Your blog is an extension of you. It’s a part of who you are. It could also be a nice source of income if you know how to grow your audience and build a brand.
When you’re first starting out as a blogger, one of the great mysteries that you’ll experience is related to hosting. If you ask other bloggers, most will tell you that you’re fine with shared hosting.
The only reason why they’ll say that is because they don’t know what else is out there. They’re actually missing a lot of benefits from a VPS host. You could be too unless you read this article.
Read on to learn what VPS hosting is and why you’d want to have it for your blog.
Are you familiar with shared hosting? Shared hosting is where your web site’s files live on a server along with the web site files of many other websites. The exact number depends on your host. Since you’re sharing space and resources with many other websites, web hosts can charge you much less for
There’s also dedicated hosting, where you have a server all to yourself. That’s a great solution if you have a ton of traffic going to your site every month.
You’re not sharing the space of the server with anyone else, which means much more resources for your site, but that will come at a cost.
VPS hosting stands for a virtual private server. OK, so what’s a virtual private server? It combines the best of shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
A VPS will have a server that they can partition and install several operating systems on the same server. This creates several “mini servers” within one server. The result is that you have server space that you don’t share with any other account, even though there are technically others on the same server.
You have dedicated resources for your blog, and you don’t have to carry the costs of having your own server.
A virtual private server does have plenty of advantages including costs and server space. Let’s take a look at other reasons why a VPS would be a great choice for your Irish blog.
With shared hosting, you’re kind of at the mercy of the other accounts on the server. If one website on your server gets hit with a denial of service attack or sees a surge in traffic, your site will be impacted. Your customers might not be able to access your site because of another account.
Let’s say that you do have a surge in traffic to your site because you were recently featured as a top influencer in Ireland. A shared host may decide to limit your bandwidth or throttle traffic to your site. That will prevent people from accessing your site at a critical moment for your blog.
With a VPS, your site is protected from these surges in traffic and you usually have much more bandwidth available if you do experience a sudden surge in popularity.
For bloggers and any type of web site, security and privacy have to be front and center. A hacked website can result in a loss of ad revenue, traffic, and credibility. It can also be devastating to your site’s SEO, which can be difficult to recover.
The most important thing at stake is your site’s reputation. A major hit to your blog’s reputation can’t be measured and very difficult to recover from.
If another website on your server experiences an attack, it can cause havoc for your site. You certainly don’t want to lose your hard work because of someone else.
With a VPS, you’re protected from the mistakes of other accounts, which means that you can focus on creating amazing blog content.
Overall, you’re going to get much better performance from a VPS plan than a shared plan. That will translate into faster load times for your blog.
Faster load time for your blog means that your readers don’t have to wait for your site to load. That means that traffic will stick around, and they won’t abandon your site.
Better performance is also much better for SEO. Site speed is a ranking factor in Google, which means that if you have a slow-loading website, you won’t rank well in search engines.
You work very hard on building a dedicated audience for your blog. They’re loyal and they’re ready for more content from you, including paid content.
You can open up an e-commerce store where you can sell products on your blog. This can turn into a lucrative source of income for you as you grow your blog.
The thing is, you can’t have an e-commerce store on a shared server. You have to comply with PCI payment security standards, which can be a challenge with a shared plan. With a VPS plan, you know that your customer’s data is secure because you’re in control of the server.
With shared hosting, you basically have to deal with what you’re given. There is no room to customize the server to speed up performance. You may have to learn to code, but it’s worth it.
A VPS allows you to make customizations to the server. After all, you have the server space to yourself so you can do what you like.
When you’re trying to find the best hosting plan for your Irish blog, it can be easy to get lost in the different types of plans. You might figure that they’re all the same, so you go with the cheapest.
By doing that, you’re missing out on everything a virtual private server, or VPS hosting plan has to offer. A VPS offers better security, control, and performance.
Are you ready to start looking for a VPS? Contact us today to find out about our VPS hosting plans.
