Obtaining a web domain and creating a website is becoming increasingly simple for business owners. However, many are unaware of the importance of web hosting. Web hosting is the foundation for any website on the internet. Without a web hosting service, your web page and domain would exist, but your website would not be visible to your customers. It would be like having everything for a retail store without a physical store space.
What is Web Hosting and How Does it Work?
Web hosting is the process of sharing your website online for people to see. This is done through a web hosting service. Web hosting services run and maintain the servers that house business websites. These service providers offer a secure place to store your online content such as the coding, images, text and videos used for your website.
Essentially, when you purchase a web hosting plan, you are renting a space on a server such as the cloud, where you store your data and files used for the running of your website.
The Importance of a Good Web Hosting Service
As previously mentioned, web hosting is essential for your business to be visible to customers on their browsers. Choosing a good, high-quality web hosting service is crucial for your business as a smooth-performing website comes with benefits.
Web hosting companies are in charge of maintaining and running their servers 24/7 to ensure the websites that they host perform well. High-performing websites can help businesses increase their sales and enhance their user experience.
Choosing the wrong web host provider can cause risks of server attacks due to a lack of security measures such as encryption, firewall and spam blocking.
Crunchy Carrots will deliver a high-quality web hosting service for your business. They will ensure your websites are safe by using the fastest and most secure servers to ensure your business sees the benefits of a good web hosting service.
WordPress Plugins
Before we can cover that, we need to explain where they are used & why. WordPress is our chosen platform for creating your company’s website and is an excellent option for any business large or small.
You will hear us talking about WordPress plugins, and you might find yourself wondering, “what is a WordPress plugin?”. It’s a fairly common question to ask, and simply put, plugins are an essential building block of every single WordPress site.
A WordPress plugin is essentially a bit of code that “plugs in” to your WordPress site. In Layman’s terms, that means a plugin is something that adds new functionality to your WordPress site or extends existing functionality on your site.
The Benefits of WordPress Plugins
One of the benefits of WordPress is there are thousands of WordPress plugins that you can be added to your site. Plugins can make everything from small tweaks to massive changes to your site.
For example, some plugins can even turn your WordPress site into a fully functioning eCommerce store, social network, or forum.
Or, they can also add smaller features like an Instagram feed. Some WordPress plugins don’t even have front-facing effects. For example, you can install plugins to improve your site’s performance or help it rank better in search engines like Google.
Why Update WordPress Plugins?
WordPress plugins are like apps for your WordPress site. Much like on your mobile phone, these plugins need to be updated regularly.
Plugins are created by third-party developers. Most of them keep improving their plugins by adding new features, improving code quality, and keeping them secure. These changes are then released as updates.
You should always keep your WordPress plugins up to date to ensure that those changes are applied on your site immediately. This improves WordPress security and performance of your website.
Reasons to keep plugins up-to-date
Security & Bug Fixes
Hackers are often looking for vulnerabilities which they can exploit to take control of WordPress websites. Bugs can occasionally make into the Production code, and it is these that hackers try to exploit. Keeping on top of your updates safeguards against this.
Performance
Over time technology evolves and plugin authors update their plugins to take advantage of these changes. One of the benefits of this is the performance of the plugins. Plugins are often rewritten to make use of the changes to WordPress or PHP, the computer language which WordPress is written in.
Improved Compatibility
Having plugins updated to the latest release can ensure the compatibility between all plugins. Updating to the latest version allows plugins to work together smoothly.