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Category: Website hosting

  • Website hosting explained – how to choose your website hosting

    It’s a fact that all websites need allocated space on a high-spec computer connected to the internet – a web server – along with the associated software. However, all hosting is not the same. There are a huge number of different factors involved and these affect not only how your site performs, but also how your site indexes and how your visitors interact with the site. 

    Choose your website hosting carefully

    Some of the most important considerations you need to think about when choosing your hosting include:

    • Cost – you really do get what you pay for. Cheap hosting and special offers from companies like GoDaddy or Fast Hosts will reel you in but what happens when you need some tech support, your site gets hacked, you need to configure your email accounts, your prices go up, or when your server gets overloaded by all the other sites sharing your resources? Are you happy to compromise your site performance and SEO to save money?
    • Technical support – is someone there to help you get things configured? Or do you really need to spend time doing it yourself? Or even worse, when your site gets hacked – who will help you fox things? Paying for hosting is also paying for tech support, however, you only find out how good or bad (or non-existent) the tech support is when you’ve paid, signed that contract, and it’s too late.
    • Server performance – this is one of the factors Google takes into consideration when ranking your site. At the most basic level, you only get a certain amount of time for Google to index your site. If it’s waiting for pages to load, you’re going to miss the opportunity to have the site properly indexed by Google (and the other search engines for that matter!) Also, what happens when you get a spike in visitors? All you need is a mention on a larger website or some coverage in the papers and your site is down. And this is even before we get to the subject of your visitor experience! We all know how frustrating it is waiting for pages to load. This is affected by how ‘good’ your server is in terms of it’s performance under pressure. My advice is don’t take the gamble
    • Flexibility – are you able to quickly and easily increase resources such as site storage? What happens when your site becomes busy and grows? Make sure you’re in a position to be able to quickly and easily increase resources when you need to. This includes having the right tech support available at the right time.

    Our website hosting packages

    We have three basic hosting packages – basic, premium and tailored. All servers are based in the UK.

    The basic hosting is suitable for more basic sites that don’t use a complex content management system (such as WordPress) or for those who are not too concerned about site display speeds or the SEO benefits from higher-quality servers.

    The premium hosting is suitable for more complex site, such as WordPress, and those who want to benefit from faster upper-level server tech-support, fast site display speeds, and fast server speeds.

    The tailored hosting is suitable for larger, more complex sites such as eCommerce sites, Moodle learning platform, Open Cart, or Magento. Storage and server specifications (and of course the cost) are tailored to fit the requirements.

    Other available website hosting options

    We also have other options available such as:

    Green website hosting – 100% carbon neutral & environmentally friendly website hosting suits those who want to show a commitment to the environment. Our green web hosting servers not only use modern energy efficient technology, but they’re also powered by 100% green energy.

    Website migration services – move your website to us. Fed up with your current provider? It’s a VERY common problem. Give us the nod and we’ll do the rest. You’re not stuck!

    Find out more about our website hosting packages

    For more information on moving your site to us, upgrading your website hosting, or upgrading your server, give us a call on Sheffield 0114 383 0711

  • How to reactivate the ‘edit theme’ option in WordPress

    If the ‘theme edit’ option has disappeared from your WordPress dashboard and you’re unable to edit themes from the website back-end, try the following tutorial as it’s a common problem with (what is usually) a simple, quick fix. Being able to edit your site themes is useful, however, it can be a big security vulnerability which is why there are many plugins designed to remove the ability to edit themes from the dashboard. When the ‘theme edit’ functionality is disabled, the changes are often made permanent regardless of whether you’ve uninstalled or deactivated the original plugin that made these changes.

    In order to complete this tutorial, you’ll need:

    • FTP access to your site
    • Admin access to your WordPress site’s dashboard

    How to reactivate the ‘edit theme’ option in WordPress

    1. Firstly, a bit of housekeeping. If you’re not sure what your doing, remember you can easily damage your site by editing the theme files. If you’re not sure, should you get professional help to do this? Also, make sure you have a full backup of your site just in case. Before you edit any files directly, have you checked the plugin settings to allow theme editing? For example, iThemes Security you need to go to Security > Settings > WordPress Tweaks and enable ‘file editor’ then save the changes.
    2. If the above didn’t work and you still can’t edit your WordPress theme, deactivate any of the plugins via the WordPress dashboard that you think may have disabled access to the ‘theme edit’ function such as WordFence or iThemes Security.
    3. Access your site via FTP
    4. Open the ‘wp-config.php’ file to edit (you may need to download it depending on your FTP client)
    5. Find the line of code in the file ‘define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, false);’. Here you can switch WordPress dashboard theme editing on or off by editing this line to:
      1. define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true);
      2. define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, false);
    6. Save the updated file on the server again. Remember that there is a potential security risk allowing the theme to be edited via the dashboard as anyone with an admin login can do this. To disable theme editing again. Follow step 5

    Is your WordPress hosting secure?

    The reason why we prefer to host the WordPress sites we look after includes the following reasons:

    • We provide ongoing 6-hourly, 7-day server backups. This is besides any offline backups we store. If the worst does happen and your site is hacked or damaged, we can have it back up and running in minutes
    • Our server is secure and designed for WordPress hosting. We have a minimum 40-point server security protocol we apply to every site. This is on-top of the best-practice site management we provide too.
    • Our servers are premium and in the UK. This means that your site visitors benefit from fast display speeds; you can administer your site quickly and easily; and you also get the Google SEO benefit that comes along with the geo-location and fast display speeds
    • If you ever lose your login details, we’re able to quickly and easily access your database directly to reset them and restore access
    • Disgruntled employee attempting to sabotage your site? It’s a real and common potential problem! We can quickly and easily stop access to anyone unauthorised
    • Are you at risk of a DDOS attack? We’re able to block these automatically

    And many more reasons!

    Call us for more information about any of the points here or if you need some help editing your WordPress theme. We’re available on 0114 383 0711 or by email