Many artists have transitioned and began to find new ways to share their talents in order to stay afloat when in-person events and programs were put on pause.

Finding the right hosting plan for your website is essential when starting an e-commerce business. As more people transition to online shopping, especially during a year like 2020, selling goods and services online has become critically important to stay afloat in the modern economic climate. For the music industry, the last year has been a difficult time to connect and create due to lockdowns and limited public events. Many artists have transitioned and began to find new ways to share their talents in order to stay afloat when in-person events and programs were put on pause.

Jesse Neo, a DJ, and entrepreneur, decided to combine his musical and technological talents to create a platform where artists can connect and collaborate online in a new way. Gemtracks is a music and singing website that provides a range of song instrumentals and articles, as well as an exclusive online store that produces unique backing tracks for bands, singers, and songwriters.

Through Neo’s story, you will learn how a man with musical talent, technological skill, and a powerful dedicated server was able to shift the way musicians collaborate and create music digitally.

A Business that is Changing the Tune of Musical Collaboration

Jesse Neo has been blogging and developing web content since 2006. His vision to create Gemtracks, a music-industry marketplace best known for buying and selling instrumental backing tracks (also known as beats), began when he was in college. He wanted to create an online store so that he could sell the tracks that he was composing. When he first began his store, he was selling his music on a first-come-first-sold model and his customers would have full ownership and copyrights placed in their names.

In 2019 Neo moved to Los Angeles and, through the advice from the local talent there, realized that this e-commerce business model might be very lucrative long term. He transitioned his small business from a private store into a public marketplace for freelance musicians to sell their own songs. He also created the capability for artists to book recording studios and submit their songs to other curators that might be interested in the artist. “I am the sole founder of Gemtracks. I personally programmed, designed, and marketed Gemtracks from scratch,” said Neo. “From time to time, I take on interns and contractors, but the major bulk of the company is done with my own two hands.”

Building a Musical Digital Presence

Finding the right hosting provider for Gemtracks was critical when Neo first began to envision his company. “Everything about Gemtracks depends on the website. Without a website, Gemtracks would not exist. This is why I was very concerned about where my server was hosted.”

When he first began searching for a hosting provider, Neo had a few server requirements that he felt were essential to the eventual success of his site, including ensuring sufficient processor capacity to meet business demands, great support, uptime, and reliability. He originally learned about A2 Hosting off of a recommendation from a friend back in 2006. “I remember a friend operating a small blog telling me she paid only a few dollars a month for hosting. She gave me the name of A2 Hosting – and I have been a loyal customer ever since,” said Neo. “ I have also developed friendships with some staff at A2 Hosting; that has also contributed to my reason for staying.”

When asked about his experiences over the years dealing with A2’s support, Neo commented, “I have worked with support many times, to the point I even remember them, and I’m pretty sure they remember me too. A2’s support has always been fast, and I usually get the first reply within an hour.”

Why Dedicated Hosting Works for Gemtracks

Since Neo was a technical user who was able to anticipate rapid growth and lots of content, a dedicated server was the best solution for his burgeoning company. “Gemtracks has turned into, almost like, a service-as-a-product kind of business, where the choice of hardware and architecture that runs my server is very important,” said Neo. “The #1 requirement was to have enough CPU power. I needed to make sure that there was enough CPU and resources to handle sudden influxes of visitors. This was because, based on experience, as soon as the number of visitors went up, so did the number of searches visitors would make on my website. This strained the database, CPU, and slowed down the website.”

Neo also needed to make sure his business stayed at peak performance as he scaled and matured. “My server needed to be compatible with all the latest networking trends, such as content delivery networks, and long polling to ensure seamless delivery.” He required resources that were dedicated just to his website, so he wouldn’t have to worry about “neighbors” potentially interrupting his website’s speed or reliability. “The worst thing that could happen was the website going down during the most profitable hour.” A2 Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime commitment. This gave Neo the peace of mind he needed to start his company on one of our dedicated plans.

Lessons Learned

When reflecting on his digital and entrepreneurial journey, Neo shared advice for other small businesses starting out. He said one of the biggest lessons he learned is how important support has been since his business is based solely online. “Whenever I have issues, the support team will always investigate for me, which includes seeing which script is taking up all my resources and what I can do about it,” he said. “It’s comforting to know that the support team at A2 Hosting has the knowledge and skills, not only to solve problems but to help investigate them too.”

The post Gemtracks: Striking a Chord with the Online Music Community appeared first on The A2 Posting.

A fast and reliable website is very important for small business owners, so choosing the right plan for your business is essential for long-term success.

Managed VPS plans, powered by Virtuozzo, can be a great tool to help businesses level up their digital presence as they outgrow the resources available on shared hosting plans. With additional power, security, support, and flexibility, migrating to our Managed VPS plan is easy with the assistance of A2 Hosting’s Guru Crew support. This case study will share the story of Greg Houston, a successful architect with nearly two decades of experience whose website was beginning to experience some lag in speed with the growth of his company, GMH By Design. Read his journey about how choosing the right Managed VPS plan for Greg’s website improved his user experience for his customers.

An Architect on a Mission to Bring His Designs to Life

Greg Houston founded GMH by Design, a residential and commercial architecture practice based out of Denver, Colorado, because of his love of architecture and his passion for working with clients to help bring their visions to life. His company specializes in quality workmanship, simple design, and modern convenience. “We offer the benefits of a large firm at the cost of a small design office,” said Greg. “We work with residential and commercial clients to envision and design their space to suit their needs as we guide them through the process.”

Improving Greg’s Digital Experience

“Our website showcases the work we’ve done, who we work with, and our vision. It’s our salesperson twenty-four hours a day,” Greg shared. “It’s important because it’s the primary way we share our work with potential clients.” His website is one of the main ways his clients find his business, which makes its pictures and content important when optimizing for search engines. As his website has continued to grow over the years he noticed that the speed of his site has been on a steady decline. This led Greg to start looking into changing hosting providers to find a better plan that would improve the performance of his website. Greg shared, “The front end and the backend of our website have been slow which made it hard for our potential clients to navigate and for us to update.”

GMH by Design is currently on WordPress. Greg initially tried to combat the site speed issues with a caching plug-in as well as some other optimization plugins he found. This helped a bit, but it was not enough improvement for his company’s site long term. Because of this, he set out to find a new solution.

When searching for a new provider and plan Greg had some specific requirements he was looking for. “First is reliability, then speed. The website needs to be up for our potential customers to reach and it has to be fast, even with the large images we use on our site to showcase our work. We need to rank well and we want customers to feel the site is professionally hosted,” said Greg.

GMH by Design was looking for a new host that offered stability, speed and was affordable. As a small business owner, Houston wants to prioritize time to devote to his business rather than worrying about the stability of his site or the speed of his page load times.

Greg was initially referred to A2 Hosting by a friend that was already working with us. “I was hesitant to move providers at first because I was worried about the migration process. I eventually decided on A2 because my friend who was a current customer with A2 Hosting recommended your plans. I also read reviews and while searching I saw you had a reputation for fast servers.” He evaluated a few other shared packages with rival hosting companies, but in the end, decided on an A2 Hosting’s Managed VPS plan.

Transferring to a VPS Plan with A2 Hosting

When asked about his experience getting started with A2 Hosting, Greg commented, “It was very easy. The free migration was simple and fairly hands-off and my experiences with the support team so far have been great.”

Greg was interested in A2’s Managed VPS plans (powered by Virtuozzo) because he knew he needed more power overall to improve his website. “I would say investing in a Managed VPS over a Shared Hosting plan had several advantages that I wasn’t aware of, speed being the primary one.” Not only do VPS plans offer more resources over a shared hosting package, but they also can provide GMH by Design with more independence from noisy neighbors on the server who could affect Greg’s site’s performance when they get heavy traffic. “I wasn’t aware of how beneficial dedicated resources can be for a site,” Greg said. “With a VPS the overall function of my website on average is increased because of not sharing resources with other business sites.” VPS servers offer users their own disk space, RAM, and CPU. They come with significantly more space to store website-related files, images, and folders. This is something that will be important for Greg as he continues to work on new projects and post large images to his site.

Lessons Learned

“My best advice would be not to wait to migrate your site to a faster host, even if it seems like it will be a lot of work before you get there,” Greg shared. “I thought migration would be difficult or time-consuming but it wasn’t. If I had known, I would have moved my site much sooner.” Greg’s overall migration took less than a day with no downtime. “Since the move, my website has been faster and much easier to manage.”

The post GMH by Design: Architecting the Perfect Hosting Solution appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Website speed and security are essential in 2021, so finding the right hosting provider and plan is an important task for many small business owners

Katie Davis is an accomplished author, with over a dozen traditionally published books for children, launched two guides for writers at #1 on Amazon, a TEDx and conference speaker, writing coach, and A2 Hosting Customer. She’s the co-founder of the Picture Book Summit, and most recently the founder of The Writers’ Block, a virtual community that helps both experienced and new writers fine-tune their craft through live critiques. She’s known she wanted to be an entrepreneur since the beginning of her career.

“I’ve always wanted to be my own boss,” Katie says. “I didn’t do well working for other people. In my 20s I started my company, Dirty Dishes making hand-painted ceramics. As long as I could pay the bills, I was happy.” She started her career in advertising and marketing, later pivoting to selling hand-painted ceramics, and then moved into writing and illustrating children’s books and novels. She’s sold almost a million copies of her books by this point. Though she has many talents, her secret superpower, and where her passions currently lie, is teaching writers about writing, and coaching them past any procrastinating talents they may have.

Building Katie’s Digital Presence with A2 Hosting

Katie founded her site back in 1999 and she’s been using it to connect with her readers and other writers ever since. When asked, Katie shared, “My website is my home online.” At the beginning of her career, she was in charge of handling the front and back end of her website, but as she progressed she realized that extra help could benefit her business. She hired WPOnline Design to take charge of her site. She had been experiencing a lot of malware and DDoS attacks which were crippling her webpage. Most attacks had been targeted at her previous host so her web developer told her to make a change. Though he also offered hosting through his own company, he recommended A2 Hosting because of its good prices, stability, reliability, and faster load times. We’ve now been working in tandem to ensure Katie the best site. “WP Online Design has had a great experience working with A2’s team on multiple occasions to keep Katie’s site running as smoothly as possible,” they commented.

When selecting her hosting provider, Katie chose A2 Hosting because she said she “wanted to make sure that my site was strong enough to handle growth and able to take the weight of what I put on there.” She’s since stayed with A2 because she “values transparency and honesty in a company” and she continues to see that here. She appreciates her interactions with A2 chat and phone support. Katie said, “I’m techy, but when it comes to hosting issues – forget about it! It can be frustrating so I appreciate A2’s support staff.” She had a situation recently where her SSL certificate had issues due to misconnections with a payment system, and when she called support the issue was resolved in minutes. It’s interactions like these that have kept her with A2 Hosting for the past decade.

The Writers’ Block

Katie’s latest venture is The Writers’ Block, a virtual support community for writers. The Writers’ Block is a place for writers to take their craft to the next level through twice-monthly live critiques (only by her, not the other members) and monthly “Writers Playground” sessions, where she shares tips, give encouragement, and answers questions. Through this community, Katie is able to help fellow writers grow as she reads and annotates their manuscripts. Katie describes it as “a virtual community—a private clubhouse—offering you writing inspiration and support, publishing instruction, experts’ knowledge, marketing skills, and more. It’s a place to get encouragement to keep you going when the going hits a dead stop; it’s a welcoming front porch when you just can’t seem to continue or even get yourself started.” She runs the community through her website, holding bi-monthly workshops, guest expert interviews, and live community sessions. “My business is helping writers develop their skills. My bread and butter is teaching people what they need to know about their work and the business.” To accomplish this every day she relies on optimal performance from her site.

Configuring Her WordPress

Katie chose to migrate to a Turbo Max Shared Hosting plan when moving her WordPress site to A2. For Katie, a faster site is not a “nice to have” portion of her business, it was essential. With faster loading times she gets better SEO rankings, lower bounce rates, and higher visitor satisfaction. Turbo provides her site with up to 20x faster performance. A2’s Turbo Max servers are made faster through a combination of NVMe drives, AMD EPYC Processors, LiteSpeed Servers, and built-in caching with Memcached, turbo caching, and APC/OpCache. All of these in tandem help her site load faster for her writers each day.

As a WordPress user, Katie also has access to the A2 Optimized WordPress plugin that pre-configured her setup to optimize performance and security settings. This includes WordPress login page protection, Easy W3 Total Cache configuration, Minify HTML, CCS, and JS. It also helps with image optimization which is important due to some of the larger images of her books that she houses on her site.

In the last couple of years, Katie has begun to improve her website as she focuses more on her online business, The Writers’ Block. She’s been working on improving site appearance and adding more content. When asked what online tools and plug-ins have been most valuable, she had a few to share with fellow WordPress users. She relies on WooCommerce, Stripe, and LeadPages for her daily use. “Stripe is super easy. It lets me manage and handle all financial transactions, whether just payments or if I need to refund a member. I haven’t had a billing dispute, but everything with Stripe has been easy,” she says. “Simplifying the experience is key for small businesses. I had too many different services and it was too complex and I’ve been working to make it simpler.”

In addition to her efforts, A2 Hosting’s Turbo Shared Plans also help with the backend function of her site. Performance Plus, offering traffic spike protection, applies additional resources so that Katie’s site retains performance even during traffic surges. This is a great service if Katie publishes a popular blog post or offers a new book to her audience. A2’s free SSL certificate provides free HTTPS encryption and contributes to the security of katiedavis.com. Finally, A2’s DropSuite Backups offer offsite backups and are recommended for Katie’s peace of mind that may come from disasters or hardware.

Katie’s Advice to Other Small Businesses

Katie shared advice from her experience as a small business owner of twenty years in order to shed some light on how others can succeed long term: “When you’re a small business owner, it’s easy to work harder than when working for someone else. If you’re your own boss, you still have to tell that boss––aka YOU––when you need a day off. A silver lining of the lockdown for me was learning to de-stress about work,” Katie said. “I don’t have to work every minute of the day.” When asked about starting out she had some great advice for writers trying to make it in 2021. “Figure out who your audience is and build a mailing list. Even if you’re not yet published, it will enable you to keep in touch with your fans. It keeps your fan base connected. And if you’re thinking, ‘Yeah, but I do that on Facebook/IG/Twitter/Whatever, remember that’s just building your house on someone else’s land. Own the land.”

She also recommends taking the time to choose the right hosting provider for your needs. For Katie, A2 Hosting has been the right choice for the last ten years and counting. Between Katie, her web designer, and A2 Hosting, her small business has continued to thrive through 2021.

The post Katie Davis: For the Love of Writing appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Deciding what hosting plan is right for your business is not always an easy task.

Everyone has a dream, but only a special few make it a reality. Mark and Niamh are passionate cyclists from Scotland and Ireland, but it was always their dream to turn their love of cycling into a business. When the Pyrénées Cycling Lodge, a bed and breakfast situated in the heart of the Pyrénées mountains in France, came available for purchase in 2017, the pair decided it was time to take action. “It was always our dream to go to the mountains in France,” said Niamh. “If we had waited any longer we would have missed our chance…so we just decided to do it.”

The Lodge, which is centrally located along the route of the Tour de France, offers a warm bed, hearty meals, local ales, and a chance for cyclists to join together with others who share their passion for cycling. The accommodation is nestled in the small town of Saint Savin in the Hautes Pyrenees. It’s surrounded by breathtaking mountain backdrops, curving mountain roads, and medieval architecture. “It was a complete change of lifestyle for us, working for ourselves, doing what we love in amazing surroundings,” said Niamh. “Meeting so many like minded, positive people from around the world… it’s a dream come true.”

Creating the Digital Experience

When Mark and Niamh took over the lodge and its digital properties, the business already had a name and established domain. “Having the domain name was really important to us,” said Niamh. “It’s a really important thing to have as it has “cycling” and “Pyrénées” in the url.” This allowed those searching for an adventure in the famous region to zero in on their business quickly. “We depend on our website for a lot of our direct bookings,” said Niamh. However, when they took over the website it needed a lot of work. The website was hosted on a small local provider and Niamh didn’t feel like it had enough power behind it to reach the global audience she was targeting.

Niamh set out on Google to find a new home for her digital presence. Her requirements? Reliable service, speed & performance, and good customer service. “I can work my way around cPanel but I’m not very technical so I depend on customer service.” After reading several reviews, looking at some of the other players in the space, and evaluating pricing and package features, she ended up deciding on A2 Hosting. “A2 was at the top of a lot of the reviews that I had read,” said Niamh. “Packages were comparable between providers, but it was the customer service and package offerings that eventually swayed me.”

Niamh initially chose the Shared Turbo Max plan. It came with cPanel, advanced NVMe storage options, 2X more resources than the standard plans, and a LightSpeed enhanced web server. It also came pre-optimized to get the most speed and performance out of WordPress, the CMS her website was built on. As her business grew though, she would eventually make the move to Managed VPS hosting.

Working with A2 Hosting

As a customer for more than four years now, Niamh has had a number of interactions with the A2 Team. “I’ve worked with support, sales, and billing a few times and I’m always impressed with the speed and efficiency that my ticket is dealt with,” said Niamh. “They have provided me with constant communication and the technical teams are very knowledgeable and always supportive and patient.”

Covid-19 has made this past year especially hard on the business, which saw a reduction in bookings causing added stress and financial strain on Mark and Niamh. “Billing has been especially helpful this year. They are always approachable and have been supportive with our renewals,” said Niamh. “I know they didn’t have to do that.”

“I can’t find fault in any of my experiences with A2 Hosting,” said Niamh. “Our business relies on the speed and customer services offered by A2 and it has exceeded my expectations on both accounts.”

Getting the Most Out of WordPress

While the previous site had been built using WordPress, it was a very basic deployment. “WordPress let’s me build my own site and I depend on the themes available for it to guide the aesthetics of our site,” said Niamh. The Lodge uses the Sucuri plugin to help with malware, Checkfront to manage the online booking system, and Monster Insights to help understand their web performance and usage patterns. Additionally, they leverage Slider Revolution for photo galleries and an Instagram feed plugin to help aggregate their social content. “We are quite active on social media,” said Niamh. “Instagram and Twitter are big drivers, there’s lots of interaction there and we get a fair share of bookings through it.”

The Future of the Pyrénées Cycling Lodge

Despite having success on the Shared Turbo Max plan, Niamh has been considering a move to Managed VPS Hosting (powered by A2 Partner Virtuozzo) for some time and as the business would be positively impacted by switching to A2’s VPS plans. She has decided to migrate over this year to receive all the added benefits that come from this upgrade.

VPS offers the Lodge the ability to have resources dedicated to just them instead of sharing with the other parties on the server. This means that they can count on the speed and performance of their server to be consistent throughout the year and not risk any performance dings that may be caused by a “neighbor” sharing resources.

VPS also provides the Lodge a greater level of security, more control over their environment, and more peace of mind for the small business owner. Shared is a great, low cost hosting option for personal websites and blogs, but VPS is always the better option for a business who depends on their website for revenue.

What advice would Mark and Niamh give a business owner who is about to walk down the similar path of taking over a business and reinventing it to make it their own? First, they recommend that you take some time to understand what the backend will look like before making your final choice. “I’ve used hosting providers before but didn’t have that much experience,” said Niamh. “Having a user friendly dashboard that is easy to work with… one you can work your way around, is important. A2 has made that easy for me.”

In addition, “You have to understand how important reliable customer service is when looking for a hosting provider. A2’s customer service has been right there or they get right back to you. For my needs, it has all worked out.

The post The Pyrénées Cycling Lodge: Cycling in the Heart of the French Pyrénées appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Why Node.js?

So why use Node.js? Here are some key Node.js features that make it a popular choice for building web, desktop, and mobile applications: 

• Scalability: Node.js can handle a large number of concurrent connections,  improving application performance.
• Fast processing: Non-blocking thread requests are processed faster, enabling clients to receive faster responses for simple web application requests.
• Easy to maintain: Node.js is a cross-platform environment that enables you to use the JavaScript language to create web, desktop, and mobile applications.
• Large support community: Node.js has a large online community and tutorial repository, making it ideal for beginners.

Who uses Node.js

Approximately 1.6 percent of websites currently use Node.js, and usage is on an upward trend. It is frequently used by sites with high traffic, including many well-known companies such as Twitter, Spotify, eBay, Reddit, LinkedIn, Godaddy, and Netflix. Concurrent request processing, its lightweight footprint, and other Node.js features make it ideal for applications such as chatbots, data streaming, and the Internet of Things (IOT). For example:

• Twitter used Node.js to improve the performance of its mobile web app.
• Node.js is the de facto front-end web stack used by eBay to power web applications and orchestrate services on the eBay platform.

Getting started with Node.js web hosting 

Node.js has the right features to offer if you want to build a scalable web application using a single language, such as JavaScript, for both the frontend and the backend. These features include scalability, speed, and advanced performance. To see how easy it is to get started and set up a Node.js application using the cPanel control panel, see our Knowledge Base article How to Create a Node.js Application with cPanel.

Conclusion

Choosing the right development environment for your application can be a difficult decision, especially when starting out. This blog post has highlighted some of the key features of Node.js, and why it is a popular choice for web development. For more information about Node.js, please visit https://nodejs.org.

The post Why Should I Use Node.js? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Fortunately though, there are plenty of hosts like A2 Hosting that offer free migration assistance. This guide takes you through everything you need to know about website migration – from picking the right host, to actually completing the move. So whether you’re planning your first website migration, or just want to be better prepared for when the time comes, read on!

What is free migration in web hosting?

Web hosting migration is the process of transferring your website from one host to another without negatively affecting search engine rankings or changing your website’s appearance or functionality. 

When migrating a website, you can either do a full migration or a partial migration. In a full migration, you migrate all of your website files, databases, and other content. In a partial migration, you migrate parts of your website (for example, just emails).

A migration does not affect the existing published site. The web host essentially copies your data over to the new server: the information is duplicated, not removed from your existing server. This creates a mirror version of your website. 

To make your site active on the new host, you update the domain’s name servers to point to the new web hosting server. The entire process can take only a few hours to a couple of days, depending on how complicated the migration is. 

Why would you want to migrate your website from one host to another?

There are many reasons you might want to migrate your website to another host, including:

1. You need better performance. Sometimes web hosting providers don’t work out. Your site isn’t performing well and you’ve tested your code for errors, but at the end of the day, you know that the problem is your web host. In this case, you’ll want to consider moving to a host who can provide faster website speeds.
2. You need better support. Have you ever had a time when you’ve called a company’s support team, only to be placed on hold for an hour or transferred multiple times without receiving a solution? We’ve all been there. Some providers have better support than others. At A2 Hosting, we provide 24/7/365 support on live chats, tickets, and phones. Not everyone does that. 
3. You need a less expensive plan. In the web hosting world, it’s industry-standard to purchase a plan at a lower rate. But when the contract expires, the plan price increases. If you need a cheaper plan, switching hosts might be the way to go.

There are, of course, other reasons to move from one web host to another, but these are the most common. 

Whatever your reason, when you’re considering making the switch to a new web host, you definitely want to consider cost. Some web hosting providers charge a fee to migrate your website (typically it’s around $25). 

You’ll want to ask any prospective host how much the migration may cost. The best hosts, like A2 Hosting, can do it for free.

The web hosting migration process

At A2 Hosting, we offer free migrations for your entire website. The migrated content includes:

• Website files
• Emails (note that we do not guarantee the entire transfer of mailboxes, as it can be incredibly time-consuming)
• Databases
• cPanel settings for cPanel-based accounts.

A migration takes around 24-48 hours to complete, but the site is not down during the process. Your site stays live on your old server until you choose to point the domain name servers over to the new host. 

If you’re not sure how to migrate your site, here’s an inside look at the migration process:

1. Purchase a web hosting package from our website. If you’re not sure which plan to buy, please consult our guide or contact our sales team here. 
2. Log into the A2 Hosting customer portal.
3. Click Support, and then click Migrations. The My Migrations Tickets page appears.
4. Click Request a Migration.
5. Provide the requested information. If you aren’t sure how to fill out some of the fields, you may need to contact your current hosting provider for this information.
6. Agree to the Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, and then click Continue to Step 2.
7. In the Choose Service box, select the service to migrate your content. 
8. Click Continue to Step 3.
9. Provide the requested information, and then click Submit Migration Request.
10. We notify you when the migration is complete. The entire process takes around 24-48 hours. 

Important: We highly recommend testing your website on our servers before changing your domain’s name server settings. To do this, you can use the shared URL for your account. The shared URL enables you to view the site without using the account’s domain name. For more information, please see this article.

Wrapping up

We know that moving your website to a different host can be daunting. A2 Hosting is committed to making the process as easy and painless for you as possible, so we have put together this guide on how to migrate your site with us in a few simple steps! Have questions? Contact one of our sales representatives today- they are standing by ready to answer any question or concern you may have about migrating your website to us. With over 20 years of experience in web hosting, our team knows what it takes to make sure all of your files are transferred successfully from one platform onto another with minimal service disruption. If there is anything else we can do for you while helping transition your website to our servers, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Related Articles:

• Migrating an account from another web host
• How to Migrate a WordPress Website to a New Host
• Differences between site migrations and domain transfers
• How to migrate an existing WordPress site to A2 Hosting

The post What Is Free Migration in Hosting? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of CSS frameworks that can fast-track the design and development process. By opting for a framework, you can create standardized, higher-quality code, with less time and hassle.

In this post, we’ll discuss what CSS frameworks are and why you may want to consider using one for your next project. We’ll then share advice on how to find the framework that’s right for you, before exploring six popular CSS frameworks. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to CSS Frameworks

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) controls the presentation of a document that’s written in a markup language such as HTML. Unlike some other languages, CSS creates a separation between presentation and content. This gives you more flexibility in how you display your content.

This language also promotes code reuse, as multiple pages can use the formatting defined in a single CSS file. This can reduce complexity and repetition, while also improving your project’s performance, such as by reducing your website’s page loading times.

Many different systems use CSS. This includes WordPress themes, which uses CSS to output the data generated by this popular Content Management System (CMS). Every WordPress theme contains a single style.css file:

Although you can write pure CSS, many designers and developers choose to use a CSS framework. This is a collection of stylesheets that provide a basic structure and classes for common elements.

You can use these pre-prepared stylesheets as a reference for resolving problems of a similar nature. Alternatively, you can override the framework’s generic functionality for your specific use case.

There can be some confusion about when to use a framework, and when it makes more sense to opt for a library. With libraries, you control when this technology performs a particular function. The rest of your code exists independent from that library. However, with CSS frameworks the control flow is in the framework, and you’ll customize it in places to better suit your project.

Why You Might Want to Use a CSS Framework

CSS frameworks can reduce the amount of code you need to write. Instead of programming everything from scratch, these frameworks provide all the tools you need to spin up a basic UI.

You can then spend your time perfecting this interface to meet your project’s exact requirements. Since you’re not starting every project with a blank slate, you’ll have more time to focus on the specific features that make your site or app unique.

A CSS framework can also be useful for agencies and freelancers who manage multiple client sites. Using this tool, you can create a theme and then deploy it across countless websites. This can help you onboard new clients more quickly, and grow your business without drastically increasing your workload.

If you’re collaborating on a project with multiple people, a CSS framework can help you achieve consistency. For example, instead of each team member inventing their own class names, a CSS framework implements standardized naming conventions. This typically results in higher-quality code that’s easier to read and maintain.

When your code is consistent, you’ll also find it easier to onboard new team members or freelancers. It’s also worth remembering that just because your staff are happy in their role now doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll stick around forever.

It’s smart to ensure that even if your head developer leaves, your project can continue. To make sure your project is never wholly reliant on a single person, it’s a good idea to implement a standardized approach that’s clearly defined and understood by everyone. A framework can help you achieve this uniformity across your project.

Factors to Consider When Using a CSS Framework

A CSS framework can be a valuable addition to your project. However, if you have little previous experience with CSS, then it’s important to familiarize yourself with this language before jumping into the world of frameworks.

By taking the time to master pure CSS, you’ll be better equipped to identify issues with your syntax. When you know how to achieve the desired results in pure CSS, you’ll also find it easier to scan your framework’s documentation for the information you need. This can boost your efficiency, particularly when it comes to problem-solving and troubleshooting.

We always recommend taking some time to sharpen your CSS knowledge before you start shopping around for a suitable framework. Depending on your previous experience and knowledge, this may require a significant amount of time and effort.

A CSS framework will also add to your project’s overhead. Depending on your project, this may include lots of unnecessary or irrelevant code that you don’t even use. Bloat is never good, but it makes zero sense to increase your project’s size without adding any value.

Since your project exists inside the CSS framework, this may be limiting for your application or website. If you rely on a framework too heavily, there’s also the risk that your finished project will look similar to other sites and apps that use the same framework. This can make your project blur into the background, when it should be standing out from the crowd.

How to Choose the Right CSS Framework

To start, your chosen framework should meet all of your project’s technical requirements. It’s also smart to look for characteristics that make this framework a good fit for your project. For example, a lightweight framework may be the perfect addition to a mobile-focused design, but it may be less ideal for a large, complicated application.

Over time, your project’s requirements will likely change. Although it’s impossible to predict the future, it’s always worth considering how your project might develop over the long-term. Your chosen CSS framework should be able to support your site or application as it evolves over months, and potentially even years.

When choosing any technology, it’s always smart to consider its ease of use. Even if you’re fluent in CSS, learning any new technology requires a big upfront investment. Every moment that you spend familiarizing yourself with your new framework is time that you could have invested directly into your project.

Ideally, your chosen framework will be intuitive, user-friendly, and have a gentle learning curve. This will minimize the time between installing the framework and starting to reap the benefits. If a framework is user-friendly, then you’re also much less likely to encounter major issues, including stumbling blocks that require you to pause development in order to research the problem.

When considering ease of use, it’s important to find out what support is available. Ideally, the framework will be backed by official documentation, tutorials, and perhaps even professional support.

You should also consider the level of community resources available, including third-party blogs, forums, and social media sites. An active community can be an invaluable source of additional support. You could even put your questions directly to the community via channels such as Stack Overflow.

6 Popular CSS Frameworks (And When To Use Them)

With so many CSS frameworks to choose from, picking just one isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of the six most popular CSS frameworks. Along the way, we’ll help you make the right decision, by suggesting the kind of projects each framework is perfect for.

1. Bootstrap

Originally named Twitter Blueprint and developed as a tool for internal teams, Bootstrap has since grown into one of the most popular CSS frameworks. Today, Bootstrap is used by around 22 percent of all websites, and its GitHub consists of over 20,000 commits from more than 2000 contributors.

To get started, you can download Bootstrap’s source Sass and JavaScript files from either Composer, Meteor, or the Node Package Manager (npm). You can also use the npm template repository to quickly generate a Bootstrap project, or check out any of the official examples, that are supported by extensive documentation.

All of this makes Bootstrap a great choice for anyone who’s new to CSS frameworks, or has limited pure CSS experience. This may include back-end developers who want to make some changes to their projects’ User Interface (UI). For these designers, Bootstrap provides templates for all of the most popular UI components, including alerts, tabs, forms, and dropdowns.

Bootstrap is also designed for responsive, mobile-first front-end development. This makes it a good fit for mobile projects.

If you do require additional support, Bootstrap has a large and active community on Stack Overflow. You can also access real-time support via the Bootstrap Slack channel.

2. Foundation

Foundation is a front-end framework for building websites, applications, and emails. Thanks to its Sass compiler, the responsive Foundation framework is ideal for creating projects fast.

Foundation favors clean, semantic code and takes a mobile-first approach. After ensuring that your project is fully compatible with mobile devices, you can add in more complexity for a fully-responsive design.

Foundation provides HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which is great for rapidly prototyping websites. If you’re using Foundation to create emails, this framework provides tested patterns that work with all of the major email clients, including Outlook. This can help you create emails that display and function correctly, regardless of how the recipients choose to access them.

Despite its speed, Foundation is far from a limited framework, and many developers use it to create large applications. It’s also highly customizable, which makes Foundation a good choice for designers who want to create a unique experience for their end users, and who aren’t afraid to dig into Foundation’s more complex features in order to achieve the desired result.

Despite its current status as an open-source project, Foundation was originally maintained by ZURB. Today, ZURB continues to offer a full program of tutorials, online courses, custom training, and even an official Foundation certification.

3. Skeleton

The Skeleton framework is a small collection of CSS files that you can use to rapidly generate clean code and simple layouts. Coming in at under 400 lines of code, this bare-bones framework is a good fit for smaller projects, or projects that don’t require the utility of a larger, heavier solution.

As a lightweight framework, Skeleton shouldn’t add unnecessary bloat to your project, which can be particularly valuable for mobile designs. If you’re creating a mobile project, Skeleton has a well-structured grid that enables you to create a responsive layout with minimal hassle.

Skeleton provides a 12-column fluid grid with a maximum width of 960px. This grid shrinks according to the browser and device. However, if you need to alter the maximum width you can make that change with a single line of CSS.

Skeleton serves its scalable grid using media queries. It also provides a list of mobile-first queries for styling your project across multiple devices. All styles outside of a query apply to all devices, so larger devices are targeted for enhancement. This prevents small devices from having to parse large amounts of unnecessary CSS.

If you’re new to the world of CSS frameworks, Skeleton’s simplistic approach makes this a good framework for beginners. For CSS newcomers, it can even be a valuable learning tool before progressing to more complex and feature-rich frameworks.

Unlike some of the other CSS frameworks on this list, Skeleton is designed as a starting point that you can develop into something more substantial. It’s also worth noting that Skeleton’s lack of templates may become an issue if you try to use this framework in larger or more complex projects.

4. UIKit

UIKit is a responsive, lightweight CSS framework that you can use to create clean and professional-looking interfaces. This framework defines all the core components such as table views, buttons, labels, and navigation controllers.

UIKit is also extensible, and supports a comprehensive collection of advanced components that are not bundled with the core framework. This includes parallax girds, dynamic pagination, and sliders.

Alongside CSS files, UIKit provides an autocomplete package for Sublime Text and Atom editors. Since users don’t have to repeatedly look up UIKit markups and class names, this framework is great for your overall productivity.

Unlike other frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation, UIKit breaks the layout into three components: grid, flex, and width. Instead of restricting you to a 12-column grid setup, UIKit gives you the flexibility to create as many columns as you require.

Over at the UIKit website, you’ll find extensive official documentation and a series of video tutorials. Despite these useful learning resources, we find that UK Kit is a more complex framework that’s best suited to experienced developers.

5. Semantic UI

Semantic UI is a framework for creating responsive layouts. Based on natural language principles, Semantic UI aims to make code readable and easier to understand by creating a shared vocabulary around UI.

To achieve this, Semantic UI treats words and classes as interchangeable concepts. All classes are human words and use syntax from natural languages, including noun/modifier relationships and word order. Semantic UI also uses plurality to link concepts intuitively. As a result, its code often resembles regular text.

Human-readable code and ease of use makes Semantic UI a great choice for anyone who’s new to the world of frameworks. If you do have previous experience, it’s worth noting that Semantic UI integrates with React, Angular, Meteor, Ember, and various other frameworks.

In addition to the functionality you’d typically expect from a CSS framework, Semantic UI provides simplified debugging and performance logging. This enables you to track down bottlenecks without digging through stack traces. These added extras make Semantic UI suitable for larger projects, including enterprise apps and websites.

6. Pure

Built on Normalize.css, the Pure framework is a set of small, responsive CSS modules that provide layout and styling for native HTML elements. This includes many common UI components. Pure has a minimal and unopinionated design, so you should have no issues adding new CSS rules and overriding Pure.css with your own styles.

Coming in at 3.87B minified and gzipped, this is a simple, lightweight framework. If you only require a subset of Pure’s modules, you’ll save even more bandwidth. This makes Pure ideal for smaller projects, or any project that has modest requirements.

Its small footprint also means that Pure is a good choice for mobile projects, where you’re typically working with less memory. Even better, this framework is responsive out of the box, thanks to its use of Pure Grids and Vertical Menus. With Pure CSS, you can be confident that your UI will look and display correctly across a range of mobile and tablet devices.

Conclusion

Building applications and websites from scratch can quickly start to feel repetitive. Instead of wasting time coding the same elements over and over again, a CSS framework can handle this busywork for you.

If you’re still unsure which CSS framework is right for you, here’s a quick reminder of the six frameworks we covered earlier:

1. Bootstrap: An open source framework that’s perfect for responsive, mobile-first front-end web development.
2. Foundation: With an emphasis on speed, Foundation is ideal for rapid prototyping.
3. Skeleton: Coming in at under 500 lines of code, this CSS framework is designed with mobile devices in mind.
4. UIKit: A lightweight, modular framework that targets highly-experienced, professional developers.
5. Semantic UI: This theming framework contains pre-built semantic components that can help you create professionally-designed, responsive websites.
6. Pure: A collection of responsive CSS modules that have much to offer for mobile developers.

A CSS framework can be your secret weapon for developing professionally-designed websites and applications in record time. However, once you’re ready to send your project out into the world, you’ll still need somewhere to host it.

By choosing a provider that’s optimized for web frameworks, you can ensure that you’re getting the very best out of your finished project. At A2 Hosting, we’ve optimized our plans for a wide range of frameworks, including Bootstrap. We even offer 1-click framework setup!

The post What Is a CSS Framework? (And When to Use 6 Popular Options) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

So, Does Website Migration Affect SEO? 

Any server change carries a slight SEO risk with or without modifications to your website,  but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You see, migrations primarily affect site speed. So if you’re migrating to a host like A2 Hosting, you’ll notice increased site speed. As loading time is a top SEO ranking consideration, this can only help you, not hurt you. Unfortunately, this means the opposite for migrating to a slower host (maybe it’ll make you think again about migrating to a cheaper host?). 

When users experience slow loading times, they’re less likely to revisit your site in the future, especially when more than 50% of visitors abandon a website if a page takes over 2 seconds to load. Since 2010, speed has been a ranking factor for desktop searches on Google. When researching new hosts, look for speed optimizations or determine how the web hosting company optimizes its servers for speed. 

For example, at A2 Hosting, we use only SSD and NVMe storage. “Our speed, your success” is our motto because we believe that speed is the most critical factor in attracting, maintaining, and increasing traffic and conversions. Additionally, our Turbo servers offer Litespeed caching, and specific servers also offer the AMD EPYC processors. When combined, these three elements contribute to lightning-fast speeds.  

Changing web hosting providers can also come with risks, especially if you lose certain functionalities at the new host or move from Apache to Nginx or IIS (Internet Information Services). If you’re wary about changing hosts, talk with someone on our sales team about the process and ensure your server needs match up with what we can offer you. 

Now that we’ve discussed how website migrations affect SEO, let’s review the migration process. Use our SEO checklist to prepare your website for its migration:

• 1. Set up a staging site on your new server. Before canceling your other web hosting plan, compare your existing site’s page load speeds against the new server’s load speeds. Hopefully, the new server improved your site speeds! 
• 2. Pick a slow time. After testing your new site on the server, pick a quiet time to perform the DNS propagation. Your site may be down for up to 24 hours as the DNS propagates around the world, but choose a time when you experience low traffic, so you’re not missing opportunities for leads and conversions. 
• 3. Perform checks on your site. For example, check the organic health of your website. Is there any penalization for spammy backlinks? Are your current backlinks relevant for the content? We recommend tracking your site’s domain authority with Moz Pro. 
• 4. Crawl your site. With Moz Pro or ScreamingFrog, you can crawl your website to receive a full URL and content inventory. Then, you can fix issues while you’re staging your site and map old URLs to new URLs in your 301 redirect map.  
• 5. Update Internal Links. Test your website and update internal links to avoid internal redirects or broken links. ScreamingFrog allows you to find internal links and their attached anchor text and their respective pages.
• 6. Create a custom 404 page. When visitors experience a broken page, engage them with a custom 404 page. It should direct them to your homepage or additional pages on your website. Otherwise, a blank 404 page frustrates users and makes them want to close the browser tab altogether and find a site that works. 
• 7. Update your Robots.txt file. The robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages the crawler can or can’t request from your site. It lives at www.yoursite.com/robots.txt. 
• 8. Test your website on mobile. Is your site responsive or rendering correctly on a mobile device? Google offers a Mobile-Friendly Test tool to determine if Google views your site as mobile-friendly. 
• 9. Measure your performance post-launch. Once you’ve ensured your site launches appropriately, there are no broken pages or backlinks, your site is mobile-friendly, and you’ve updated your robots.txt file, analyze your performance after you launch your website. Check your ranking performance, organic traffic users/sessions, check for site crawl issues, and monitor your backlink profile. Track any 404 page traffic in your Google Analytics post-launch to catch and add any redirects to your 301 redirect file. 

SEO doesn’t need to be significant when migrating your website concern. With a few preparations, you can efficiently execute a website migration plan without worrying about lowering your website’s ranking. 

Related articles:

• How to Migrate a WordPress Website to a New Host
• Tips for Migrating to Joomla 4
• How to Switch Your Domain Name Without Damaging Your Site’s SEO
• A Total Beginner’s Guide to Website Hosting
• Who Has the Fastest Web Hosting? Matching Your Need for Speed

The post Does Website Migration Affect SEO? The Definitive Website Migration SEO Checklist. appeared first on The A2 Posting.

What is a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)? 

A Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is a domain name consisting of three parts: the hostname, the domain name, and the top-level domain. The hostname is the specific computer or device on the network that you want to use the FQDN for. The domain name is the section of the FQDN that uniquely identifies your network. The top-level domain is the highest level of classification for domains and is assigned by ICANN. For example, when you type “www.google.com” into your web browser, “www” is the hostname, “google” is the domain name, and “.com” is the top-level domain. 

Different computer types use different terminology for FQDNs like network names or full computer names. 

Why should I use an FQDN? 

FQDNs indicate unique addresses on the internet. If you don’t have an FQDN, you don’t have an accessible website. They’re required for installing SSL certificates, imperative to the security of your website. 

Apart from having an accessible website, FQDNs are also useful to have a discoverable computer on an internet network, like when you need to access a computer remotely. This is common in an office to track a computer’s activity. 

Also, FQDNs help you access domain services like FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and email. For example, if you want to connect your domain name’s email to an email app on your phone like Gmail or Apple Mail, you need to know the FQDN for the mail server, which is typically something like “mail.yourdomainname.com.” 

Here is an example of an FQDN:

1. www.a2hosting.com
2. mail.a2hosting.com
3. ftp.a2hosting.com

How to find your FQDN

If you’re not sure how to find your FQDN, please review the following links: 

Find your FQDN for Windows OS (operating systems).

Find your FQDN for macOS.

When you generate a domain name, it should contain three parts. The first part is the hostname which identifies the specific computer or device on your network that will be using this FQDN. The second part of an FQDN is the domain name and it uniquely identifies your company’s network. Finally, there is the top-level domain (TLD) which classifies domains as either generic or country-code TLDs such as .com for commercial purposes. If you need help viewing any of these components within your own FQDN contact our support team today!  

Related Articles:

• How to manage cPanel Mail Exchanger (MX) records
• How to use the DNS Zone Editor in cPanel
• How to verify site ownership with Google
• How to determine your account’s server name

The post What Is a Fully Qualified Domain Name? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

When you have an eCommerce site, ensuring a smooth payment process is critical to gaining conversions from leads that visit your site. WooCommerce allows you to configure various payment methods such as direct bank transfer, checks, cash on delivery, and Paypal to provide your customers with additional options for completing order transactions.

The WooCommerce PayPal Checkout extension allows your WordPress store to accept PayPal payments and makes use of customizable Smart Payment ButtonsTM. Customers who use PayPal Checkout can pay with PayPal or any major credit or debit card without ever leaving your website. Using this extension visitors can buy directly from your product pages and pay in 26 different currencies. This blog will walk you through the process of configuring and adding the WooCommerce PayPal Checkout for WordPress sites.

Installing the WooCommerce PayPal Checkout Plugin in WordPress

Note: Paypal Checkout Plugin is no longer available in the WooCommerce marketplace. You may use PayPal payments as it’s the upgraded option to this extension.

Follow these steps to install the WooCommerce PayPal Checkout in WordPress:

1. Log in to WordPress as an administrator.

2. In the search plugins, type “WordPress PayPal Checkout.” Install and activate the plugin pictured below:

3. After you’ve successfully installed the plugin, you’ll need to configure the PayPal checkout in WooCommerce.

Configuring the PayPal Checkout Process in WooCommerce

Follow these steps to set up the PayPal checkout process in WooCommerce.

On the WordPress Dashboard, in the left sidebar, click WooCommerce, and then click Settings. This will take you to the WooCommerce settings page, which has multiple tabs for various settings. To enable the payment method, navigate to the Payments tab.

Enable the toggle button next to the PayPal checkout option on the Payment Methods page. To configure the PayPal Checkout settings, click Set up or Manage.

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You will then be directed to the PayPal Checkout page, where you can begin configuring various checkout settings. The process will begin with basic store information, then help you link your PayPal account, and finally assist you in configuring the checkout page’s look and feel, including payment and billing details.  

To begin configuring the PayPal checkout process, fill in the basic information about your store before moving on to linking the store to a PayPal account.

• Title – Choose the title shown to customers during checkout
• Description – Add a description shown to customers if they use PayPal Checkout
• Account Settings – Environment  – Select Live to accept payments and Sandbox to test payments.

Linking Paypal Account in WooCommerce

In WooCommerce, you can use the API settings to create or link an existing PayPal Account. To link it to your PayPal account, use the API credentials sections on the PayPal Checkout setup page, under the payment tape.

When you click the Setup or link an existing PayPal account button, you will be taken to the PayPal account login page.

Log in to your PayPal account, then click Activity on the top menu bar and select API Access.

Next, scroll to NVP/SOAP API Integration (Classic) and click Manage API Credentials. Ensure Request an API Signature is checked and click Agree and Submit.

 Click Show to reveal API Username, password, and signature.

Copy the API Username, Password, and Signature into your WooCommerce PayPal Checkout settings.

In the PayPal-hosted Checkout Settings section, enter details such as your Brand Name,  your site or product name, images for logo and header, and so on to ensure the PayPal checkout page has the same look and feel as your website. The landing page is the URL that all customers see when they check out.

Additional payment confirmation details can be set in the Advanced Settings for further advanced settings of the checkout pages, such as shipping details.

Once you’ve finished filling out all of the settings, click Save Changes at the bottom of the page to finish the PayPal Checkout configuration in WooCommerce.

Smart Payment Buttons™ PayPal Checkout Advanced Options

Smart Payment Buttons™ is an added benefit for US customers, as the feature provides relevant payment options such as PayPal and both Pay in 4 and PayPal Credit*, allowing your customers to buy now and pay later while you get paid upfront. Fill out the sections after the advance settings if you want to further customize the look and feel of the buttons or configure PayPal checkout pages. Please see the PayPal Checkout page for more information.

Have any questions or concerns? Contact our sales team today! Looking for a new Managed WordPress Hosting plan? We have you covered with our new Managed WordPress plans that simplify speed, security, and stability.

The post How to Add Paypal to Your WordPress Website Using WooCommerce appeared first on The A2 Posting.