Your Guide To Hosting Types For Your WordPress Website via @sejournal, @vahandev

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) with a dominant market share of 60%.

WordPress is not just an ordinary CMS but a dynamic and extensible platform. Due to its flexibility, it can transform into any type of website, such as e-commerce, blog, community, or portal.

However, the strength and reliability of your WordPress site largely depend on the server or hosting supporting it.

The vast and varied hosting landscape offers a wide range of options, including shared and VPS hosting, dedicated servers, cloud, and managed WordPress hosting services.

In this guide, we explore the hosting types and companies available you can use as a starting point in order to conduct your research and find the best hosting companies for your use case.

We will dive into hosting types, as these determine the quality and performance of the website, and will list well-established hosting companies available in the market.

The different types of hostings available are:

Let’s now understand each type of hosting and detail its unique characteristics and benefits.

(Note that our list of services is organized alphabetically, and the order does not imply any ranking or suggest that one service is superior to another.)

What Is A Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is a type of web hosting service where multiple websites reside on a single web server.

In a shared hosting environment, each user gets a portion of a server’s total resources (such as disk space, bandwidth, CPU time, etc.) to use for their websites.

Because all users share resources, this can sometimes lead to slower website performance, especially if one website gets a lot of traffic or consumes a lot of resources.

While shared hosting is a great match for small and low-traffic websites, it may not be sufficient for complex projects such as ecommerce, blogs with high traffic, or those needing full control over their server environment.

Below is the list of the most well-known shared hostings:

What Is A Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

A virtual private server (VPS) is a type of web hosting that uses virtualization technology to provide you with dedicated (private) resources on a powerful server with multiple users.

VPS hosting replicates the capabilities of a dedicated server while still technically sharing the physical server with other users.

A VPS is partitioned so that each user has their own operating system, bandwidth, and disk space, unaffected by others on the same server.

As your website grows, you can easily upgrade your resources (like memory and disk space) without having to migrate to a new server.

However, the physical resources of the server (like CPU, RAM, and disk space) are shared among the different VPSs.

This type of hosting is usually good for ecommerce or blogs with moderate traffic (few thousand visitors per day).

What Is A Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS)?

As the name suggests, a virtual dedicated server (VDS) uses a level of virtualization that makes it seem like the operating system is running on dedicated hardware, even if this is not the case.

It differs from the VPS based on how partitioning is done.

The main difference is that each virtual server is allocated a dedicated portion of the server’s resources.

For example, if a VDS has three virtual machines, each will use one-third of the allocated resources, regardless of whether it is running or not.

This level of resource guarantee can be important for more resource-intensive applications or for situations where resource usage can be very variable.

VDS services often come with a higher price tag than VPS services. This is primarily due to the dedicated resources and the enhanced control that they offer over your server environment.

In most cases, companies that offer VPS do also offer a VDS.

Below is the list of the most well-known companies offering VPS hosting:

What Is Dedicated Hosting?

Dedicated hosting (as the name suggests) is a type of hosting where you have your own server and have full access to its resources.

It provides maximum performance and control for websites with high traffic, resource-intensive applications, or those requiring extensive customization.

Below are the hosting companies that offer dedicated hosting (server) service:

Additionally, dedicated hosting offers enhanced security measures; as the sole user of the server, you have complete control over its security settings.

It offers a unique level of customization. Since you have root access to the server, you can install and configure any software or applications that your website or business requires.

Please note that dedicated hosting is more expensive than shared hosting or VPS hosting options, and it requires technical knowledge and skills to set up, configure, and manage the server.

What Is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting is a type of hosting service that utilizes a network of servers to distribute resources and handle website or application hosting.

This means that websites hosted on a cloud hosting platform can scale your resources up or down based on your needs and easily handle spikes in traffic.

One of the advantages of cloud hosting is cost efficiency.

Instead of investing in and maintaining dedicated servers that may remain underutilized during low-traffic periods, cloud hosting allows you to scale resources as needed and pay only for the resources you’ve used.

Here are a few well-established cloud hosting providers:

Please note setting up a website on the cloud requires advanced technical knowledge in cloud infrastructure management to be able to deploy and maintain your website or application.

Because of that, I would recommend going with managed WordPress hosting providers, which are built on the cloud and free up your time from managing your installation instance.

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting is a specialized hosting service specifically designed for WordPress websites.

With managed WordPress hosting, the hosting provider takes care of all the technical aspects of running a WordPress site.

While installing and maintaining WordPress on the cloud on your own may be a more affordable option, you will spend time maintaining your presence on the cloud, which can distract you from focusing on your website growth – and you may end up hiring a cloud specialist to do that.

With managed WordPress hosting, you will offload maintenance tasks related to:

• Server configurations.
• WordPress updates.
• Security.
• Staging environments.
• Scalability.
• Resource optimizations.
• Hosting support.

This will let you focus on content creation and business growth.

Below is not a full list, but a shortlist of well-known companies offering managed WordPress hostings hosted on the cloud. These often come with built-in CDN:

By going with a managed solution, you can forget about server administration and will be able to focus on your online business growth.

Conclusion

In this guide, we have explored the different hosting types and provided a list of well-established hosting companies.

It is important to conduct further research and evaluate your specific requirements based on factors such as budget, website size, and complexity.

As we’ve discussed, the hosting landscape offers various options, including shared bosting and VPS, dedicated servers, and managed WordPress hosting services. Shared hosting is suitable for small websites, while VPS and VDS hosting provide more resources and control.

Dedicated hosting offers maximum performance and customization, but it requires technical expertise. Cloud hosting allows for scalability and cost-efficiency but requires cloud infrastructure management skills or hiring a cloud specialist.

Among these options, managed WordPress hosting stands out as a specialized service designed specifically for WordPress websites, which I would recommend going with.

In the next article, we will dive deeper into the characteristics of each managed hosting provider. Subscribe to our newsletter to get notified when the new guide is out.

More resources:

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How to Use WordPress Hooks To Improve Technical SEO via @sejournal, @vahandev

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, with a market share of more than 60%.

A big support community and a number of available free plugins make building a website with WordPress (WP) affordable, and it plays a key role in why its market share is so big.

However, as you know, installing plugins comes at a cost.

They often may degrade your Core Web Vitals scores; For example, they may load unnecessary CSS or JS files on every page where they are not needed.

To fix that, you need to hire a programmer to do it for you, buy a premium plugin, or perhaps go down a small learning path and do it yourself.

You can also go hybrid and solve some parts of your issues by custom coding, and other parts using plugins.

This article aims to help you in your learning path, and we will cover the most needed WordPress hooks to help you improve your website’s technical SEO.

What Is A WordPress Hook?

WordPress hooks are key features in WP that allow developers to extend the functionality of the CMS without a need to modify core WP files – making it easier to update themes or plugins without breaking custom modifications.

They provide a powerful way for developers to extend the functionality of WordPress and make custom changes to their sites.

What Is A Filter Hook?

The hook filter function is used to modify the output of the function before it is returned. For example, you can suffix page titles with your blog name using the wp_title filter hook.

What Is An Action Hook?

Action hooks allow programmers to perform certain actions at a specific point in the execution of WP Core, plugins, or themes, such as when a post is published, or JS and CSS files are loaded.

By learning a few basic action hooks or filters, you can perform a wide range of tasks without the need to hire developers.

We will go through the following hooks:

• wp_enqueue_scripts
• wp_head
• script_loader_tag
• template_redirect
• wp_headers

wp_enqueue_scripts

This is exactly the action hook you would use to exclude redundant CSS or JS files from loading on pages where they are not needed.

For example, the popular free Contact Form 7 plugin, which has over 5M installations, loads CSS and JS files on all pages – whereas one only needs it to load where the contact form exists.

To exclude CF7 CSS and JS files on pages other than the contact page, you can use the code snippet below.

function my_dequeue_script(){
//check if page slug isn't our contact page, alternatively, you can use is_page(25) with page ID, or if it is a post page is_single('my-post') 
  if ( !is_page('contact') ) {
     wp_dequeue_script('google-recaptcha');
     wp_dequeue_script('wpcf7-recaptcha');
     wp_dequeue_script('contact-form-7');
     wp_dequeue_style('contact-form-7');
  }

}
add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_dequeue_script', 99 );

There are a few key points; the action hook priority is set to 99 to ensure our modification runs last in the queue.

If you set it to, say, 10, it will not work because CF7 enqueue function uses priority 20. So to ensure yours run last and have an effect, set a priority large enough.

Also, in the code, we used as a function argument identifier “contact-form-7”; you may wonder how I found that.

It is pretty simple and intuitive. Just use inspect element tool of your browser and check for the id attribute of link or script tags.

You can check your website source code using inspect element and start dequeuing any JS or CSS file where they are not needed.

wp_head

This action hook is used to add any resource JS, CSS files, or meta tags in the section of the webpage.

Using this hook, you can load preload above-the-fold resources in the head section, which can improve your LCP scores.

For example, font preloading, which is one of Google’s recommendations, or logo and featured images on article pages, always load above the fold – and you need to preload them to improve LCP.

For that, use the code snippet below.

function my_preload() {
?>
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
The first two lines are for preloading Google fonts, then we preload the logo and check if the article has a featured image, then preload the featured image.
As an additional note, your theme or site may have webp images enabled; in that case, you should preload webp version of them.
script_loader_tag
You heard a lot about render-blocking resources which can be fixed by defer or async loading JavaScript tags. It is critical for improving FCP and LCP.
This filter action is used to filter the HTML output of the script tags, and you need exactly this filter to async or defer load your theme or plugin’s JS/CSS files.
function my_defer_async_load( $tag, $handle ) {
   // async loading scripts handles go here as an array
   $async_handles = array('wpcf7-recaptcha', 'another-plugin-script');
   // defer loading scripts handles go here as an array
   $defer_handles = array('contact-form-7', 'any-theme-script');
   if( in_array( $handle, $async_handles) ){
     return str_replace( ' src', ' async src', $tag );
   }
   if( in_array( $handle, $defer_handles ) ){
     return str_replace( ' src', ' defer="defer" src', $tag );
   }
return $tag;
}
add_filter('script_loader_tag', 'my_defer_async_load', 10, 2);
This filter accepts two arguments: HTML tag, and script handle, which I mentioned above when examining via inspect element.
You can use the handle to decide which script to load async or defer.
After you defer or async load, always check via the browser console if you have any JS errors. If you see JS errors, you may need a developer to help you, as fixing them may not be straightforward.
template_redirect
This action hook is called before determining which template to load. You can use it to change the HTTP status code of the response.
For example, you may have spammy backlinks to your internal search query pages containing weird characters and/or common patterns.
At Search Engine Journal, we are used to having spammy backlinks pointing to our internal search pages that are in Korean – and we have learned from our server logs that Googlebot was intensively crawling them.
Screenshot from author, February 2023
WordPress default response code is 404 not found, but it is better to throw in 410 in order to tell Google they are gone forever, so it stops crawling them.
function my_410_function(){
  if( is_search() ) {
    $kw = $_GET['s'];
    // check if the string contains Korean characters
    if (preg_match('/[x{AC00}-x{D7AF}]+/u', $kw)) {
     status_header(410, 'Not Found');
    }
  }// end of is_search
}
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'my_410_function', 10 );
In our case, we know that we don’t have Korean content, which is why we composed our condition like that.
But you may have international content in Korean, and conditions may differ.
Generally, for non-programmers, ChatGPT is a great tool for generating conditions using a regular expression, which you may use to build an if/else condition based on your spam pattern from GSC.
wp_headers
This action hook is used to modify HTTP headers of WordPress.
You can use this hook to add security headers to your website response HTTP headers.
function my_headers(){
      $headers['content-security-policy'] = 'upgrade-insecure-requests';
      $headers['strict-transport-security'] = 'max-age=31536000; preload';
      $headers['X-Content-Type-Options'] = 'nosniff';
      $headers['X-XSS-Protection'] = '1; mode=block';
      $headers['x-frame-options'] = 'SAMEORIGIN';
      $headers['Referrer-Policy'] = 'strict-origin-when-cross-origin';
      $headers['Link'] = '; rel=preload; as=image';
     $headers['Link'] = '; rel=preconnect; crossorigin'; 
$headers['Link'] = '; rel=preload; as=image';
      return $headers;
 }
add_filter( 'wp_headers', 'my_headers', 100 );
Beside security headers, you can add “Link” tags (as many as you want) for pre-connecting or preloading any resource.
Basically, it is an alternative method of preloading, which was covered above.
You may also add “X-Robots-Tag” (as many as you want ) to your HTTP headers based on your needs.
Conclusion
Plugins are often aimed at solving a wide variety of tasks and may often not be designed specifically to fulfill your specific needs.
The ease with which you can modify WordPress core is one of its most beautiful aspects – and you can alter it with a few lines of code.
We discussed action hooks you can use to improve technical SEO, but WordPress has a large number of action hooks you can explore and use to do basically everything you want with minimal use of plugins.
More resources:

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