Tag Archives: web hosting tips

Inspirational Quotes about Blogging, Websites, and Online Entrepreneurship

The post Inspirational Quotes about Blogging, Websites, and Online Entrepreneurship appeared first on HostGator Blog . Inspirational Quotes for Bloggers and Online Entrepreneurs “The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.” – Zig Ziglar Whether you’re starting your own blog, a new website, or an online store, there are going to be some rough patches, and at times it can be hard to stay motivated. Prevent writer’s block. Stop spinning your wheels. And get going! Kick your motivation into high gear with some of our favorite quotes for bloggers, entrepreneurs, and online store owners. Inspirational Quotes for Bloggers “Write what you know.” – Mark Twain “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” – Sir Winston Churchill “Transparency, honesty, kindness, good stewardship, even humor, work in business at all times.” – John Gerzema “These days, people want to learn before they buy, be educated instead of pitched.” – Brian Clark “An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.” – Seth Godin “The paradox is the more info you give away, the more people will buy what you have to give.” – Brian Clark “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney “If you can learn something new every day, you can teach something new every day.” – Martha Stewart “Content is king, but distribution is queen and she wears the pants.” – Jonathan Perelman “Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life.” – Avinash Kaughik “Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.” – Brian Clark “Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” – Larry L. King “When you brand yourself properly, the competition becomes irrelevant.” – Dan Schawbel “If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.” – Zig Ziglar “Content: there is no easy button.” – Scott Abel “Create content that teaches. You can’t give up. You need to be consistently awesome.” – Neil Patel “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs Inspirational Quotes for Online Entrepreneurs “Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours per week.” – Lori Greiner “If you’re looking for the next best thing, and you’re looking where everyone else is, you’re looking in the wrong place.” – Mark Cuban “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” – Steve Jobs “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon “The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.” – Seth Godin “Any idea is only as valuable as its ability to solve a problem.” – Sally Hogshead “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos “Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes but they don’t quit.” – Conrad Hilton “Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” – Dennis Waitley “Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait, the grip of your hand and the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.” – Henry Ford “The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and actualizer. He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.” – Robert L. Schwartz “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” – Seth Godin “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” – Jeff Bezos “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” – Guy Kawasaki “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.” – Scott Cook “No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.” – Andrew Carnegie “Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising.” – Milton Hershey “I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.” – Elon Musk “The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about.” – Seth Godin “You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.” – Jack Ma “In every success story, you will find someone who has made a courageous decision.” – Peter F. Drucker “My best advice to entrepreneurs is this: Forget about making mistakes, just do it.” – Ajaero Tony Martins “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford Inspirational Quotes for E-Commerce Site Owners “Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.” – Mark Zuckerberg “You can’t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there and drag them back to your store.” – Paul Graham “E-commerce leaders will have to keep with these changes (and others) to survive and stay ahead.” – Linda Bustos “Learn as many mistakes about what not to do while your business or product is small” – Daymond John “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why do you it.” – Simon Sinek “In e-commerce, your prices have to be better because the consumer has to take a leap of faith in your product.” – Ashton Kutcher “Don’t obsess over data as a tool, obsess about the future.” – Jeff Beaver “You can have an assertive culture without trampling people’s sprits.” – Jill Layfield “Communications is at the heart of e-commerce and community.” – Meg Whitman “Customer service shouldn’t be just a department; it should be the entire company.” – Tony Hsieh “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” – Jeff Bezos “Stop selling, start helping.” – Zig Ziglar “Overall the web is pretty sloppy, but an online store can’t afford to be.” – Paul Graham “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates “The reason it seems that price is all your customer’s care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about.” – Seth Godin “Amazing things will happen when you listen to the consumer.” – Jonathan Mildenhall   Hopefully, the quotes above will bring you an added dose of inspiration for your new online venture. Any quotes we didn’t mention above? Share your favorites in the comments below. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Inspirational Quotes about Blogging, Websites, and Online Entrepreneurship

7 Best WordPress Backup Plugins

The post 7 Best WordPress Backup Plugins appeared first on HostGator Blog . Best WordPress Backup Plugins Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time building and tweaking your website, from theme customizations to setting up plugins, creating pages, writing posts, and adding images. What would happen to you if all this data were lost? Would you have a backup to restore from? Or, would you have to do it all over—from scratch? There are plenty of reasons your site can fail, but instead of going into every case of doom, it’s better to be prepared if it ever does happen. If you run a WordPress site, then one of the best things you can do is utilize a WordPress backup plugin. Below we highlight why you’ll want to use a WordPress backup plugin, and offer a handful of plugins to choose from. Why Would I Use a WordPress Backup Plugin? Most hosts offer their own backup services (HostGator customers can sign up for CodeGuard here ), and although you should take advantage of these, you may want to supplement these backups with backups of your own . A WordPress backup plugin will simplify the backup process so you don’t have to think about it, but there’s always a version of your site you can restore from if need be. Think of a WordPress backup plugin like an insurance policy for your website. You’ll still want to protect your site from hackers, but you’re covered if something happens.   7 WordPress Backup Plugins to Consider There are dozens of different WordPress backup plugins for you to consider. To simplify your search we’ve highlighted seven of our favorites below.   1. VaultPress VaultPress was founded by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress. It’s now part of JetPack, and will automatically backup your entire site, media, posts, comments, and dashboard settings included. In order to use this plugin, you’ll need a subscription to Jetpack . The higher level plans can get expensive, but the features and ease of use might make that cost worthwhile. Also included are things like one-click site restore, customer support, backup storage, and malware and virus scans.   2. BackupBuddy BackupBuddy is a very popular and long-running WordPress backup plugin. You can schedule your backups to run on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Plus, you can have those backups automatically go to Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace, or even have it emailed to yourself. This plugin is a premium plugin, but you only pay on a yearly basis and you get access to plugin updates, user forums, and even 1GB of backup space.   3. BackWPup BackWPup is a very popular and free backup plugin. Its popularity probably comes from how easy this tool is to setup and use. With this plugin, you can create a complete WordPress site backup and have that backup sent to cloud storage, or download it directly to your computer. Plus, restoring your site from a backup is very straightforward with their built-in restoration wizard. There’s also a paid version of this plugin that offers you additional features like site scans and database repair and optimization, and more.   4. Duplicator Duplicator is primarily a site migration and cloning tool, but it can also be used to backup your site as well. The free version of the plugin allows you to manually backup your entire site. Now, the free version isn’t automated, but for sites that don’t change very often, it can be a solid solution. There is a paid version of the plugin , which includes scheduled backups that you can send to cloud storage providers like Amazon S3, Dropbox, or Google Drive.   5. UpdraftPlus UpdraftPlus is a popular and free WordPress plugin. With this plugin, you can create a complete backup of your site to store on your own computer, or via cloud storage, like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Rackspace, and more. You have the ability to created scheduled backups, or even on-demand backups with this plugin. There’s also a premium version of the plugin , which will offer you additional features like migrating or cloning a site, support for multiple sites, premium-level support, and much more.   6. BackUpWordPress BackUpWordpress is another very popular and free backup plugin. This plugin allows you to schedule automatic backups, so you don’t have to remember to backup your site. It’ll backup your entire site, including all of your site’s file and databases. However, in order to send your backups to a cloud storage provider, you’ll need to purchase an extension .   7. Backup & Restore Dropbox Like the name suggests Backup & Restore Dropbox will backup your WordPress site and send that backup to Dropbox. If you currently use Dropbox as your preferred cloud storage provider, then this is a great option. All of the backups are fully automated; all you have to do is authorize the connection to your Dropbox account. By using a WordPress backup plugin you’re safeguarding your site in case your data is lost, or you need to restore your site to a previous version. It’s always a good idea to have multiple fail-safes in place, from host backups to additional backups from a WordPress plugin.   Back Up Your WordPress Site Any of the plugins above will be a great option to provide you with consistent, high-quality backups. For added security and peace of mind, make sure you sign up for a backup service through your web host. HostGator customers can schedule daily site backups through CodeGuard . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 7 Best WordPress Backup Plugins

WP Gutenberg as a Site Builder: Is It the Right Choice for Building Your Site?

The post WP Gutenberg as a Site Builder: Is It the Right Choice for Building Your Site? appeared first on HostGator Blog . WordPress Gutenberg as a Site Builder: Is It the Right Choice for Your Site? The WordPress Gutenberg update will change how pages and posts are created within WordPress. Gutenberg will add page-builder functionality to the backend of every WordPress site. The overarching goal is to simplify and improve the content creation experience. The current rollout has been slow, and Gutenberg currently exists in plugin form , but one thing is for sure: The release of Gutenberg will change how we build sites and create content within WordPress. Below we look at the role that Gutenberg will play in building out your website, so you can decide if going with WP Gutenberg is going to be the right choice for your new project. What is Gutenberg? The purpose of the Gutenberg rollout is to make adding rich content to WordPress a simple and enjoyable process. Think of it as a way to quickly build page layouts and media-rich pages, instead of just creating your standard blog post. Instead of using custom HTML within the visual editor you’ll be using content blocks to create more advanced layouts. Overall, the Gutenberg editor makes writing much simpler and distraction free (which is a huge plus). You can then rearrange and add various content blocks to either change the style and layout of the page or include embeds like YouTube videos or songs from Soundcloud. Essentially, with Gutenberg, you’ll get access to more features and a more powerful editor that’ll give you more control over the end result of your content.   How Will Gutenberg Help Me Build My Site? The current process for building out a WordPress site is installing the core WordPress CMS, and then customizing that setup with themes, plugins, and custom HTML. There’s a lot of talk that the Gutenberg update will make certain themes, plugins, and integrated WordPress page builders obsolete. After all, a lot of the problems these tools solve will now be incorporated directly into the WordPress core. Gutenberg will allow you to customize your posts and pages with a dark and drop editor. You’ll be using content blocks to build media-rich pages, instead of just writing a wall of text and customizing your pages with shortcodes and HTML. The overarching goal is to make rich content creation fun and easy. As it currently stands, existing themes and plugins will need to adapt and integrate with the new WP Gutenberg setup. It’s a bit too early to tell just how much the Gutenberg release will affect themes and plugins, but they will need to evolve or become obsolete. Overall, this release will make creating, publishing, and building your site much easier. Think along the lines of creating a site with a drag-and-drop builder , or seamlessly creating rich content on Medium.   Is WordPress With Gutenberg the Right Choice for My Site? Instead of asking if Gutenberg will act as a solid site builder for my site, you should be asking: is WordPress going to be the right platform for building my site? The Gutenberg release marks a shift in how WordPress will change into the future. Instead of the standard core updates, the WordPress team will now focus on adding additional features to the WordPress core. This will make customizing your site and creating content a much more seamless process overall. If you’re looking to build a content heavy website then it’s hard to find a better solution than WordPress. This will especially be true with the introduction of the Gutenberg editor, which will make the publishing experience similar to Medium (which is stellar). If you’re just trying to build a very simple website with a handful of pages, then you can probably get away with using a simple site builder that doesn’t place such a heavy focus on content creation. WordPress still continues to power 30% of the web , so it’s not going anywhere soon. WordPress still remains a flexible and powerful CMS that allows you to create a content-rich site with ease. The Gutenberg release will make content publishing easier, especially once the kinks have been worked out. While WordPress will continue to remain a great CMS that’s continually focused on creating a backend CMS that makes site building and content creation easier. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on WP Gutenberg as a Site Builder: Is It the Right Choice for Building Your Site?

Does the Type of Web Hosting You Choose Affect Your SEO?

The post Does the Type of Web Hosting You Choose Affect Your SEO? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Can Your Web Hosting Plan Affect SEO? When it comes to SEO, the details matter a lot. One of those details that’s commonly neglected is your choice of web host. Usually, it’s the last thing that people think about. However, the type of hosting you’re using can have a big impact on your rankings. The extent of the impact will depend on the size of your site and its overall traffic levels, but your host is either supporting or damaging your rankings. Obviously, you want a host that does the former. Below you’ll learn how your host affects your search engine rankings, and how to choose a hosting environment that will actually support your rankings. 5 Ways Your Web Host Affects Your Rankings The type of web hosting you choose can either help or hurt your rankings. Below we cover five different ways your choice of host can affect your SEO.   1. Site Speed Is a Ranking Factor The faster your site loads the better your site will rank in the search engines . Now, just having a fast loading site isn’t enough to push your site to page one. But, if you already have solid onsite and offsite SEO and you boost your site speed you will start to see your rankings climb. Having a slow loading host will lead to a poor user experience since they’ll be sitting and staring at a blank screen. Poor user experience leads to poor metrics, like a high bounce rate , and a very low time on site, both of which will push your rankings down.   2. Data Loss = Rankings Loss No one likes to think about it, but there is a chance that your site will face a disaster. Whether it’s getting your site hacked , a catastrophe at your host’s datacenter, or unintended site data loss, it can happen. To protect your site and your rankings from data loss you need to have some kind of backup system. A high-quality host will have a backup system in place that will help you quickly recover from any of the above scenarios. HostGator customers, learn more about protecting your site with CodeGuard.   3. SSL Certificate Improves Rankings Trust is huge online. If your site doesn’t seem trustworthy , then Google won’t trust you and you’ll have a hard time ranking. The same goes for your visitors. If your visitors don’t trust you, then they probably won’t purchase anything from you, or stay with your brand over the long-term. One easy way to improve your trust is to install an SSL certificate on your site . An SSL certificate will encrypt the connection between your server and your user’s web browser. This will allow for the secure exchange of personal information. But beyond making your visitors feel safe an SSL certificate will also help your site improve its rankings. Since 2014 Google has acknowledged that SSL certificates are a ranking factor .   4. Uptime Matters No host can guarantee 100% uptime, but the better your host, the higher uptime your site will have. If you’ve been experiencing high levels of downtime, then it’s probably time to think about switching your hosting environment. Learn more about HostGator’s 99.9% uptime guarantee! Having your site down shouldn’t affect rankings too much, but it can have a negative impact on your user experience. If a person tries to visit your site time and time again and your site is offline, they simply won’t come back. This can have a negative impact on your bounce rate and your CTR from the search engines.   5. Server Location and Performance Another factor that influences the performance of your site is the location of your physical server. Now this will depend on what kind of hosting you’re actually using. For example, if you’re using cloud hosting it won’t be a factor. But, if you’re using shared, VPS, or a dedicated server, then the farther your visitors are from the physical location of your server the slower your site will load. However, if you have a high-quality host this will be offset through an integrated CDN and a high performing server environment.   How to Choose an SEO Friendly Host An SEO-friendly host will look different depending on the kind of site you run and how much traffic you receive. There is no perfect hosting choice for every style of website. For example, if you have a small site that doesn’t receive a lot of traffic, then a solid shared host will be enough to support your site. But, if you receive hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, then using a shared host will probably have a negative impact on your site’s performance and rankings. In that case upgrading to a VPS , cloud, or dedicated host would be the best course of action. In order to find the best SEO-friendly host, evaluate your hosting choices with the factors below: Does the host have a high benchmark of performance? If you’re unsure, spend some time checking out user reviews online. Does your host include an automated backup system or use a third-party plugin? Do you have the ability to install or purchase an SSL certificate for your site? Does your host guarantee a high site uptime? Is there data, or a guarantee to back it up? Can you choose your datacenter location? Or, does you hosting include an integrated or third-party CDN? Going through the above questions will help you find a high-performing host that’ll actually support your rankings, not bury your site in the search results. Overall, your host can have a big impact on your SEO. If your site hasn’t been ranking as high as you think it should, then your hosting environment could be the culprit. There’s a reason people consistently choose HostGator web hosting. Learn more about our award-winning hosting by reading real reviews from our customers! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost, vps | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Does the Type of Web Hosting You Choose Affect Your SEO?

What Is a Managed WordPress Site?

The post What Is a Managed WordPress Site? appeared first on HostGator Blog . What Is a Managed WordPress Site? A managed WordPress site is one that’s hosted on a managed WordPress host. Essentially, you’ll be outsourcing the hosting of your site to a team of WordPress experts. If you run a high-traffic WordPress site, then going with a WordPress managed host could be a great option for you. Below we explore what managed WordPress hosting is, and the benefits it can offer your site, so you can determine if it’s time for you to switch up to WordPress managed hosting. What Is Managed WordPress Hosting? Managed WordPress hosting is a streamlined hosting environment that’s optimized to help you build and run WordPress websites. The goal of this style of hosting is to ensure your site is running at peak performance, with high levels of security. A managed host will also take care of general administrative tasks like updating your site, maintaining security, and monitoring traffic levels. By hosting your site on a managed WordPress host you’re effectively outsourcing your hosting to a third-party of experts, so you can focus on growing your site instead.   The Benefits of WordPress Managed Hosting Having a managed WordPress site just requires a switch to managed WordPress hosting. Below we explore the main benefits your site will receive when you make the jump to a managed hosting environment.   1. Improved Speed and Performance When you utilize a WordPress managed server everything to do with the server environment will be optimized to get the most out of WordPress. That includes the server configuration, the hardware, the software, and the databases. Your WordPress site can become slow for a variety of reasons, whether onsite or having to do with your server environment. With regular monitoring, the team behind your site will be able to diagnose and solve any performance issues before they become a problem.   2. Easier to Scale Your Site If your site prepared for when an post goes viral, or you get featured by a major media outlet? Most sites will fail when they receive a large spike in traffic. Instead of visitors seeing the article or homepage, they’ll get nothing more than an error message . Managed WordPress hosts are built to scale. With traffic monitoring features the team behind your site will be able to scale your site’s resources at a moments notice to handle the flood of traffic.   3. Greater Levels of Security Most people don’t want to admit it, but there’s a chance your site could be hacked. Security is typically the farthest thing from people’s minds. Why would somebody want to hack my site? The last thing you want is to wake up one morning and realize your site’s been hacked. Then, you have to go through the process of fixing your site, which can be a real headache if you don’t have solid technical skills. With a managed WordPress host your server environment will be much more secure. Plus, since they’re WordPress experts they’ll be well aware of any common security holes and vulnerabilities and be able to patch the issues effectively.   4. An Expert Support Team Behind You A lot of support teams will only be able to help you with the actual server hardware when something goes wrong. So, if the issue is with your site, then you’re left on your own, having to search through Google looking for the magic fix . A managed WordPress host will not only be able to diagnose and solve server and hardware issues for you. But, they’re also staffed by a team of WordPress experts that will be able to help you troubleshoot any issues that might arise. And of course, the goal of a solid managed WordPress host is to help you avoid experiencing any site issues in the first place.   5. Automated Website Backups and Updates Backing up your website is incredibly important , but usually, it falls by the wayside if you have to figure it out yourself. However, with a WordPress managed host your site will be backed up automatically. The frequency of the backup will depend upon your host, but usually, it’s on a daily or weekly basis. Beyond backups the other task you’ll have to take care of yourself is updating your WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Failing to update these in a timely manner will make your site more vulnerable to attacks. Luckily, with WordPress managed hosting all of your updates will be handled automatically. Whether or not your plugins will be updated as well depends on the host.   Is Managed WordPress Hosting Right For Your Site? Managed WordPress hosting gives you the freedom and time to focus on growing your site, not managing your hosting. If you’re running a high traffic WordPress site and you want to improve its performance and security without any added work on your end, then WordPress managed hosting is an option worth considering. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Is a Managed WordPress Site?