But TurboHub, our exclusive dashboard for WordPress sites, gives you a snapshot of your security status and makes detecting vulnerabilities and updating your protection as easy as one click.

Whether you take care of your own website or are an agency or web developer who manages dozens of sites, TurboHub makes reviewing security status and making the necessary updates a breeze.

Advanced WordPress Security From One Easy-To-Use Dashboard

The TurboHub security tab is the fastest and easiest way to keep your site safe. Whether you manage one website or 1,000, it is vital for monitoring site health and security.

Loaded with features to keep you secure, you can quickly review potential threats in one convenient place. Verify your SSL certificates, make sure malware detection and proactive defenses are enabled, and review potential threats.

Plus, TurboHub recommends actions to eliminate security vulnerabilities. From salt key status to inactive plugins or themes, you can take immediate action directly from the control panel. In most cases, you can enhance your security with one click.

What Is TurboHub?

TurboHub is A2 Hosting’s exclusive control panel for WordPress sites. Designed to make managing and protecting WordPress sites easier, it offers comprehensive metrics about the performance, health, and security of your websites.

Improve your efficiency and workflow by reviewing all of your A2 Hosting WordPress sites in one place. Easily view current performance and security snapshots, review recommendations, and make improvements and updates across all of your sites.

TurboHub Security Features

WordPress site security is one of the core features of the TurboHub control panel. From proactive defense to security best practices, it puts the top security features at your fingertips.

SSL Status & Proactive Defense

When it comes to website security, you need to be proactive. TurboHub’s SSL status and proactive defense indicators ensure your SSL certificate is valid and your malware and proactive security defense are active.

SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is the industry standard in data encryption for information transferred between a web server and a web browser. It protects online transactions and personal information, ensuring data privacy over the Internet.

A valid SSL certificate tells web browsers – and your customers – that your website follows SSL protocols for secure data transfer, keeping them safe.

Malware and proactive security defenses protect your website against malicious attacks that can hijack your website or steal customer data.

Advanced Website Hosting Protection

TurboHub allows you to instantly validate the status of your firewall and DDoS and brute force protection. These ensure you are safe against attacks designed to gain access to your web server.

A firewall is a digital barrier that blocks unauthorized access to your sites from cyber threats. When active, they block malicious traffic based on predefined security rules.

Reinforced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection prevents malicious attempts to attack your website and take them offline. DDoS attacks use multiple compromised computer systems to slow down or even crash websites, preventing access to legitimate users.

Brute force protection shields against relentless attacks attempting to log into your system. Attackers will systematically try to guess passwords, encryption keys, or other secret information. Brute force attacks are typically automated, allowing them to rapidly test millions of combinations.

A2 Recommended Actions

TurboHub also includes a number of A2 Hosting recommended security actions, like locking editing abilities on plugins and themes or bcrypt password hashing. These recommendations improve your overall website security, lowering the risk that hackers can access your site data.

Common recommendations include:

• Locking the editing for plugins and themes from WP Admin to prevent the misuse of built-in editing capabilities for malicious purposes.
• Deny direct access to configuration files to block bots and web users from directly accessing and potentially exploiting WordPress config files.
• Remove old wp-config.php backups to eliminate unnecessary files with potentially sensitive information.
• Use bcrypt password hashing for a more secure password storing and hashing method.
• Disable XML-RPC services to close a possible entryway a hacker could exploit your site.

You can easily toggle these options on or off from the TurboHub security panel to fit your security needs and keep your website data safe.

Best Security Practices

TurboHub also analyzes your website to ensure you are following the best security practices. You can identify potential vulnerabilities at a glance and take action to secure your sites. Simply review the recommended security updates and follow the instructions to implement these improvements.

When necessary, TurboHub will recommend the following actions:

• Regenerate salt key passwords to protect your account even if your login cookies are compromised.
• Check for and remove insecure SQL backups and files that could be accessed by hackers.
• Reduce potential vulnerabilities and improve site performance by removing unused plugins and unused WordPress themes.

Just follow the steps associated with each best practice to protect your site.

More TurboHub Features Coming Soon

Committed to the fastest and most reliable hosting solutions, A2 Hosting developed TurboHub to streamline WordPress site performance and management.

From personal sites and hobby projects to agencies and developers managing client sites, it offers features that simplest updates and makes everyone a performance and security expert.

But we aren’t done yet. We have an exciting lineup of advancements that will enhance your workflow and your websites.

A2 Intelligent Performance

Optimize your site’s performance with the power of AI. A2 Intelligent Performance monitors critical performance indicators to keep your site performing at its best. Easily review the data and make the most informed decisions about your site’s speed and reliability.

A2 AI Assistant Inside WordPress

Launch new websites quickly and easily with our AI co-pilot. Exclusive to TurboHub, our A2 AI Assistant for WordPress writes content, generates images, and can even design page layouts. Trained on WordPress help documentation, it will answer common questions and help you get the most out of your WordPress site.

Enhanced Staging

Our upcoming enhanced staging feature makes developing, testing, and deploying website updates a snap. This robust tub maximizes compatibility by recording changes on both staging and live sites. And the advanced 2-way sync ensures changes are mirrored in both environments.

Enhance Your Website Security With TurboHub

Enhance site security and improve your site performance with TurboHub for WordPress from A2 Hosting. Quickly review potential security risks and easily make improvements to protect your website. Streamline your WordPress site management today. TurboHub is available on all A2 Hosting WordPress hosting plans.

The post WordPress Security Made Easy With TurboHub appeared first on The A2 Posting.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of building a WordPress site in three easy steps, so you can share your ideas with the world.

Step 1: Choose a Hosting Plan and Domain Name

The foundation of any successful website is a reliable hosting plan and a memorable domain name. Here’s how to get started:

Selecting a Hosting Plan:

Research Hosting Providers: There are numerous hosting providers available, each offering different plans with various features. All hosting providers are not the same so make sure to do your research to find the best fit for you. Hosting companies should be evaluated on the following criteria:

• Speed and performance
• Ability and track record to keep your site secure.
• Scalability to grow with you as needed
• Cost effective

WordPress is the most extensible and widely used platform on the web, so it’s important to choose a hosting partner for your WordPress site that knows what they’re doing. Both A2 Hosting and WordPress were established 20 years ago and from our inception, our focus has remained the same: providing our customers with the ultimate hosting experience. Renowned for our speed and reliability, we offer plans to fit various budgets and the flexibility to scale as your website grows. By choosing A2 Hosting, you ensure you have reliable and fast hosting to set your website up for success. Don’t just take our word for it– check out what other customers have said on TrustPilot and see why our customers choose us!

Choose a Plan: Hosting plans typically come in different tiers, catering to various levels of website traffic and requirements. If you’re just starting, a shared hosting plan is usually sufficient. As your website grows, you can upgrade to more robust options.

At A2 Hosting, we have plans for all different levels and budgets: from shared, to VPS, to Dedicated Servers. For super easy setup, choose Managed WordPress hosting. These plans are geared towards WordPress users and offer fast and easy setup for WordPress sites.

Register a Domain Name:

• Brainstorm Domain Names: Your domain name is your online identity – make sure to choose one that reflects your website. The best domain names are memorable and would be relevant to your website content.
• Check Domain Availability: Use a domain search tool to ensure that your desired domain name is available. If your first choice is taken, get creative with variations or consider using different domain extensions (.com, .net, .org, etc.).
• Complete the Registration: Once you’ve found an available domain name, complete the registration process.

By the end of this step, you’ll have secured a hosting plan and a unique domain name which will lay the groundwork for building your WordPress site.

Step 2: Building Your WordPress Website

Install WordPress and Create Site:

Before you start building your site you will first need to install WordPress. If you have selected a plan like our Managed WordPress hosting plan, the installation is done for you. Otherwise follow the instructions here to get started.

In addition to installing WordPress, If you want to take the hassle out of setting up a new site, all our managed plans come with a quick site launcher preinstalled. It will guide you through building and launching your site and allow you to get started in minutes! Choose the type of site you want to build, its goals, your design preferences and the pages you want to build. You can even choose from thousands of responsive WordPress templates right in the launcher.

Choosing a Theme: 

Login to your WordPress dashboard and go to the ‘Appearance’ tab and select ‘Themes’ Here, you can browse through a variety of free and premium themes. Make sure to choose a theme that aligns with the purpose, style, and functionality of your website. Once you’ve found the perfect theme, click the “Install” button, followed by the “Activate” button. Your website will now have a new look based on the selected theme.

Select and Install WordPress Plugins:

WordPress plugins are like apps for your website and can add extra features and functionality to your site. To explore the plugin library, navigate to “Plugins” in the dashboard and click “Add New”.  You can also use the search bar to find specific plugins you want to install and activate.

Whether you want to enhance SEO, add a contact form, or integrate social media, there’s likely a plugin for it. Here are some of our favorites:

• Forms – Ninja Forms, Gravity Forms
• SEO – RankMath, All in One
• Page Builder – BeaverBuilder, Guten, Elementor

Once you find the plugins you want to use, you will want to make sure you look over the customization settings as most plugins come with options that allow you to tailor your site and optimize performance.

Step 3: Set Your Website Up for Success!

Elevate your WordPress site with these proactive measures for a seamlessly optimized and secure website. Here are some things to look at and adjust to ensure your WordPress site is operating at its best:

• Performance: Make sure to utilize things like page caching and image optimization, as well as Minify CSS,HTML & Javascript. Optimizing your site is important and will greatly improve your site performance, create the best user experience, and will help improve your search engine rankings.
• Regular Updates: It is important to keep your WordPress core, themes, and plugins up to date. This helps secure your website if you have the latest security patches. This also ensures that you have all new features available.
• Regular Backups: Set up automatic backups of your site for peace of mind.
• Utilize TurboHub: We have created a WordPress Dashboard for our WordPress users. This makes it easier for people to make many of the optimizations above as easy as a click! It’s now offered on all shared and managed WordPress plans.

Congratulations! You now have a WordPress site!

In conclusion, opting for our managed WordPress hosting provides a seamless and efficient solution for website owners. By auto-installing WordPress, the initial setup becomes a breeze and by utilizing TurboHub, it simplifies the process of implementing crucial optimizations for your WordPress site.

Get started today with managed WordPress hosting!

By following these easy steps, you’ve successfully built a WordPress site from the ground up! As you navigate your WordPress site, experiment with different themes, plugins, and customization options to make your site truly unique. Happy WordPressing! 

The post Build a WordPress Site in 3 Easy Steps 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.

However, if you know how to incorporate video into your website, you can use it to maximize engagement and drive conversions. With the right approach, video can act as a powerful Call To Action (CTA).

In this article, we’ll talk about some of the latest video content trends, and then go over three tips to incorporate videos into your website. Let’s get to it!

What the Latest Video Content Trends Are

It’s likely that many of your users spend a significant part of their day watching videos on one platform or another. On average, users consume around 100 minutes of video per day. If you can seize even a fraction of that time through your content, it can help increase conversions.

If the primary goal of your videos is to drive sales or conversions, shorter is usually better. Despite the massive amounts of video content that customers consume, it’s safe to say that attention spans are getting shorter. At the end of 2019, up to 66 percent of video ads were approximately 30 seconds long. Although that might sound short, there’s a lot that you can say about a product or service in half a minute.

Thanks to the rise of social media stories and platforms such as TikTok, users are getting increasingly comfortable with shorter video ads as a part of their online experience. Moreover, there’s massive interest in User-Generated Content (UGC). If you can get consumers to share their experiences with your products or services in video format, that’s a huge marketing win.

There’s also a growing interest in educational videos. If your website focuses on online learning, video is a channel that you can tap into to expand your audience.

3 Tips for Incorporating Video into Your Website

If you’re ready to start incorporating videos into your website, there are several factors that can help you maximize their effectiveness. Let’s look at three tips you can use to make the most of your video strategy.

1. Add an Intro that Highlights Your Brand

If you go to your favorite YouTube channel right now and open a random video, we’re willing to bet it has an intro:

The goal of intros isn’t to pad video length, but to take the opportunity to reinforce brand awareness. An intro can accomplish that in several ways, including:

• Reminding you of the brand’s name
• Showcasing the brand’s logo
• Reinforcing the brand’s style and the type of content it focuses on

In this case, your website or business is the brand. Even if your videos are only 30 seconds long, adding a short intro that includes your name and the site’s logo can only benefit you. This is particularly the case when users end up watching those videos outside of your website.

Depending on which video marketing tools you use, adding intros to your content might be easier than you think. A lot of tools provide you with templates that you can use and edit, as well as the ability to upload your logo and incorporate it into the video.

2. Choose a Performance-Oriented Hosting Provider

If you plan on uploading videos directly to your server, you should use a performance-oriented web host. A lot of websites choose the cheapest hosting provider they can find, which often translates to slow loading times and a frustrating User Experience (UX).

If visitors have to spend minutes waiting for a video to load, and then wait for it to buffer every two seconds, they are much less likely to watch it in full. Even worse, that poor user experience can reflect badly on the rest of your website.

To ensure the best video experience, we recommend avoiding shared web hosting. At the very least, you’ll want to use a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting plan, which in most cases provides better performance as well as dedicated resources for your website.

3. Create Videos that Target Your Website’s Audience

You probably have a pretty good idea of who your website’s target audience is, such as:

• Where your users are visiting from
• The average age of your audience
• What their interests are and what content they want to see or read about

This information is critical for video creation. You can have an amazing idea for a marketing video, but if it doesn’t speak to your website’s audience, it won’t get the results you want. In other words, the video won’t get you conversions.

When you’re working on video content for your website, it’s important to consider whether it’s something your audience will be interested in. If the video provides or promises solutions and answers to questions they might have, it will likely succeed in its goal.

Conclusion

Knowing what the latest video content trends are is a solid starting point for creating your own media. Your website is the perfect channel to deliver those videos because it already has a built-in audience, some of whom may appreciate a different kind of content.

If you’re not sure how to approach video creation, you can start off on the right foot by keeping the following three tips in mind:

1. Add an intro that highlights your brand.
2. Choose a performance-oriented web hosting provider.
3. Create videos that target your website’s audience.

Do you have any questions about how to incorporate video into your website? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

Image credit: Pixabay.

The post 3 Tips for Embedding & Adding Video into Your Website 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.

What if we told you that WooCommerce can do all that for you? With the free and open-source plugin, maintaining your website instantly becomes so much easier.

Keep reading to find out exactly what WooCommerce is and how it can help your WordPress website.

What Is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an e-Commerce plugin used by over 3 million online stores. It was developed to be used as an extension to WordPress, which is why it integrates perfectly into any WordPress site. A simple but powerful platform chock full of features, it is a fantastic solution for anyone looking to sell their products online.

We highly recommend that you use WooCommerce as an extension for your shop, as it contains everything that you need for your business to run smoothly.

What Are the Benefits of WooCommerce?

WooCommerce exists to make managing your online shop simpler. It is incredibly user-friendly and offers dozens of helpful features right at your fingertips. If you’re about to open your own online shop or just want to upgrade an existing site, we’re certain that you’ll find all of the features of WooCommerce to be extremely helpful.

Customization Options

You can make changes to your store page any time you like with no additional costs, thanks to WooCommerce. You can either customize everything yourself or choose from a wide array of stylish, functional themes.

Built-In Analytics

Even if you have no experience in tracking implementation, WooCommerce comes with a built-in data analysis tool that will give you more insight into your growing business.

Integrated Payment Gateways

An efficient payment process is essential for any store. With WooCommerce, you can give your customers the option to choose from several platforms, such as Stripe, PayPal, debit or credit cards, bank transfer, or even cash on delivery.

Various Shipping Options

WooCommerce allows you to provide any variety of shipping options for your customers’ orders, like a pickup from nearby stores, local delivery, or international shipping. You can even restrict shipping options as you see fit.

Automatic Tax Calculation

WooCommerce makes it easy for anyone to calculate taxes for their online shops. All you need to do is configure the settings to automatically compute taxes on every order.

Order and Inventory Management

The built-in inventory management system of WooCommerce allows shop owners to handle and track everything in their supply. Plus, you can oversee the entire order process, from tracking orders to shipping them out.

All these amazing WooCommerce advantages will pair perfectly when used with a Managed WordPress platform, which is another worthwhile investment for any WordPress user.

What Is Managed WordPress?

Managed WordPress is a hosting platform that is fully streamlined and optimized for easy creation and management of your website. As its name implies, the web host manages your WordPress for you, taking over all the server responsibilities.

Our platform, A2 Hosting, revolves around making your site run as fast and secure as possible. We will handle all the administrative tasks, from installing WordPress, to security checks and updates, and even caching your web page. If you have any questions you can speak with our sales team for more information on our new and improved Managed WordPress plans!

WooCommerce is an incredibly powerful tool for WordPress users. When paired with our efficient Managed WordPress platform, managing your online shop will be fast and hassle-free. For an optimized eCommerce shop, get started on managed WordPress today with A2 Hosting!

The post What Is WooCommerce? Explaining the Features and Benefits appeared first on The A2 Posting.

What does it mean to “optimize” your website?

Optimizing your website is the process of using tools, strategies, experiments, and analyses to improve your website’s performance with the end goal to drive more traffic to your website, increase conversions, and grow revenue. 

You may have heard of SEO or search engine optimization. SEO is only one aspect of optimization (albeit the most critical). 

Optimization combines a variety of dimensions for optimal website performance like

• SEO
• Your website’s content and landing pages
• Analytics
• UX (frontend)
• Web development (backend)

What is A2 Optimized?

A2 Optimized is a WordPress optimizer. It combines various ideal WordPress configurations to enhance website performance and increase security.

Performance-enhancing

A2’s motto is “our speed, your success” and A2 Optimized is no exception. Our plugin enhances speed with:

• Page caching – storing copies of your web pages in a temporary storage location for quicker access.
• Object caching – storing database query results in a temporary storage location for quicker access.
• Minifying (minimizing code) for HTML, CSS, and Javascript) in your web pages and script files.
• GZip data compression – takes chunks of data and makes it smaller.

Secure

Secondly, A2 Optimized is secure by:

• Denying direct access to configuration files.
• Preventing bots from submitting to comment forms.
• Cutting off the file editor in wp-admin.
• Preventing plugins and themes from wp-admin tampering.
• Disabling other bot-targeted services like XML-RPC.

A2 Optimized configures difficult settings so you don’t have to. If you’re not technically savvy, installing the W3 Total Cache plugin may prove challenging. But when Memcached is enabled for WordPress, A2 Optimized automatically installs the plugin for you. 

A2 Optimized combines the best caching features and enhanced security configurations making it the ideal WordPress plugin. And an extra bonus, it’s free and just as easy to install as it is to uninstall, so give it a try today to see if it’s right for you! 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is A2 Optimized free?

Yes, it is! 

Can I use A2 Optimized with any host?

Absolutely! A2 Optimized works with any WordPress-supporting host. However, A2 Hosting provides some of the fastest servers in the business, and also includes additional tools to speed up your site on our servers. 

Will A2 Optimized make all of my sites faster? That’s a guarantee?

A2 Optimized does speed up sites the majority of the time, but not all plugins and themes are created equal. 

If your site is slower after enabling caching in A2 Optimized, ensure you’re using the best plugins for your website by speaking with a developer.

Can I use A2 Optimized with WordFence?

A2 Optimized is compatible with the majority of features in WordFence, but we recommend disabling caching and logging in WordFence. Otherwise, if page caching in A2 Optimized is enabled, some WordFence features may not respond.

Related Links:

• Everything You Need to Know About the WordPress 5.7 Esperanza Update
• An Introduction to WordPress Toolkit Deluxe
• How to Install a WordPress Theme on Your Website
• WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com | What’s The Difference?

The post What is A2 Optimized (and how does it help your WordPress site)? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

This year, our new WordPress plans are getting a makeover with new features to boost it above and beyond our other Shared Hosting packages. Keep reading to learn what sets them apart. 

What’s the difference between Managed WordPress vs Shared Web Hosting?

To boil it down, Managed WordPress plans offer services and performance tweaks specific to WordPress whereas Shared Web Hosting plans are generalist plans that host anything from WordPress to Drupal. But Shared Web Hosting and Managed WordPress hosting are more similar than they are different. 

You see, both plans are managed and come with 24/7/365 support on phones, tickets, and LiveChats and both plans are on shared servers. 

To summarize, 

• Shared Web Hosting plans share resources with other sites on the same server.
• Managed WordPress plans offer additional WordPress-specific services and tweaks to performance in a shared environment.

Why Use Managed WordPress Plans?

Managed WordPress Hosting offers WordPress-specific services, performance optimizations, customizations, and other valuable add-ons and performance tweaks including:

• Jetpack: Jetpack is an all-in-one WordPress plugin. Even the free version of Jetpack is powerful. They have 1-click site speed optimizations to increase your SEO, brute force protection by blocking unwanted login attempts from malicious botnets, and automated spam filtering. 
• Less users per server.
• Faster plans (with 4x more physical memory than our Shared Hosting packages)
• A2 Optimized and LSCache settings to speed up your website. 
• WordPress Toolkit for easier site management.

Why Use Shared Hosting Plans?

Shared Web Hosting is an affordable option to hosting your website. It’s especially beneficial for new or lower traffic websites. With a typical shared hosting plan, to keep the costs low you’re sharing the server with other users. This means if something happens to one site on the server, your site may be affected. Luckily here at A2 Hosting, we don’t overload our servers with thousands of users on one server. This mitigates that risk. 

The Pros and Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

Pros of Managed WordPress Hosting

• Server architecture finely tuned specifically for WordPress 
• Auto-testing any new updates to find potential issues before the updates go live.
• Automatic updates for WordPress. 
• Built-in server-level caching
• Free Jetpack license for your primary domain
• Site staging 
• cPanel
• LsCache, one of the fastest caching agents on the market
• A great in-between plan if you aren’t ready to upgrade to a VPS yet

Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

• Managed WordPress plans are inherently more expensive due to more features
• Stricter limits/caps on resource usage
• Limited to hosting only WordPress sites 

The Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting

With everything, there’s a pros and cons list. Here are a few for Shared hosting:

Pros of Shared Hosting

• Less expensive way to host WordPress
• The ability to host unlimited websites
• Still has significant performance perks like our Turbo Boost and Turbo Max plans
• Easy to seamlessly upgrade within the Shared ecosystem
• Site staging
• cPanel

Cons of Shared Hosting

• Can be slower than their Managed WordPress counterparts 
• Jetpack isn’t included
• Lack other performance-tweaking WordPress customizations

Which plan is better for WordPress?

There isn’t a single answer for this question. Only you know what’s best for your website and your needs. The best way to decide is to analyze what you need. Which plans will help you get to where you need?

To help you decide, consider the following:

• Are you going to host websites other than WordPress? If so, the decision is easy–stick with Shared Web Hosting packages. 

• Do you need all of the WordPress-specific customizations or is your site simple enough to get by on a Shared Web Hosting plan?

• What is your budget? Shared hosting plans are less expensive, but Managed WordPress plans have additional power and features that may be worth the investment. If the features sound nice enough to pay a little extra every month, consider it.
• Do you need automatic updates? WordPress updates automatically on our plans. Installing the latest versions of software means your site is as secure as possible. If you don’t need automatic updates, Shared hosting packages may be the better choice.
• How much traffic do you have? If your website is small and discreet, starting out on a Shared server is probably the best option, at least for a while. You can always upgrade to a Managed WordPress plan at any time. Smaller is always better to start. Then, scale up your needs as your business grows.

Also, consider this: the Managed WordPress plans are the best in-between plan if you need more resources than a Shared hosting package, but less than a VPS. If you’re unsure, as always, contact our sales team today to find out which plan is best for your needs. 

Whatever plan you decide is best for you, it’s a personal decision and we support you either way.

Related Articles: 

• How to Find the Right WordPress Plan (and Why It Should Be with A2 Hosting)
• How to Get Started with WordPress
• How to Install WordPress on Managed WordPress Hosting
• A Complete Guide on Navigating Your WordPress Dashboard
• How to Become an Expert WordPress Site Owner (3 Key Tips)

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Ann Arbor, MI—January 17, 2022—A2 Hosting, a provider of high-speed web hosting solutions, announced the availability of its new and improved portfolio of Managed WordPress plans. Modernizing its prior WordPress offerings, the new plans run on the company’s high-performing Turbo servers and introduce advanced features and tools—innovations that collectively increase website speed and security as well as ease of management for customers. The plans are available in four distinct packages to support various business requirements from single or multiple website deployments to basic corporate or eCommerce site configurations. 

“Last year, 70 percent of businesses chose to invest more in their digital presence. In parallel, over 60 percent of websites currently use WordPress as their content management system,” said Bryan Muthig, CEO, A2 Hosting. “We have a highly regarded track record of staying in step with our customers’ wants and needs which is why we released an extensive WordPress survey. The results guided us in creating our new Managed WordPress solutions that maximize, secure, and simplify the use of WordPress.” 

Run, Jump, Fly, Sell

As stated above, A2 Hosting’s WordPress experts developed the four different levels of WordPress plans based on feedback from current and prospective customers. All plans include cPanel’s WordPress Toolkit for easy site management. The tiers are defined as: 

• Run: The first tier plan is for WordPress beginners and hobbyists to quickly and easily get sites up and running. Run best fits the needs of users who are beginning on WordPress and need a strong foundation optimized with security and features that can be built on.
• Jump: The second tier plan is designed for professionals whose businesses need more resources and/or have up to five websites to host. Jump includes extras like Jetpack’s Daily Backup License and 250 GB of NVMe performance storage.
• Fly: The third tier plan is designed for experienced web professionals and developers who host a number of sites for themselves and their customers. Fly provides users with unlimited websites, unlimited NVMe storage, and free daily malware scans with Jetpack’s Security Daily License. 
• Sell: This tier is specifically crafted for eCommerce professionals, with WooCommerce pre-installed and optimized. Sell is also bundled with a premium RapidSSL certificate and a site seal to demonstrate enhanced security to customers. This plan is ideal for buying and selling using WordPress.

Advanced Plan Features and Benefits

The new Managed WordPress plans are supported 24/7/365 by A2 Hosting’s in-house Guru Crew. This team provides hands-on assistance with server and plan maintenance. The plans take a focused approach to help users increase their success rates with the popular CMS: 

•  Security Enhancements

Also included is extensive security, including features like a web application firewall, real-time antivirus protection, a network firewall, and patch management that detect, fix, and protect these hosting plans. The Fly and Sell plans also include Jetpack Daily Secure that addresses specific WordPress vulnerabilities through malware scans, brute force protection, automated spam filtering, and more to remove the guesswork from deploying the most secure website possible today. 

• Speed Optimization

The plans are hosted on A2 Hosting’s Turbo servers. The servers’ integrated NVMe storage, advanced LiteSpeed caching, and A2 Optimized plugin (which uses Memcached and TurboCache to accelerate website performance) to increase server speeds up to 20x faster than stock installation with 204% of standard disk performance.

• Managed Server Benefits

All plans come with complete server management. This includes features like 24/7 server maintenance, security, resource upgrades, malware scanning, and more. 

• WordPress-Specific Site Management Tools  

The plans also include newly introduced tools designed to aid and automate the speed and security of WordPress websites. The tools offer daily back-ups and malware scans, site speed scores, 1-click optimizations, optimized CSS, and other features. They are also bundled with cPanel’s Deluxe WordPress Toolkit, which helps users easily manage, update, back up, clone, stage, and secure WordPress websites.  

A2 Hosting’s New Managed WordPress plans are currently discounted, ranging in price from $11.99 to $41.99 per month.  

About A2 Hosting

Recently awarded Leader in Web Hosting for Summer 2021 by G2 and Best Cheap Dedicated Web Hosting by Digital.com, A2 Hosting, Inc. is a high-performance hosting services provider located in Ann Arbor, MI. The company delivers ultra-reliable solutions and 24/7/365 US-based support from its Guru Crew team. Since 2003, A2 Hosting has offered innovative, affordable, and developer-friendly hosting for small- and medium-sized businesses as well as web development agencies worldwide. Customers seeking the fastest hosting options in the industry can host websites of any size on A2’s Turbo Performance server platform featuring page load speeds up to 20X faster compared to competing solutions. To learn more, visit https://www.a2hosting.com.

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Press Contact:

Heather Ailara

211 Communications

+1.973.567.6040

heather@211comms.com

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Step 1: Purchase a Web Hosting Package

The first step to using A2’s SiteBuilder is finding a hosting package. If you’re unsure how to choose the best plan, please consult our guide. Selecting a package comes down to three main questions:

1. First, how many unique daily visitors does your site have?
2. What resources do you need? (disk space, bandwidth, CPU)
3. Do you need a managed or unmanaged solution?

We offer shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans with options for dedicated WordPress hosting and reseller hosting. 

Upon checkout, select which A2 SiteBuilder plan you want. 

We offer four tiers of SiteBuilder: (all prices reflect USD)

• Free (1-Page Site)
• Basic (10-Page Site) $6/monthly
• Business (10 Pages & Unlimited Templates) $12/monthly
• Enterprise (Unlimited Pages & Templates) $16/monthly

The hosting plan you need depends on answers to the above questions. If you’re still not sure, contact our sales team today. They’ll assess your hosting needs and set you up with an appropriate plan. 

Step 2: Log in to your cPanel to access A2 SiteBuilder

Once you purchase your website, log in to your cPanel to access A2’s SiteBuilder. 

Follow these instructions: 

1. In cPanel, locate the Software section and click the A2 Website Builder icon.
   
2. On the A2 Website Builder page, click the Create Site button.
   

Additional controls appear. Click Login under Actions. Then, it transfers you to the SiteBuilder. In this SiteBuilder, you can pick a theme, edit every page aspect, and add a blog or eCommerce integration.

Now you’re ready to design! Only three more steps until you’ve created the website of your dreams.

Step 3: Choose Your Template

We offer various pre-designed templates to customize to your liking. You can edit every aspect of the template, from the layout to the color schematics. 

Step 4: Add Content

You can’t sell a piece of a blank canvas at an art exhibition just as you can’t advertise your website without content. With A2’s SiteBuilder, you can add text, logos, headlines, videos, pictures, and any additional content to your website. 

Step 5: Publish Your Site

Once you’ve chosen a template and added your first content, you’re ready to publish your website. 

Click the Publish button and your website is off to the races! You can further edit your website at any time, whenever you need to add content or change existing content. 

And that’s all there is to it! A2’s SiteBuilder offers:

• A plethora of pre-designed templates 
• Easy drag and drop editing
• eCommerce capabilities 
• SEO (search engine optimization)
• Social sharing across social channels
• Easy image uploads
• Easy video integrations

In only 5 steps, you no longer need to worry about WordPress complications. A2’s SiteBuilder gives you WordPress power in a simple form!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is the A2 SiteBuilder included in my web hosting package?

Yes, you can add SiteBuilder to any one of our plans, but the cost depends on how many pages you need to design. We offer a free SiteBuilder package for one page, but if you need to design additional pages, we offer higher-tiered packages. 

Do I need technical expertise to use the A2 SiteBuilder?

No. We designed it for ease of use and for users of all experience levels. Even seasoned developers like it because of its ability to help you customize your website quickly and affordably.

Can I change my template after publishing my site?

Yes! You can change the website’s template at any time without losing any of the content. 

Related Resources:

• Build A Website Fast & Easy With The A2 Website Builder
• How to Design Your Site with A2 Website Builder
• 3 Ways Using a Website Builder Can Save You Time
• Should I Use A Website Builder Or Hire A Web Developer?
• Can You Build a Website for Free?

The post How Do I Create a Site Builder Website? The Step-By-Step Guide appeared first on The A2 Posting.