How to Choose a Dedicated Server For WordPress?

Your WordPress website has become pretty popular, and you consider switching to a dedicated server? Or you’re sure your new blog is doomed to success, and want to start up with a powerful hosting option? In both cases, that’s the right choice, but now you have a challenging task ahead: selection of dedicated servers for WordPress. How to choose the right dedicated server?

Hard drive matters

Generally, dedicated servers of popular brands like SuperMicro and Dell are equally reliable, but what matters is the type of hard drive. Today, there are two main options available:

1. HDD (hard disk drives) are used in most computers and laptops. They contain a rotating element, which is why they produce noise. One HDD can provide up to 4 Tb of storage, reliability and redundancy during the process of writing and reading data. However, it consumes more power, and the speed of data processing is slower. It should be used for operations that don’t require frequent reading or writing of data.

2. SSD (solid-state drives) don’t have rotating elements, which is why they are completely silent. They accelerate the operations of reading and writing data (in HDD, IOPS reaches 80-100, while in SSD it can be more than 8,000 operations per second). Their service life is shorter, and they can be more expensive, but still SSD is a perfect option for a website developed on any modern CMS.

If you host a traffic-heavy website on an HDD WordPress dedicated server, choose SAS interface, if on SSD server – SATA interface will be more appropriate (it may transfer data at the rate up to 6 Gb/sec).

Managed vs Unmanaged

Users with profound technical knowledge can save on server maintenance buying unmanaged dedicated servers. In this case, you will be responsible for backups, fixing technical issues and monitoring performance. If you face technical problems you cannot solve, you will have to ask for provider’s help: be ready to pay support team on an hourly basis for their assistance.

You’re not a tech-savvy user? Opt for a managed dedicated server, because in this case you will be provided with:

• 24/7 monitoring;
• competent technical support;
• regular backups;
• security features.

Although such option is more costly than the first one, you will sleep soundly knowing your WordPress website is always available, and data on the server is safe and secure.

Location

To ensure fast website loading you need to shorten the distance between end users and the source of data (the original server). This is why you should order a dedicated server that’s located as close to your target audience as possible. However, even the most advanced dedicated server will not ensure rapid loading for users from all over the world.

If your website is popular geographically spread regions, or the entire globe, consider charging its speed with CDN for WordPress. CDN (content delivery network) is a system of servers that cache website assets and deliver them to visitors much quicker. That’s a cheaper and easier option than leasing several dedicated servers in multiple regions.

When selecting a dedicated server, you should take into consideration requirements of your project, not its price only. Keep in mind that an ideal server is the one that suits your exact needs.

5 Most common SEO mistakes

If you’re new in website hosting, most likely you make some widespread mistakes that hurt SEO considerably. Find out what changes can be made to the website to increase the number of readers and boost ranking.

No permalink optimization

Permalinks show users what your pages are about, and also let search engines to define their relevancy. Therefore you should shape up a correct structure of your permalinks in settings. It’s recommended to post permalinks to page titles only. Don’t forget to include keywords in the links.

Ignoring fields about keywords and title

If you don’t fill up all fields in your post, it can have negative impact on SEO. Keywords allow search engines to understand how well a webpage is optimized for targeted keywords. SEO title helps to customize the title and make it understandable for search engines. Besides, if you dedicate a few minutes to writing a meta description, a post will have better click rates.

Poor interlinking

Why having links between blog posts? First, it increases user engagement making people surf the website continuously. Secondly, bounce rates become much lower. SEO benefits are also clear: when Google sees that contextually relevant pages are linked, the relevance of website in some certain topic increases. Use links actively and include different keywords.

Not much external linking

External linking also boosts search ranking, if they connect users with authoritative web-sites. That happens due to the above-mentioned relevancy factor. Furthermore, Google approves of this strategy, because it shows the relevancy of the project. So if you don’t have external links, or use them rarely, Google will assume your website is not interesting and invaluable.  

No image optimization

Although some developers don’t care about writing alt text, this is very important. It’s useful for mobile visitors and visually impaired people. Alt text should also be added to logos and navigational images, because it provides wider context for search engines.

Learn how to improve SEO with CDN: https://inxy.hosting/blog/how-cdn-improves-3-google-ranking-factors

Why using a Dedicated Server in Your Business?

Modern IT market is highly competitive, and it gets harder to outperform the rivals. To be ahead of the competitors, a business needs to use every opportunity to succeed. With a dedicated server, an organization can give its website a huge boost, attract more customers and have complete control over hosting. What are the reasons to implement this technology?

Brilliant user experience

If a visitor tries to open a website in vain, and it takes too long to load, he or she is more likely to abandon the slow page and go to a competitor’s website to find the necessary product or service. If you want to avoid such situations, order a dedicated server right now. This way, you will be able to improve overall performance of your website and prevent downtime.

Overall control and customization

When shared hosting is used, a business has nowhere to grow further – limit of resources is a serious obstacle. Besides, developers can’t adjust the website and bandwidth whenever needed. With a dedicated server you can have as many resources at your disposal as necessary. When there’s a low volume of traffic, you can scale down and reduce expenses. When the traffic flow grows, you will be able to scale up instantly and give customers a quick access to your website.

Security Improvement

During the recent years the number of hacker attacks and data leaks has increased considerably, so we’re in dire need of additional security measures. Shared hosting can’t provide your business with a consistent level of security: your website will be under permanent threat because of other users’ actions and resource consumption. If you have precious information, taking measures for super-security is obligatory. Data breach can rupture your image and reputation, but with a dedicated server, you will have every opportunity to adjust every aspect of protection. Use a firewall, important backups and SSH, and you will be able to repel all attacks.

Absence of limits

Every business should have space to grow and develop. Most entrepreneurs start with cheap shared hosting, but this choice can take its toll in the future. To avoid problems with switching (loss of data, website lags), simply start from dedicated server hosting. You will be able to add up more bandwidth and disc space as your business is developing.

Dedicated IP Address

Using a separate IP address is crucial just like having a unique brandname. With a dedicated server, you have a separate IP and your website can’t be blacklisted because of other users.

Use of a dedicated server is a must for those who need overall control over hosting and sufficient amount of resources. To get more info about advantages of dedicated servers, read https://inxyhost.com/blog/3-key-qualities-of-dedicated-servers

Why eCommerce sites need low latency CDN?

So you have launched an eCommerce store and have ordered services of a decent hosting provider. Shoppers are satisfied with your goods, social media praises you store, and everything seems to be perfect. Why would one need a CDN then?

Purchasers are highly demanding. If in 1999, people were ready to wait 8 seconds for a website to load, today, their patience allows waiting for 3 seconds only. So if your website is too slow, you can lose up to 79% of potential shoppers who would not return to make a purchase. Furthermore, about 40% of them will tell a friend they had negative online experience. Thus, low latency CDN is crucial as Internet users are very demanding (Read about speed importance in 2017: https://www.spacecdn.com/blog/content-delivery-network/the-importance-of-page-load-speed-in-2017/).

Another problem users have is slow speed when using mobile devices. This is why eCommerce websites should use responsive design and do their best to boost web performance. 73% of mobile users claim that websites are slow, and 38% reckon that there are sites totally unavailable via mobile devices.

Accessibility has become very important for online stores, because half of content goes from mobile devices. In situations when bandwidth is limited, low latency CDN becomes crucial for user experience: it improves the speed of website, no matter what gadget is used. That particularly concerns emerging markets where access outside the country is poor, and PoPs can improve the situation.

Statistics show that eCommerce sites with daily revenue of $100.000 per day may lose up to $2.5 mln in a year, if they have 1 second delay in loading. On the contrary, even 0,1 second improvement in loading can increase revenue by 1%. Thus, low latency CDN is very important for developing eCommerce sites. Using it, you boost speed, improve customer experience and maximize revenue paying just a few dollars a month.

Why PoP count is not always crucial for CDN?

The choice of CDN depends on many factors, and the number of PoPs is one of them. Being the link between users and CDN, PoPs are located in mission-critical places to bring content to users effectively. Quite often, companies regard the number of PoPs as indicator of hosting quality. But while PoP itself makes up for faster loading, its excess is also no good.

When the more PoPs is the better?

Being the link between users and content, PoPs reduce the distance, make up for load balancing and better redundancy. As a rule, a large number of PoPs is beneficial for companies that want to reach global coverage and host bandwidth-intensive files like videos. If you are going to expand your presence in new regions, choose CDNs that offers PoPs there. This way, content won’t have to travel too long

When More PoPs Doesn’t Matter?

Not every company needs an expensive CDN with hundreds of PoPs and customization options. If you need presence in a few regions, you only need to choose a network that has points of presence in these very regions. The closer to visitors – the better. Extra PoPs in regions you don’t serve won’t make the difference. A third party CDN, or their combination will be a cost-effective and reliable option.

These two factors should be taken into account when evaluating CDN infrastructure. What matters is the relation to users, not the number of PoPs.

Cash and cache issues

Prior to ordering a CDN, make sure that it features PoPs only where you need. In most cases, users overpay for extra servers, because providers usually have them everywhere. Find a CDN solution that is relevant to your target audience. This way, you will make sure that every dollar spend is worth: you build up a reliable and effective network that works for YOUR company.

Most CDNs are tailored to deliver static files, while dynamic content is hard to cache, so users are often redirected to the origin server. That limits the advantages of CDN and causes waste of efforts when CDN always tries to replicate data over PoPs. Therefore, if you have need acceleration of dynamic content delivery, choose CDN solutions created especially for that.

Read more about CDN and PoPs: https://www.jodihost.com/blog/news/is-the-number-of-pops-in-cdn-is-so-important/

When should I move from shared hosting to dedicated server?

Most sites and blogs are hosted on shared hosting servers: it becomes the first step in their development. But while shared hosting is less costly, easy to set up and provides some great features, it has a lot of limitations. While your business is growing, hosting plan should also grow with it to meet all demands. How can one know that it’s high time to move hosting to the next level? 

There are several signs that the move from shared hosting is inevitable:

1. Your website deals with high traffic pretty often

If your website traffic volume constantly increases, present shared hosting plan may be not enough to sustain it, and you should switch to a VPS or a dedicated server. It will provide you with sufficient amount of resources and bandwidth.

2. Your website’s load time increases

Shared hosting distributes resources over several websites, and when one of them starts demanding extra bandwidths, other websites start run slower, or even crash. If you have noticed downtime on your website, it’s time to get independent from your neighbors. Besides, if it takes much time to load for a website with several plugins that make several PHP and SQL database requests, it’s time to switch and maintain your server environment.

3. You need more security

Although shared hosting servers are protected with firewalls and other security applications, the risk appears because of other users. If one website causes vulnerability, other websites on the server can be hacked, as well.

With VPS and dedicated server, your site is separated from the others. You get your own IP address and mail server, so your projects won’t be blacklisted, and email letters won’t be marked as spam because of others’ actions.

4. Your project requires more resources

When using shared hosting, all available resources like bandwidth, CPU, memory, and disk space are shared among sites not equally. If some websites consume extra traffic and bandwidth, it will affect your usage limits. With dedicated server hosting, you will get a defined amount of resources in your virtual environment. Besides, VPS and dedicated servers provide far more disk space, bandwidth and more scalability, so you can define certain amount of bandwidth and change it.

5. You want overall control

If you need more control over web hosting account and the opportunity to install any software, to manage cPanel accounts and setting permissions, the switch to a VPS or a dedicated server is necessity.

Now when you’ve made a decision, you only need to find a suitable provider who has the desired product and configuration. To choose between VPS and dedicated servers, read this article: https://inxyhost.com/blog/5-reasons-to-upgrade-from-vps-to-a-dedicated-server

Technologies that will become popular in 2017

After discussing information technology trends in 2017, many specialists agree that artificial intelligence is one of the most actively evolving spheres. Find out why, and what IT directions are as relevant in 2017 as never.

AI(artificial intelligence)

As many other technologies, artificial intelligence can be implemented in a large number of spheres starting from automation of manufacturing finishing by self-driving cars. IoT devices use it, as well. AL is the future of our work, because it makes up for automation of processes around saving time and efforts. Probably, smart agents with AI will soon replace mobile applications and behavioral algorithms. A self-learning app may serve as personal assistant. However, rapid development of AI can lead to job loss, too.

Specialists also claim that in some cases AI is just a refresh of an old product and a marketing hype. For instance, you don’t need a toaster with Internet connection and self-learning when a usual $30 model will be enough. Another debatable issue is security: when all personal devices, homes and cars get technical, you can’t really feel safe. Anyway, machine learning can accelerate the development of AI, making robots and devices learn on their own.

New mobile competitors

The market of smartphones can become different with new players emerging. A lot of Chinese smartphone producers offer top-notch quality products, and HP Elite x3 and the Kodak Ektra have recently caught attention of publicity.

Blockchain

Blockchain technology has caused a lot of buzz. This is a secure transaction tracking technology that can be used in many industries, not financial services. If it expands the presence to cover all transactions, it may become the new standard of purchases.

Hyperconvergence

Hyperconvergence is another sphere that grows considerably: it is predicted that this market will double every year in the future. Security is one of the main features today, and not for the reason of hacking and DDoS attacks. What companies focus on is control over pipes and content, as well as storage options (that are likely to become cheaper).

CDN

 Again, security makes companies implement this technology. While accelerating websites, content delivery networks make up for higher safety and provide DDoS protection on layer level. Besides, load balancing protects the origin server from break. More info about the benefits of CDN is here: https://inxy.hosting/blog/why-you-should-start-using-cdn-right-now