love your website

4 Steps to a Seductive Website

Make visitors love your website by using these 4 expert tips

Illustration by Ben Jordan: https://twitter.com/benjordan

Illustration by Ben Jordan: https://twitter.com/benjordan

The arts of seduction and interaction design go hand-in-hand. Your goal, after all, is making the user fall in love with your website or application.

The same principles of courtship apply: trying too hard repulses the user, while not trying enough will make them pass you over.

In this article, we’ll show how to take advantage of human psychology and emotional design to create an alluring charm to your interface.

1 – Create an inspiring flow

An alluring interface is designed to put the user in a state of flow — a mindset in which they are so focused on interacting with your product, they forget the rest of the world. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow, explains that this is the optimal experience because the user focuses on their work, and the interface becomes only an invisible hand guiding them along.

The way to inspire flow is to constantly and rewardingly engage the user — “seducing them,” in other words. To create such an experience, at least two factors are needed:

  • Control — The user must feel in control the entire time. This is why seduction favors subtlety over aggressive approaches.
  • Achievement — Obviously, the user needs a purpose for using your product, whether business or pleasure. Beyond the main goal, the sense of achievement can be bolstered by positive and well-placed feedback from the system.

While a simplistic viewpoint of the much more complex field of interaction design, creating this “flow” in your users is a nice, simple goal to chase throughout the rest of the design process.

2 – Understand your users

banking_misconception2The first step is understanding as much as possible about people.

This list of observations about individuals as a whole leads the way to interaction designs that give people what they want. From this list, we can derive a list of elements that will make your website or app more attractive to the common person.

  • Social Proof — Most people follow popular opinion, so if your product seems popular, its perceived value increases. If you don’t have the numbers to parade openly, even a few considerate testimonials will help.
  • Scarcity — Just like an exclusive club, scarcity adds the allure of something not everyone can have. Offering limited promotions or even a private, invitation-only beta version of the product can generate more excitement from non-users than the users themselves.
  • Recognition over Recall — As we explained in Interaction Design Best Practices, the more the user must think, the less they’ll enjoy the product. Design your interface with recognizable patterns so users don’t need to relearn basic controls. For example, link text should be labelled the same as the headlines of the linked content.
  • Sensory Integration — Stimulating more of your users’ senses will engage them deeper. Aside from visuals, this can only apply to audio effects/music, or some creative use of gesturing in mobile devices. For example, the Wunderlist app plays a pleasant bell chime when you complete a task.
  • Visual Superiority — While sensory integration is welcome, vision remains the dominant sense. Design your interface along a solid visual hierarchy so that it looks as good as it functions.

Because so much of interaction design concerns human experiences, you must design for what the brain cares about (which is different than what the conscious mind cares about). To design for a brain that’s evolved over a long period of time, you’ll need to incorporate beauty, visual variety, and of course emotion.

While we’re on the topic of the human element, let’s explore emotion in interaction design. First we’ll explain the difference between usability and enjoyment, and then we’ll discuss some practical tips for designing emotional experiences.

3 – Balance usability and enjoyment

Emotional stimuli make the difference between a product that’s loved, rather than simply usable. Anders Toxboe, Designer for Bonnier Interactive, makes the case that, while usability will satisfy your users, the satisfaction will be short-lived. To be loved, an interface requires more than functionality.

As you can understand, a homeless person who comes into some money will likely spend it on food or shelter instead of a psychologist appointment — physiological needs hold more weight than self-actualization needs.

Evidently, usability goals are still core to interaction design. But once they are fulfilled, there remains a lot of room for improvement.

Don’t make the mistake of designing only for usability. Make sure you design experiences that also fulfill the user’s emotional needs.

4 – Focus on delight

One of the reasons a lot of designers miss the top part of the pyramid is because it’s difficult.

JoyfulSliderLeftFaceKnowing whether something is usable is relatively easier — a test can determine if it works, and some troubleshooting options can solve the problem if it doesn’t. But how can you determine if your interface creates an emotional response or not? That’s a little trickier to test.

Here are a handful of helpful tips discovered by the experts that can guide you into developing the UX your users want:

Appealing Visuals — While a delightful mascot may seem cheesy to some, its appeal to users is well-known.

Discoverables — People generally enjoy surprise treats more than expected ones.

Trust — This should go without saying, but if users don’t trust you — i.e., product pictures don’t match descriptions — they will turn off emotionally. It’s best to be honest with your content and media, albeit with your best foot forward.

Reciprocation — When the user feels like they were done a favor, they’re more likely to return the favor. If your design permits, try to give away small gifts (like a sample chapter for a book).

Personalization — When your interface responds to a user without them disclosing information, you can create an immediate rapport.

sifi-vs-fantasyNovelty Surprises — The core functions themselves should be predictable (e.g. a popup form shouldn’t redirect users after clicking “OK”). Surprise only works to your advantage when it adds delight rather than affect the function.

Just as with human interaction, the more personality you show, the more it will polarize you. This means if you make a statement like, “Fantasy is better than sci-fi,” fantasy fans will love and appreciate your site much more, but you will lose some sci-fi fans.

While eliciting an emotional response can occasionally backfire, it’s better to stir something in your users than nothing at all.

Conclusion –

Seductive design isn’t about tricking your user into behaving a certain way. It’s about getting them to want to behave that way on their own.

You shouldn’t be deceitful or manipulative — it’s just a matter of creating an interface that’s enjoyable enough so that users want to use it. Words and phrases like “engaged” or “in the flow” are just synonyms for “having fun.” If you want users to keep coming back, you need to incorporate the foundations of any good human relationship: be helpful, reliable, understanding, and interesting.

Our goal is to help you understand that interaction design isn’t just about creating interfaces. It’s about mastering human-to-human design, because your goal is to make the black box of technology feel as empathetic and alive as possible.

 

 

VPS or Shared Web Hosting?

Taking your business online is a huge risk, it could either become an instant success or a wasted effort and it all depends on utilizing the right tools in web hosting. Choosing the right kind of web host provider is one of the important steps in making sure that a site that will be able to deliver superior performance. Availability of the site without any downtime is one way to attract more internet users and you can achieve this with a reliable web host provider.

Budget plays a huge role for companies in choosing the right web host package especially for small and medium scaled enterprises that are still on the early age of the business. This budget restriction is one of the reasons why companies prefer to go for the affordable option without a proper research. Shared web hosting is often the typical choice for most businesses because it is less expansive yet offers the basic benefits that you should expect from a host provider. But is this the best choice for your company?

VPS or Virtual Private Servers are slowly climbing the popularity charts as another alternative in web hosting. In a brief comparison, VPS may cost a little more than shared web hosting but it also provides more benefits. In a shared web hosting environment, a number of users share a common server which can lead into problems especially if your site experience heavy web traffic. On the other hand, users are given their own “virtual space” in VPs setting allowing them to take full charge of its settings and configuration. This freedom to customize enables web masters to make changes or adjustments in case a need for it arises.

In another comparison, shared web hosting provides web administrators with limited access which means you will not be able to utilize your own software and operating system. It also restricts the use of customized security procedures which basically means that you will need to rely on the security software that from the web host provider. With internet security being a sensitive issue, it is very important to choose a hosting solution that will ensure that your website will be safe and secured.

Another thing to look at is the bandwidth and disk space that a shared or VPS hosting provides. The amount of bandwidth and disk space is often determined by the type of hosting package that you sign up for. Expect that it will be limited if you pay a small amount and hope for more options if you go for a more expensive web host package.

for more information please contact us about VPS or Shared website hoisting.

Is Your WordPress Under Attack?

Is Your WordPress Under Attack? In a word, Yes.

Just how secure is your site? Is your password strong enough? Are your themes and plugins up-to-date? Are you running the latest version of WordPress? Do you have any security plugins installed? Can you say with 100% certainty that there are no malicious files on your server? Have you ever been hacked? Are you sure about that?

If you think you’re not going to get hacked, think again. According to WP White Security, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to hacker attacks. It’s easy to become complacent. After all, putting in place security measures on your site is complicated and takes time, right?

The WordPress security plugin Coast Internet Publishing utilizes for our clients continuously prevents, patrols and protects your WordPress websites against today’s ultra-advanced cyber attacks, hacks and online security threats.

One of the most common website security vulnerabilities is Malware. Malware, short for malicious software, is any software used to disrupt website operations, gather sensitive information, gain access to private computer systems, or display unwanted advertising. Malware is often disguised as, or embedded in, non-malicious files. The majority of active malware threats are worms or trojans rather than viruses and therefore will often go on running undetected for months.

For your free wordpress security evaluation and recommendation report please contact us

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10 Responsive Web Design Do’s and Don’ts

Responsive web design (RWD) seems very appealing but venturing into the world of multiple screen sizes, media queries, and mobile-first can be daunting. Fear not, however. JDM Digital has put together a list of the top 10 Do’s and Don’ts to guide you through the treacherous waters of modern responsive website and email design.

The Responsive Web Design Backstory
“Make my site mobile-friendly!” It’s a pretty common demand in today’s post-PC world. For the first time in 2014, comScore reported mobile web browser had eclipsed desktop browsing globally.

google-responsive-devicesSure, you could build an iOS app, an Android app, and a Windows 8 app to browse your site, but each of them will cost around $8K and you still require users to download said app. Get real.

Responsive Web Design (or RWD, for short) is all the rage precisely because it’s just good old fashioned HTML with the CSS you’ve come to know and love and a little magic using something called “media queries”, introduced in CSS3. Media queries simply allow you to query the screen size (the ‘media’, if you will) and update the style (CSS) in real time.

That means, you can have two columns that are 50% of the width of a screen floated side-by-side until that screen is smaller than, say, 768px. At widths smaller than 768px, the columns are both 100% wide and stacked one on top of the other. That’s responsive web design in a nutshell.

10. DON’T Do it Because it’s Trendymobile-image
Responsive web design is all the rage, but don’t do it just because it’s trendy. Think about how your user will browse your site on their mobile device and, perhaps more importantly, WHY. Are they looking for your dinner menu, your office location, your phone number, reading your awesome blog, looking for examples, researching vendors?

Whether mobile, tablet, or desktop, your website visitors don’t care about trendy whiz-bang. Get to the point.

09. DO Use Large Fonts
On a desktop, you’re used to reading content in 12-point font on a 22-inch monitor. Mobile users can’t read that tiny font on their phones. You need to use much larger font sizes. In fact, increase your smallest font size to something you think is borderline TOO big. Then, add 1 more point. As a rule of thumb, yourfont size should be no smaller than 16px (if you’re still using pixels for responsive typography).

08. DON’T Hide Content for Mobile
There’s no need to punish mobile users by hiding some of your content or, worse, showing a stripped-down version of your website. Stick to a mobile-first design strategy (design for mobile, THEN scale things up for tablet, laptop, and desktop devices). More on that in #1, at the bottom.

07. DO Keep User Experience (UX) in MindMobile-Vs-Standard-Websites
Just because you “can” do something, doesn’t mean you “should.” Keep the user in mind. Would this functionality be beneficial to THEM? Remember, your visitors don’t give a sh*t that your site is responsive. They may not even know what that means. For a little extra credit, check out Google’s 3 Things.

06. DON’T Clutter the Design
From garbage sidebars to multiple navigation planes, you’d be surprised how much of your website’s UI you can do without. It’s a painful process (trust us, we know), but try to remove HALF of everything on a given page. Then, remove HALF of what remains. That’ll keep you designs clean and clear.

05. DO Keep it Light and Fast-Loading
Even with 4G mobile networks covering most of Canada and the U.S., mobile devices are still far slower and bandwidth more expensive than desktop. You need to keep your responsive site as light as possible. Keep in mind, the biggest problem with responsive is that it’s not (yet) adaptive. In other words, that giant background image on your home page is the same if I’m viewing it on my 35-inch HD desktop display as on my tiny iPhone 5. A truly optimized asset is an asset never downloaded.

04. DON’T Use Tiny Links
A mouse was DESIGNED for great granular control and a finger is a pretty horrible pointing device. Keep your line-height at least 1.4 and your body font size at least 16px. Buttons and navigation links should also have at least 8 pixels of padding and 15px of margin around them, for those of us with fat fingers.

03. DO Test, Test, Test
Designing a mobile site requires prioritization. The only way to prioritize is by measuring and testing your design to ensure they support these critical tasks. Look into User Experience testing for real-world tests on your designs while still on a staging server. One of my favorites is UserTesting.com. They also have a free trial version called “Peek” for those of you a little apprehensive about UX testing.

02. DON’T “Build the Lily”
Something as beautiful as a Lily doesn’t need to be recreated. Try to adhere to certain design conventions whenever possible. That’s what people are used to seeing and interacting with. Google, for one, came up with their own UI design convention they named “Material Design.” Not that “Material Design” is the end-all and be-all. Just stick to the classics, unless you’ve got a really good reason to depart from those conventions. Even then, remember, the Lily was perfect before you tried to improve it.

01. DO Design “Mobile-First”
We’ve mentioned this before, but I think it bears mentioning again. Don’t start designing your new mobile-friendly site for desktop and then try and cram it into a mobile device. You need to do it in reverse, ergo, “mobile-first.” Start by designing a full-featured responsive website for mobile and then scale it UP for tablets, netbooks, and desktops. As you move up, your images could get larger (loads a separate, larger image src), your page could get a little heavier (if it must), and your navigation could return to something a bit more “mouse-friendly.”

The Relation between Web Design and Online Success

A company that is looking for a way to launch their business in a sure hit way should consider building a strong presence in the worldwide web. And why is this vital? The answer is simply because the internet has become a great equalizer in the field of marketing and communications. It has paved the way for almost anyone to easily market their offers to a wider audience without having to pay much on advertising and marketing fees.

Now the first step towards achieving this goal is by having a website that is appealing and could catch the attention of the readers quickly. Site building involves a lot of steps; one of them involves web design which plays an important role in order to draw an audience to check out your website. With a carefully planned and well executed web design, internet users can easily be attracted hence it will generate more traffic to the site.

Coming up with an excellent web design brings a company a step closer to online success. Here are some ways on how your company could utilize web design as a way to reach your goals:

  1. Design a site with a clear header and sub headers. Well defined titles are not only part of web design but are also a way to enhance the site’s SEO. Now every company is aware of the keywords that they need to use in order to increase their presence and land on the first page of various search engine results. The use of such keywords in a manner that is consistent to the entire content is also a good way to engage to your readers.
  2. Keep your articles and other information interesting. Placing them on various sections and carefully organizing the home page does not only make the site look pleasing but it also provides the customers with an easy way to access your website. Set some guidelines when it comes to the content. An article that is too long could make readers lose their interest while a short one might seem to be lacking relevant information.
  3. An efficient web design is one that is user friendly. Remember that not everyone ever tech savvy and only has limited knowledge about how to use the internet. In order to draw more prospective clients, a company’s website should be easy to understand and use. Any reader should immediately have a clear understanding as to what your company offers and the links to click in order to get more information.

Web design is not only for a site’s aesthetic purpose but it should also help in maximizing its SEO potential and aid in making your business an online success.

The Advantages of Linux Website Hosting

Within the current world economical climate, CEOs and business professionals routinely find themselves turning to an array of different techniques in order to increase profit. Some firms focus their attention on customer service, some innovate with new products, and others attempt to increase income through additional marketing and promotion. These methods have the potential to transform the revenue for even the most struggling business. But the most effective solution for increasing profit is often a simple process.

Before increasing expenditures on attracting new customers, the best advice to improve your profit is to take a look at your business costs. For companies with an online presence, overpriced web hosting can have a significant impact on margins. So how can you find a low-cost hosting solution that maximizes your return on investment (ROI)?

How A Shared Hosting Solution Can Be A False Economy

For many website owners, the first hosting solution is a modest shared hosting plan. Shared hosting is an easy-to-use and affordable solution that provides enough resources to accommodate a website with modest traffic. However, once the traffic increases, shared web hosting quickly becomes inadequate. The money you may save by choosing a budget shared hosting solution for your online presence quickly becomes irrelevant when long periods of downtime turn your potential customers away and on to your competitors.

Dedicated server hosting is on the other end of the performance scale, allowing users to host fully-fledged websites with complex implementation and high resource requirements. Where shared hosting customers sit alongside numerous other accounts on one hardware server, a dedicated server ensures consistently good performance with dedicated hardware resources. Nevertheless, many customers are reluctant to make the jump to a dedicated hosting solution, due to the relatively high costs of renting a dedicated server.

It’s true, some of the dedicated hosting plans out there can set you back hundreds of dollars per month. But not all offers are the same and if you know what to look for – and where to look – you can get a dedicated machine for less than you would expect. One option is to choose Linux dedicated server hosting as the power of a Linux dedicated server is at a more affordable price point than Windows alternatives.

Why are dedicated Linux plans more affordable than Windows solutions?

With web hosting, it is important to balance performance requirements with budget considerations. Things are rarely as simple as finding the cheapest hosting option. Instead, you should be searching for a dependable, reliable host that has a fair and transparent pricing scheme in place.

When it comes to Linux dedicated servers, there are several factors that influence the total cost of ownership, including initial costs, ongoing costs, and the cost of associated software. Let’s analyze these three groups of expenses, and see why Linux dedicated servers are more affordable than Windows servers.

1. Setup Costs

Most Windows hosting providers will charge you a hefty fee for setting up your dedicated server. The fee covers the workload required to install the server and, in most cases, a part of the cost of the software installed on the server. The setup cost for a Linux dedicated server is usually smaller, as the Linux operating system is completely free to use, even for commercial purposes. Additionally, you can easily find providers that will setup your Linux server free of charge, saving you a lot of money in the process.

2. Monthly Costs

The bulk of the costs associated with hosting your website on a dedicated server come from the monthly fees. Over the course of a fiscal year, the cost of leasing a dedicated server hosting solution could potentially run into thousands of dollars. Windows Server, the operating system used on Windows hosting plans, costs hundreds of dollars to license – a price that is passed on to and ultimately paid by the customer. Because Linux is free to use, hosting providers generate substantial savings when using a popular Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, CentOS, or Debian. In turn, customers who choose Linux get a fully-featured operating system for a much smaller fee.

3. Software Costs

One cost category that should not be neglected is the cost of the software installed on the dedicated server. Many customers don’t take into account the costs of the various applications that will run on the server, and do not factor these costs into their budgets. Linux is the foundation of the open source ecosystem and hundreds of free applications are designed to integrate with it, from PHP and MySQL to Zen Cart and WordPress. In contrast, most applications available on Windows Server are only available with pricy commercial licenses.

For the best return on investment, choose a Linux dedicated hosting provider

When searching for a hosting plan that can handle increased traffic while remaining affordable and cost-effective, Linux dedicated servers provide excellent features and a rich feature set, at a price that is significantly lower than the overall cost of a Windows machine. Unless you specifically require a Windows environment, Linux plans should be your first option, as they provide a better return for your investment and a superior set of features.

There are many Linux dedicated hosting plans available and sometimes it can be difficult to make the difference between marketing talk and genuine quality offers. Before committing to any hosting plan, thoroughly research the market and make sure to take into account all the costs associated with the dedicated hosting solution. Once you have done your research call us (604-866-5800) or email us for a free 1 hour consultation to find out how we can provide you with a reliable, fast, cost effective solution.

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4 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid

Effective Search Engine Optimization is really not that difficult but will take a little knowledge and a keen attention to detail.

Here Are 4 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid:

1. Choose The Wrong Keywords.

Each page of your website should be optimized for only a few keywords or phrases. This page helps you get found every time someone uses a search engine to find the keyword phrases you are optimizing for.

If you optimize your keywords correctly, you probably will get increased traffic to the website from looking for the type of products and services you offer. However, if you optimize for the “wrong” keywords, you won’t get an increase in traffic or can be found by the wrong audience altogether.

Using a keyword research tool, you can determine how many times per month certain keyword phrases are searched. This is important because you don’t want to optimize your web pages for terms that no one cares about.

Also, you must type each keyword phrase on Google (or search engine of your choice) to see what results you find. If the results show you the pages that relate to your own, you’re on the right track.

If the results are completely irrelevant, you should avoid optimizing for keyword phrases and search terms that are more targeted.

4 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid2. Stuff Too Many Keywords in Your Meta Tags

It is far better to be known for a few keywords than it is to be missed by hundreds…Narrow your keywords and try to use only a few keywords per page. Remember that in order for the keyword meta tag to be efective, it has to correlate to the keywords in the content of the page. There is no way you can optimize each page for more that a few keywords, so don’t bother stuffing a massive ammount of keywords in your meta tags. You are better off to have more pages, and optimize each page for a specific keyword or phrase.

3. Forget to Include The Title On Your Web Pages.

Each page of your website should have a title page also called “meta-title page.” This information will be added to the HTML code itself and can be found at the top of the page.

The title page serves many different purposes. First, it will be displayed at the top of the browser window to let visitors know the type of information is expected on the page. It also helps search engines and human visitors know what content is expected.

This is why it is essential that you include a title page that your keyword phrases to optimize.

The title page will appear every time someone finds your pages by using search engines. The title Information Page which is used for the link, is a blue clickable link and will find your page.

Forgetting to include page titles can cause search engines to add the term, “Untitled Document” on your page. It looks quite unprofessional and can hamper your ability to be found for important keyword phrases as well.

4. Using The Same Page Title On All Pages.

Too often, I see the webmaster using the exact same page title on every page of this site.

Remember that search engines index each page of your site, not your overall site. Your “meta title page” should include a keyword phrase you want to optimize the pages for, and each page should be optimized for a set of key phrases that pertain to the content of each page.

While there is more to effective search engine optimization, avoid these common mistakes and it can help you outperform many sites that use them.

If you are careful to do thorough keyword research, you will find a set of keyword phrases that will bring you targeted traffic and new businesses.

5 Ideas For a Successful Website

A website acts as an image for your business and hence it is essential to portray a good picture of yourself by creating a good looking and functioning websites. In this blog we will give some tips that you should follow in order to have a successful website.

1. Most Important: A clean and professional website
When a user visits your site, they should immediately understand that your website means business. Imagine yourself visiting some website and noticing a bad design, broken links and difficult navigation. What will you do in such a case? You will exit the browser or switch to another website. Hence, having a website with great design, professional look and feel is very important. Visitors should be able to navigate easily and find the information that they are looking for. Having a good looking website also helps increase the conversion rate. Believe it or not, looks do matter on the internet.

2. Update content regularly
People constantly look for information over the internet and want to read good articles and blog with latest news and updates. Apart from content, having an old phone number or an office address might also cost you dearly. Your customers may be trying to reach you by looking at the old phone number on your website. This creates a bad name for you as the customers will complain about poor customer service. Hence, it is necessary to keep the updated information on the website and help your customers achieve what they want to do.

3. Establish clear calls to action
Every website should have a desired objective for the visitor whether it is selling a product, signing up a news letter or completing a contact us form. Call to action is not only limited to ecommerce site but every website should be able to engage the audience. A visitor on the website should get an idea of what your business is about and what you want them to do on the website.

4. Use analytics for your website
A analytic loot helps you measure your performance, gives you a better understanding of which pages are performing better than the other. With the help of analytic tool you can determine what changes you need to make on the website. If you realize that your visitors are exiting the website from a particular page more often, you need to make that page more interactive, include a call to action or change that page completely.

5. Making a website search engine friendly
Search engines ranking are very important as that is one of the key ways your users are going to find you on the internet, The internet has millions of website including yours, and search engines is a way by which you users will find you site. Having a good search engine ranking will increase the number of visitors you get on your site. Make sure everything from your content and URLs to your code is targeting keywords correctly. Search engines are taking page load times into account now, so make sure yours loads as fast as it possibly can.

6. Bonus Point…Have a fast loading website.
Slow loading pages can be very annoying. They are a test of users’ patience. Move your website onto Coast Internet Publishing’s high speed servers for fast loading times.

1 Billion Mobile Devices Connected to The Internet by 2013

The mobile web is a fascinating space that is still in its infancy. If the current capabilities of mobile devices are a sign of things to come, I can only imagine what will be possible five years from now.

Here are 10 reasons I think that anyone with an online presence should establish a mobile presence separate from your website:
Not only are there a lot of cell phones worldwide, but they seem to outlast their owners and are passed down to another owner. There are great recycling and refurbishing programs that use old cell phones as emergency dialers or resell them at discounted rates.

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WordPress Cloud Hosting

Let me start by discussing WordPress: Most everyone is familiar with this popular blogging/CMS platform. After all, it is one the most widely-used platforms in the world for website building and blogging. The reason WordPress is so popular is because it offers complete customization and gives full control to the user.

With WordPress, you can easily customize and code pages as you need to: you can add new blog posts, approve or remove comments and install a lot of plugins. Whether you are a web developer or a total beginner, getting started with WordPress is extremely easy.

What’s So Awesome About Cloud Hosting?

“Cloud hosting” is the new, hottest trend (and a very popular marketing buzzword) in the hosting industry. The reason for it being such a trend is because cloud hosting has major benefits over the regular shared server, virtual private server (VPS) and dedicated hosting server.

“In the cloud” means that a website is not hosted on just one server but spread across multiple servers, which act as one system. So instead of relying on just one machine for resources (such as RAM, disk space, bandwidth, etc.), in cloud hosting, you can pull resources from multiple servers—empowering you to scale your website as you need to.

The major benefit of cloud hosting is that it enables you to add and remove resources when needed, and you can pay as you go.

wordpress in the cloud

WordPress + Cloud

WordPress cloud hosting means that your WordPress website is scalable, with all the benefits of cloud hosting. The important thing here is to realize why WordPress hosted on the cloud is better than a WordPress site hosted on a dedicated server or a shared hosting plan. So, let’s look at some of the features WordPress cloud hosting offers:

WordPress Optimized Server:

All the cloud servers are fully optimized to run WordPress successfully. Moreover, your hosting company has a technical team that is familiar with WordPress, so they can handle any server-related issue. Each cloud server is thoroughly tested by running different versions of WordPress and fixing any issue that could arise.

Managed Hosting with WordPress Experts:

WordPress cloud hosting solutions are fully managed by system administrators, database admins and technicians. WordPress related issues are solved by a team of WordPress experts; these experts have various tricks up their sleeves to successfully run a WordPress site on a cloud server.

The team of experienced WordPress experts takes care of automatic WordPress updates, plugin updates, speed optimization backups, server monitoring, maintenance, etc., so you can sleep sound knowing your website is in good hands.

Scalability:

Cloud hosting for WordPress offers the capability to scale the server resources (RAM, disk space, CPU cores, bandwidth) as per the website requirements. So, if suddenly your website or blog sees a spike in traffic that your server can’t handle, you can easily add more resources to it. This comes in handy during peek business seasons because you can add resources to handle your site’s increase in traffic—and then scale down again as traffic declines.

Reliability:

Every server crashes at least once, which will cause your website to go down. However, with the cloud that’s not the case as your WordPress website is hosted on multiple servers: If one server crashes, the other one kicks-in, ready to keep your website up at all times. Cloud hosting greatly increases reliability by reducing server downtime.

Security:

WordPress (being an extremely popular CMS application) is also one that is attacked most by hackers. Secure WordPress cloud hosting is offered with:

[list style=”list1″ color=”blue”]

  • Redundant Firewalls
  • DDoS Protection
  • Custom Firewall Rules
  • Automatic Core/Plugin Updates
  • Malware Scanning
  • Admin Access Controls
  • And much more

[/list]

CDN (Content Delivery Network):

A CDN is used for fast and efficient delivery of content over websites. Users today lack patience, and they need content to be delivered to them fast. A CDN can help achieve this.

With a CDN, a website is replicated over multiple different locations, like throughout Asia and Europe. So if somebody from Japan accesses your website, a CDN server from Asia will deliver that request, and if somebody from Spain wants to look at your site, the server for Europe will serve that user.

Conclusion

WordPress cloud hosting is the best, most cost-effective way to host a website. Cloud hosting is a trend that’s here to stay because of the many benefits that it has to offer. If you have a WordPress site and are in the market for an ideal hosting solution, then hosting WordPress on the cloud should be your choice.

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