filtering and blocking hackers that would want to intercept information during the checkout process.

Setting up your credit card with limits

Credit cards are fairly easy to steal which contains card and cvv numbers. The details contained on your card are mostly your initials, card number and CVV digits. These details are considered as a first level of security and should be kept to yourself. The most important of all would be the cvv number. CVV stand for Card Verification Value. The CVV number is required for performing online transactions. The 3 or 4 digit number can be found at the back of your bank card. Normally, when your card gets stolen or when the details are captured, hackers or criminals will try to guess your CVV code. When setting credit card limits, one’s usage of funds is restricted therefore, if anything does happen to the card your bank account won’t be completely wiped. In some cases, the card issuer can issue a refund due to an unauthorized transaction. Credit card limits can be set nationally and internationally.

Our Online Store builder packages includes a free SSL certificate and is equipped with the latest PHP and MySQL versions integrated caching and HTTP/2. Find out more about about our Prestashop online store builder that are loaded with benefits and tailored to your needs.

September 21, 2021

Why you should make use of WordPress themes & templates

WordPress themes are a collection of files, stylesheets, images and possibly, JavaScript that is stored in one folder. All of these files are compressed into a folder and acts as a contributing factor to the functionality and appearance of your website. It is a tool that can change various elements that’s on your website such as fonts, typography, graphics, button styles and the layout in general. When you opt for a WordPress package, the theme is a typical general, default theme provided by the platform itself. If you’re not satisfied with the theme provided to you, you’re more than welcome to select any from the various sorts to suit the industry you’re in. The range caters to any website whether it be a blog, online store, your small business or anything that you’re comfortable with. Choosing the right theme can communicate the message, feeling or your brand in general to the public. It is best to take your time with each and every theme that caught your eye and to assess whether it would be the right fit for you, your audience and your idea.

WordPress themes vs. WordPress templates

A WordPress theme contributes to the overall design of your website whereas the WordPress template contributes to a particular element of the website such as an individual page. Themes are the foundation for the front-end aspect of your website and caters to various components such as the colour palette, backgrounds, headers, footers and positioning. These two terms are often mistaken and interchangeable. Themes are available to download in a number of places. It can be found in the WordPress directory or from various WordPress theme marketplaces. You can design your own WordPress theme and allow individuals to make use of them due to WordPress being open-sourced.

WordPress templates are very much different to WordPress themes due to the fact that the templates are only meant to change the layout of a single page. To clarify a bit further, a website can only have one theme. At the same time, it can have different templates taking into consideration that a website contains different pages. For example, if you’re looking to change the body and adding a different footer, a template allows for this action to take place due to the focus being on a certain element that’s on a web page.

The pro’s of using a WordPress website

Flexibility & adaptability

WordPress has taken a chunk out of the industry by branching out and allowing various other industries to take part in what they have to offer. Generally, in the beginning WordPress was ideally for individuals that were looking into website blogs. Currently, WordPress has taken on bold strides to take their venture into e-commerce, small business and assisting at corporate level.

User-friendly for beginners

With its ease of installation and functionality, almost each and every user can figure out how to maneuver around the multi-functional platform. Whether you don’t have experience in coding or if you’re the top gun, there’s something for each and everyone. For those who don’t have much experience in coding, one can easily drag and drop elements during the design process. The platform allows one to add their own piece of coding to the mix if they’re not satisfied with any of the themes or templates provided to them.

WordPress themes are mobile responsive:

When one considers User Experience and SEO ranking, WordPress has got you covered. With the digital landscape constantly increasing, it’s of utmost importance that one looks after their website with the regards to the back-end and front-end aspects. WordPress offers various mobile-friendly themes.

The cons of using a WordPress website:

Constant updates

Update installations are important and falls part of maintaining your website. If you have not taken the necessary procedures in creating a staging site, it can be a nuisance. It can affect your uptime in the long run.

Speed

There are certain themes that contain generic code that can slow down your site and affect the uptime of it due to maintenance. Poorly coded plugins can also be a contributor to slow website speeds.

Vulnerable to hackers

With WordPress gaining popularity over the years, it has become a hotspot for hackers and spammers. If your page has a comment section on the blog page, spammers often fill comments with ‘spam-me’ content.

If you think WordPress should be the direction for you and your website, find out more on our WordPress web hosting packages. Our support team are always around to assist via the live chat (see image below).

September 9, 2021

What you need to know about bandwidth

A crucial factor before considering a web hosting package is to determine your requirements for your website. There are various aspects that one needs to consider but we’ll get into that later during our blog series. One crucial factor worth considering is bandwidth. An important step in the process is to calculate the amount of bandwidth required for your website.

Majority of web hosting companies list their bandwidth quota in the specifications list. The bandwidth range varies from package to package. The higher the package, the more bandwidth will be provided.

What is bandwidth when it comes to web hosting?

Bandwidth speed is considered as the maximum amount of data that can be transferred over an internet connection at a given time. Bandwidth shouldn’t be confused with data transfer. Although, similar in context the terms are different due to the fact that bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred within a time frame. The emphasis is on time frame and not necessarily by the amount of data that can be transferred. Bandwidth is measured in GB/s (Gigabytes per second) or MB/s (Megabytes per second)

Factors for determining your bandwidth requirements

Bandwidth plays a role in the loading time of your website. Due to statistics, users normally leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. If you are an owner of an e-commerce business, your site’s speed can affect a potential shopper’s interest or attention span. This can affect the decision making process of shopper leading up to a sale. Each task that’s completed in your network requires network bandwidth. Preparing your bandwidth requirements from a service provider entails the following factors below. The factors mentioned below serves as a guideline as to what to look for before considering a hosting package.

Monthly visitors
You should keep track of the monthly visitors to measure your website’s threshold. You can track your visitors via Google Analytics or WordPress metrics tracker.

Page views
In terms of page views, you need to find out how many pages a visitor opens when they visit your website.

Webpage size
Finding your web page size can be done by using online tools such as GTMetrix or Pingdom. The type of content being displayed and the richness can be another factor affecting your bandwidth requirements. If you have high quality imagery, videos and

How you will be using it
An important factor that needs to be considered is how the bandwidth will be used. An individual might use 1Mbps whereas the other could stream videos in 4k where it would take much more data.

Ideally, a hosting plan that offers 50% more than your current bandwidth. This will allow for much needed room to do a little extra than what you usually could do with your previous package.

How to check your bandwidth using cPanel

Once you have logged into your cPanel account, on the right hand side, there is a panel that will display your data. Under the statistics section, you can check your bandwidth usage or one could type the phrase ‘bandwidth’ into the search bar.

Another method of checking for bandwidth usage would be to log into your account and scroll down to the metrics section on the page.

At Hostking, there would be no need to be concerned about your bandwidth limit. Our WordPress hostking and cPanel hosting plans offers unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth can be a confusing topic to grasp at first. If there’s any further clarification needed, our support team is available right throughout to provide guidance.