Tag Archives: your-website

Benefits of Magento Hosting

Posted on May 17, 2019 by Hosting

The post Benefits of Magento Hosting appeared first on HostGator Blog . Your eCommerce business is starting to come together. You have your business plan and an idea  of what the design of your eCommerce website will look like. But you still need to figure out the right eCommerce software and web hosting plan to get your eCommerce website working and ready for business. When considering your web hosting options, you may come across an option that addresses both needs in its focus: Magento hosting . What Is Magento? Before you can know if Magento hosting is right for you, you need to decide whether you’ll use Magento for your website. Magento is the third most popular eCommerce platform on the market (falling only behind WooCommerce and Shopify). It supplies the main functionality you need to run an eCommerce site, namely: A shopping cart Check out functionality Account creation and guest check out options Integration with payment processing apps to accept payment Ability to list your products and track availability Those are the basics you need, but Magento has a vast array of features that go beyond the basics. Between the core functionality of the platform itself and the extensions you can add to it , the software packs a lot of power into the framework it provides for your eCommerce store.   Why You Need eCommerce Software You know now that Magento is a type of eCommerce software, but maybe you’re wondering if you can get by without an eCommerce platform to begin with. eCommerce websites have unique needs that won’t be served by a web hosting plan or content management system alone. If you want to make sales through your website, then you need a way to list your products, track inventory, provide a secure checkout, and accept payments. If you think about the online stores you buy from the most often, they probably have additional eCommerce features like the ability to set up a wishlist, mark your favorites, set up subscriptions, or take advantage of coupons. For all of that, you need the right software. If you’re building an online store, consider eCommerce software a necessary part of the process. 12 Reasons to Use Magento for Your eCommerce Website Magento isn’t your only option, but it’s one of the most popular CMSes for eCommerce websites for a number of reasons. 1. Magento is free. Few things in life are free, and it’s even rarer for something with as much usefulness as Magento to be free. But the Magento core is freely available for anyone to use. You may incur some costs for extensions you add on, or for developers you hire to help you use Magento. But the platform itself won’t cost you a thing. 2. It’s open source. Magento is open source software which means that anyone with the skills to develop a new module or extension can do so. Magento boasts a community of over 300,000 developers. They have an active forum with thousands of contributors, all working to make Magento do as much as business owners need and want it to. One of the nice things about using an open source solution is that you can count on it to improve in quality and functionality over time as people work to make it better for the benefit of all users. 3. Magento’s advanced security is ideal for eCommerce. Website security is important for all website owners, but when you run an online store that regularly takes sensitive financial and personal information from customers, security takes on an extra level of necessity. In the eCommerce community, Magento is widely considered a strong choice for security. And while the core software provides security against hackers, you can make your Magento website more secure with any of the hundreds of security extensions available. In addition, Magento lets you control how much access you allow each person who updates your website to have. Security permissions help you limit the risk of an angry employee making malicious updates to your website, or someone accidentally breaking something on the site due to ignorance. 4. Magento supports huge eCommerce product catalogs and order volume It’s understandable to wonder just how much a free product can actually do, especially if you have big goals and expect to see significant traffic numbers or list a high number of products. Magento really can handle a lot. You can add up to 500,000 products to your store on one Magento site. And the platform can handle over 80,000 orders every hour (as long as your web hosting plan is also up to the task). Plus, Magento’s reporting dashboard shows you at-a-glance how those sales are translating to your bottom line: That means it should work for you in the early stages of building your business, and allow you tons of room to grow as your sales and customer numbers increase. 5. Magento’s flexible extensions make it easy to customize your online store. Magento is extremely customizable, especially when it comes to the changes you can make using the large library of extensions. You have a lot of power to make the backend of your website look the way you want it, as well as making the website itself intuitive for your visitors. And Magento has a lot of different features you can choose to incorporate if you so desire, such as using categories to better group your different products, allowing different payment options, and letting you manage orders through the platform. With Magento, you can configure your website to have the features you want it to, both on your end and the user end. 6. Magento’s shopping cart functionality is responsive. With over half of all web use now happening on mobile devices, it’s integral that all online stores make their website mobile friendly . Magento’s shopping cart functionality is fully responsive, which means it works just as well on tablets and smartphones as it does on desktop computers. The last thing you want is for half of your visitors to bounce because they find your website difficult to use on their particular device—or worse, bounce right before a sale because the checkout process is a pain on the small screen. Magento will help you avoid that fate. 7. Magento’s powerful product search helps customers quickly find what they need. Nothing else about your eCommerce site will matter if customers find using it more difficult than it’s worth. Your website has to provide an experience that’s intuitive and pleasant from the moment they first land on the site, to when they complete their purchase. Magento helps you realize that by letting you organize your products in user-friendly ways, so visitors can browse and filter results based on their particular preferences. You can enable features like auto-suggestion for search terms or display popular search term clouds that can further help customers find what they need. And you can load multiple high-resolution images for each product to help customers make a better decision. 8. Built-in features are designed to boost your conversion rate. Magento also has a number of options you can use to increase conversions and upsells. You can offer free shipping and discounts to incentivize sales. You can also add in areas for customers to add their own promo codes at checkout: You can enable one-click purchases (just like Amazon!) with their Instant Purchase feature: You can set up your website to display recently viewed products, so customers are more likely to go back and buy items they’d considered. You can have your website show related products , or items commonly bought together, to encourage customers to buy more products at once. Finally, you can make it easy for customers to share items they like on social or with friends. 9. Magento follows SEO best practices. The minds behind Magento knew the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) for a website and built a platform that made optimizing your pages for search simple. You can easily customize your URLs, fill in the relevant meta information on each page, and create an auto-generated sitemap to submit to the search engines. 10. Magento enables personalization. Personalization is an eCommerce tactic gaining steam and showing significant results. Magento’s core platform provides some personalization options, but you can go even further with tailoring the way customers experience your website with extensions that offer additional personalization features. With the Magento core, customers can create unique accounts so you can better track their behavior over time and show them products and ads based on past purchases or views. You can automate the process of serving up personalized recommendations for each visitor. With extensions, you can generate automated recommendation and reminder emails based on their past behavior and deliver personalized ads across other sites to help get past visitors back on your site. 11. Magento works with third-party applications. Magento helps power a lot of useful features and functionality on your own website, but what happens on your own website is only part of running an online store. You also need to think about marketing your store in various channels around the web to get customers to your website to begin with. Not to mention all the work you have to do to keep up with your business’s finances. Magento is compatible with a wide range of third-party applications that help with those parts, including email marketing software, Google analytics, accounting software products, and payment processing apps. Easy integration with the various apps you need to run your business make all the extra business tasks you have to take care of easier. 12. Magento tutorials abound online. Nothing is perfect, and one of the downsides of using Magento is that it has a learning curve. If you’re not a professional developer, or you don’t have the budget to hire one, learning the ropes of using Magento can take some time and work. But you can find a lot of useful information to help you get started online. Free tutorials are available on sites like TutorialsPoint . Or for a more thorough introduction, you can take one of the courses offered at Magento U for a fee. What is Magento Hosting? Magento hosting is a web hosting plan that provides compatibility with the eCommerce software Magento. While Magento is free and provides a lot of useful features for running an online store, one thing it notably doesn’t provide is web hosting. Magento hosting plans will often provide the additional important business features an eCommerce website needs such as an SSL certificate and compatibility with third-party solutions commonly used by businesses, such as email marketing and Google Analytics. While many web hosting plans that aren’t specifically Magento hosting may make it possible to use Magento, an application web hosting plan that provides specific functionality related to using Magento can often better meet the needs of eCommerce stores that depend on the shopping cart software. 5 Benefits of Magento Hosting When choosing the best web hosting option for your eCommerce store, you’ll benefit from prioritizing Magento compatibility upfront. There are five main reasons to specifically seek out an application hosting plan that works with Magento specifically. 1. Easy installation With a Magento hosting plan, you can trust that adding Magento to your web hosting account will be quick and easy. With HostGator’s Magento hosting, you can add the application in one click once you’re signed into your web hosting account. You can focus your time on building your website, rather than figuring out how to get your eCommerce software and web hosting service to work together. 2. Assured compatibility If you’ve already made the choice to power your eCommerce options with Magento—and especially if you’ve already put the work into using it in designing your website—you really don’t want to realize after you sign up for a web hosting plan that there are compatibility issues in getting Magento to work right with your plan. Save yourself the trouble of having to work to get the two programs to support each other, or worse, having to switch over to a new web hosting provider after you’re already eager to launch. Start with a plan you know will work seamlessly with Magento from the get go. 3. No performance issues One of the complaints you’ll occasionally see about Magento is that some sites face performance issues, such as slow loading times. In fact, the issue isn’t usually Magento when that occurs, it’s that the website owner went with a web hosting plan that wasn’t up to the task of running the Magento site. To avoid performance issues, find a Magento web hosting plan that provides the degree of power and bandwidth you need. 4. No hidden fees Some web hosting plans will advertise an upfront price, then hit you with unexpected fees when it comes time to add the apps you need to your account.  With Magento hosting, you not only know that your web hosting plan will be compatible with your Magento site, you can also trust that you won’t have to pay anything extra to use Magento with the plan you buy. 5. Proper security As we’ve already established, security is paramount when you’re running an online store. Choosing a secure web hosting provider like Magento is one step to making your eCommerce site secure. Finding a web hosting plan that also promises top-notch security is another. A good Magento hosting plan will have strong firewalls in place to protect your website from hackers and offer additional security features, like an SSL certificate and security software you can add to your website. Get Started with Magento Hosting Starting an eCommerce website is a big deal. If you make the right choices, it can put you on the path to big profits. Early on, two of the most important choices you can make are which eCommerce software to go with and which web hosting plan to choose. If you go with Magento, picking a Magento hosting plan to go along with your choice just makes sense.Get started with HostGator’s application hosting . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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What to Look for in a Web Host

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Hosting

The post What to Look for in a Web Host appeared first on HostGator Blog . In those exciting early stages of launching a new website, you have a lot of decisions you need to make. You need to clarify your brand, choose your domain, and plan out your website’s design. On the long to-do list of getting a new website up and running on the web, one of the most important choices you need to make is what plan and provider to choose for web hosting . Luckily, this step is easier than a lot of the other items on your list. Designing your website and promoting it once it’s live are much harder and more time consuming tasks than selecting a good web hosting service provider. But nonetheless, you do want to take a little time to consider your options and make sure you choose the best web hosting plan for your needs. If you choose the right web hosting service provider from day one, you’ll save yourself the headache of having to migrate your site to a different company later. But if this is your first website, then how are you supposed to know what to look for? Especially if you don’t entirely understand what website hosting really is. We explain. What Is a Web Host? Before we can choose a web host, it’s important you first understand the web hosting basics . Web hosting is essentially the physical side of the web. Every website you see online is made up of various images, media, apps, and other files that take up storage space. While we tend to think of the internet as something that exists outside of physical space, all those files have to be stored in a physical server somewhere. In order to contain all the files that make up your website and serve them up to every person that visits it, a physical server must have a lot of power. For most website owners, owning and maintaining a server that powerful isn’t practical. That’s where website hosting companies come in. Web hosts own a large number of servers that have the power required to provide consistent, reliable service for thousands of websites. When you sign up for a hosting plan, you rent some of the space on their servers. A good web host isn’t just selling that space, they’re also selling their expertise in keeping their technology running smoothly, efficiently, and securely—so that your website runs consistently without problems. Do I Really Need a Web Host? If you want your website published online where anyone can find it, the short answer is yes. Every website needs web hosting because it’s the mechanism that takes the pages you’ve designed on your personal device and makes them accessible to people on other devices across the world. But in addition to making it possible for people to access your site, web hosting companies also offer some important additional value. They invest in the proper firewalls and other security precautions that make your website less likely to get hacked. And they keep experts on staff to provide any maintenance needed to ensure your website stays up consistently. By investing in the right tools and talent to keep web hosting servers functional all day every day, they make sure that your website is available and loads quickly and without problem whenever your visitors want it.   10 Things to Look for in a Web Host To get all the best benefits of web hosting , you need to find the right web host. With so many options out there, a newbie will understandably struggle to figure out how the different providers compare and which criteria are really the most valuable to judge each option by. No matter what type of website you’re launching, these are ten of the most important features to look for in a web host. 1. They have a strong reputation in the industry. One of the best measures of a business in any industry is their overall reputation. When a business consistently serves customers well for years, word gets around. But how do you find out what a company’s reputation is? Look for evidence from third-party sources. Have they earned any web hosting awards from reputable organizations or websites? Can you find reviews of them from tech publications? If so, what do they say? Just as importantly, what do reviews from their actual customers say? A little bit of sleuthing on Google will uncover a lot of information about what people have to say about the web hosting company you’re considering. If it’s generally positive, then you can trust you’ll be in good hands. 2. They promise at least 99% uptime. If your website is for a business, any time it’s not available loses you money. Even if this is a website you’re starting for fun, you risk providing a disappointing experience to visitors and losing followers if they can’t access your website each time they try to visit. The main job a web hosting company has is to keep your website up and accessible online. Every web hosting company will have to do occasional maintenance that will temporarily take your website offline. And if servers aren’t properly maintained, they could overheat or break down, which means more time your website is inaccessible. One of the big differentiating factors in the quality of web hosting providers is how well they manage the types of issues that can take your website offline. In industry parlance, the amount of time a web hosting company guarantees that your website will be available is called uptime, and reputable web hosting companies routinely promise at least 99% uptime. The best web hosting companies go even further, offering 99.9% uptime with a money-back guarantee. 3.  They offer a variety of plans. Today, you’re looking for a hosting package that delivers what you need right now. But you have big dreams for your new website. You hope that in the coming years, the number of people that find your website and become regular visitors will grow. Maybe you hope to continually create new content to add to your site as well. In either case, you need room to grow. Most new websites get everything they need with an affordable shared web hosting plan, but as a website grows in size and popularity, at some point you’ll want to upgrade to a cloud hosting , VPS hosting , or possibly even a dedicated hosting plan . When that time comes, you’ll have a much easier time making the transition if you can stick with the company you choose from day one. An upgrade is simpler than a full migration to a new company. So before you choose the right hosting package for today, take some time to think about what you’ll need tomorrow and beyond and see if your provider has plans to match your future needs as well. 4. They provide 24/7 customer service. When you’re up late at night working on those website fixes you’ve finally gotten around to, the last thing you want is to hit an issue you need customer support to resolve and realize you have to wait until the morning to get an answer. Any time your website has a problem, you want it fixed fast. And you should be able to work on your website on your own schedule, without having to wait on the business hours of your web hosting company’s support reps. So make sure your web host offers top-notch customer support at all hours of the day. Bonus points if they offer a number of ways you can get in touch, so you can choose between phone, email, or live chat based on what works best for you.   5. The price is right. Web hosting is a necessary cost if you want to have a website, but that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. Simple shared web hosting plans start at less than $3 a month. When deciding on the right hosting plan for your site, keep in mind that web hosting isn’t a one-time cost. Web hosts use a subscription model for billing. Make sure that the cost is something you’re comfortable with moving forward, and that it seems in line with what the plan is worth. While many new websites will manage just fine with the cheapest type of hosting plan, some will find it well worth spending more for additional features and higher bandwidth. Sometimes spending more is worth it, just make sure the value matches the price. 6. Their account interface is intuitive. While the main service web hosts provide is keeping your website published and accessible, they also provide an interface that allows you to do a number of important web management tasks, such as: Domain name management Setting up redirects Managing your SSL Managing your domain email addresses Adding new applications or databases to your website Managing your backups Upgrading or renewing your hosting solutions You don’t want to spend a lot of time learning how to do some of the basic, but important work involved in running your website. Look for a web hosting provider that makes it all intuitive with a good interface and simple processes. 7. They provide ample resources for getting started. Even if the overall design is intuitive, you’re still likely to have questions about how to do certain things with your website. Before choosing your web hosting provider, look into the type of resources they provide to help you learn how to use their products. They should have comprehensive support materials such as tutorials and how-to articles. What’s even better is also having an active support community where you can turn to other people who use the web hosting provider for help with your questions. See if the company has an active forum, in addition to their other support resources and customer service team. 8. If you have a site already, migration is supported. The idea is to find the right web hosting platform from day one, but not everyone meets that ideal. If you’re on the search for web hosting solutions because you’re not happy with your current web hosting company, then you want to find a provider that will help you with the process of transferring your website over. Look into what the migration process is like. Consider talking to a support person there for details, so you know what you’re getting into. If they can make the process relatively simple and painless, then you’ll be able to switch over quickly and get back to focusing on the work of running your website. 9. They support domain name management as well. Web hosting is one of the necessary elements all websites need, a domain name is another. One of the most important steps in starting a new website is finding and registering your domain. And it’s just as important to keep your domain name registration current for as long as you keep your website. While it’s entirely possible to register your domain with a different service than the web hosting provider you choose, you’ll have a much easier time staying on top of domain name management if you keep it all in one place. Make sure your web hosting provider allows you to manage your domain registration and renewals in the same interface you use for managing your web hosting. 10.  They offer satisfactory security options. Hackers and data breaches are an unfortunate part of the online world today.  Every website owner ought to prioritize security. While there are a number of steps you can take to make your websites more secure , one of the best things you can do for website security is choosing a web host that treats it as a priority. A good web hosting company invests in powerful firewalls, includes SSL certificates as part of their plans, and offers affordable security software or other add-ons to enhance your website security. Research the company’s reputation for security to make sure you’ll be in good hands. Bonus Feature to Consider: A Website Builder If you already have a great professional web designer in mind for your website, or have the skills to do it all yourself, then this feature won’t be necessary. But for anyone wanting a quick and affordable way to build a website, in spite of lacking programming skills, an intuitive website builder will make your life much easier. And opting for a website builder from a web hosting provider means you keep all your website management tasks in one place. It’s one less log in to remember and account to keep up with. Choose Your Web Host Today If you’re ready to make your decision and get started with a web host now, consider one of HostGator’s plans. We offer a range of options, so there’s plenty of room to grow. We have a money-back guarantee of 99.9% uptime. We also provide 24/7 customer support and lots of helpful resources to help you get started. And we’re one of the most respected web hosts in the industry, as evidenced by third-party reviews and awards . Ready to learn how to build a website ? Give our experts at HostGator a call today and we’ll help you find the best hosting plan for you and your needs. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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[MilesWeb] Summer Offer | Secure Your Websites With SSL | Plans Starts at $11/yr

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Hosting

[COLOR=#1A1A1A]SSL certificates enable you to secure the connection between your website and your website visitor’s browser. As a result of … | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1762897&goto=newpost Continue reading →

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How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important appeared first on HostGator Blog . You probably already have regular computer backups in place. You may manually back up all your important files to an external hard drive, or you may have found a way to automate the process. Do you do the same thing for your website? Backing up your computer helps prevent data loss if anything unfortunate occurs—like your computer gets damaged or hacked and you need to reinstall your OS and start from scratch. Just as your computer is susceptible to online threats, so is your website. Perhaps even more so. Beyond taking the necessary security precautions to protect your website , you’ll also want to regularly backup your website. That way, if something unfortunate does occur, you won’t have to completely start over. Instead, you can simply restore your site from a previous backup. Below you’ll learn what an online data backup service is, why you’ll want one, and the benefits it’ll bring you, so you can decide which website backup service is best for your needs. What Is a Website Backup? Simply put, a website backup is a copy of all of your website data. What the backup storage encompasses will depend upon your online backup provider. As a general rule of thumb, the more data that’s included in the data backup, the better. This is especially the case if your website runs on a content management system like WordPress, where you’ll need all of your site’s files, content, media, and databases to get it up and running again. How Often Should You Back Up Your Website? Like computer backups, website backups should also be done on a regular basis. It won’t do you much good to restore your site from a backup that’s a few years old. The best case scenario is either daily or weekly backups. Whether you go with daily or weekly depends on how often you update your website. If you only publish a single blog post per week, and that’s the only update you make to your site, then weekly backups will suffice. Why You Need to Backup Your Site It’s hard to imagine what losing all of your website data feels like until you’ve gone through it yourself. Regardless, it isn’t a fun experience. More importantly, it’s something that’s completely avoidable with the right online backup software behind you. Here are three unfortunate situations that could occur when you don’t backup your site: 1. You Lose All the Work You’ve Done Building a website takes a ton of time and energy. This effort only multiplies the longer you’ve been running your site. Could you imagine losing years of work on your website overnight? All the customizations you’ve done to your site. All of the content you’ve created. All the time spent getting everything just right. If you don’t have any backups to restore from, then you’ll have to recreate all of this from the very beginning. Or, if you hired someone to make customizations to your codebase, then you might have to hire them to do it all again. 2. Loss of Site Revenue During Recovery If your site has been generating revenue via content, products, or services, then you run the risk of all of this being lost. If your site is content driven, then you’ll have to create all of this content from scratch. If you run an eCommerce website, you’ll have to completely recreate your product pages, category pages, and more. When your site is offline, any existing revenue will completely stop until you can completely restore your website. Depending on how much data you’ve lost this could be a long time—especially if you’re a small business or solopreneur and you’ve created every piece of content yourself. 3. Loss of Time During Site Rebuild You should spend time growing and managing the day to day of running your website, not having to re-do tasks you’ve already done. Imagine the frustration of trying to re-do years’ worth of work. Some sites that have been running for years will have hundreds of blog posts or product pages. If you haven’t done a single backup since starting your site, then you’ll have to create all of this again. If it took you years to do once, then it might take you years just to get back to your starting point. Of course, this is the worst case scenario. With regular website backups, this nightmare won’t happen to you. How Website Backup Services Work Online backup companies help to simplify the process of backing up your website. By way of example, let’s talk about an online backup service for documents, like Dropbox. If you have a Dropbox account, you drag and drop files into the application, and a copy of your files are stored on a cloud server. It’s pretty seamless, but it still requires you to select which files you need to back up. This is great for documents and other media files, but backing up an entire website is a bit more technical in nature. Websites have a ton of moving parts and a variety of files required just for your website to load the right way. Forget to backup a crucial file and your website might not load properly. If you’ve ever played around with the code of your own website, then you’re probably familiar with how changing a single line of code can bring your website offline. Yeah, not fun. When you use an online backup service, all of this is taken care of for you. You’re not the one individually backing up every website element and file yourself. The service does it automatically in the background. This helps to ensure that every single file is backed up and you can easily restore your site if the need arises. Once you choose your online website backup software of choice and configure it to your website, you won’t have to touch it again. Just select the website you’d like backed up, and choose the frequency. The application will then run in the background, silently backing up data in your site to your preferred guidelines. This helps to take the headache out of backing up your site while giving you a safe and secure backup if you ever need to restore your site to a previous version. 3 Benefits of Using an Online Backup Service If you don’t know how to backup your website , online backup services can greatly simplify the process. All you have to do is sign up for a service and the rest is taken care of for you. You don’t have to worry about remembering to backup your site, or even securing your backups the right way. All of this and more will be taken care of by your online backup service. Here are some of the biggest benefits you’ll realize from using an online backup service: 1. Backups Are Effortless With an online backup service, you don’t have to think twice about whether or not your site is going to be backed up. All you have to do is sign up for the service and the rest is taken care of for you. Cloud-based backup solutions are very efficient. Instead of having to manage your backups yourself and ensure they’re properly stored, the entire process happens automatically behind the scenes, and your site’s files and folders are stored securely on a remote server. You also don’t have to worry about the maintenance, or physical protection of your data storage devices as well. All of this is taken care of by your website backup provider. Usually, your website data will be stored across multiple different storage locations as well, in case one becomes corrupted, or damaged in some way. 2. Enhanced Security Protocols If you’re manually backing up your site and using a basic storage solution, then your levels of security won’t be as high as what a cloud backup solution can provide. Simply using an HDD backup can open your files up to all sorts of risks like data corruption, storage malfunction, physical damage, and more. Even if you’re regularly backing up your site, it’s no use if you can’t actually access your data. Online backup services not only have multiple layers of security to protect your files, but they’ll be stored on redundant servers. This means that copies of your site’s files are stored across multiple server physical servers. It’ll be near impossible to get this level of security and data recovery when managing your backups yourself. 3. Speedy Site Recovery One of the biggest benefits of using an online backup service is being able to restore your site to a previous version in an instant. With quick website recovery and data restoration times it’ll be like your site never took any damage in the first place. When you’re managing your own backups this will be a much slower process, especially if you don’t have the necessary technical skills. A lot of online backup services will also offer technical assistance for restoring your site or even have one-click recovery options. This is a must-have for website owners who don’t want to go through the technical process of restoring their sites themselves. Choosing the Best Website Backup Service When you’re looking for a solid website backup service there are certain features you’ll want to keep an eye out for. The last thing you want to do is choose a low-quality online backup service. Here are three key features you’ll want to keep an eye out for when choosing a backup service: 1. Off-Site Backups You want your backups to be protected from hackers and hardware failure. This means that your backups need to be stored in an off-site protected location, not just on a traditional website server. Look for an online backup service that offers off-site backups as part of their service offering. 2. Automated Backups If you have to create your backups yourself, then you’ll probably never get around to it. Our lives are busy, and you probably have a handful of website-oriented tasks you’re trying to complete every day as well. The last thing you’ll remember to do is backing up your website. Plus, it’s a simple enough task that it’s easy to put off until “tomorrow”. With automated backups, you don’t have to think twice about backing up your website. Just sign up for a service, create a backup schedule, and the rest is taken care of for you. Automation is one of the most important aspects of an online backup service. Without automation, the task probably won’t get done. 3. Redundant Backups Another very important feature of your online backup service is redundant backups. This is where your website files and folders will be stored in multiple server locations. Or, you’re having backups of backups made. This ensures that a single event won’t bring down your backups or storage, and you have multiple lines of defense, instead of a single point of failure. Introducing the CodeGuard Backup Solution If you’re already a HostGator customer then you should probably consider CodeGuard as your preferred backup solution. Think of CodeGuard as a time machine for your website. Have a website update that goes wrong? Or, your site gets hacked and your site will barely function? Or, maybe your site is going haywire for no reason at all? In one-click, you can restore your site to a previous version that functions how it should. CodeGuard is equipped with features like: Daily automatic backups (or whatever frequency you prefer) One-click restore of your entire website, or a single file that’s been corrupted Email alerts for any unauthorized changes that are made to your website 24/7 website monitoring and scheduled scans The ability to backup multiple different websites in a single storage space Download a zip version of your entire site for manual backups (if you want even more stored versions of your site) If you’re already hosting your site with HostGator and looking for a backup solution, then CodeGuard is a no brainer. It immediately integrates with your existing web hosting plan, so configuration is a breeze. Just choose your backup plan, select the websites you want to save, and this tool will do the rest. Hopefully, you have a better understanding of why website backups are so important , and something you must do before an unfortunate incident occurs. With a solid website backup solution behind you and an experienced web hosting provider to rely on, you’ll protect the future of your site from any risks that are lurking online. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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What Is Responsive Web Design?

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Hosting

The post What Is Responsive Web Design? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Whether you’re building a new website or realize it’s time to do a proper redesign for a website you already have, one of the first concepts you’re likely to encounter in your research to get started is responsive web design. What Is Responsive Web Design? Responsive web design is a relatively new way of approaching website design that ensures that a website looks good on all devices. On responsive websites, the same information and page elements appear no matter what device you’re on, but the way they’re sized and organized will change based on your screen size.   The website adapts (or responds) to the smaller screen size of smartphones and tablets  to provide an intuitive experience, regardless of your device. An adaptive design and flexible layout provides a better user experience for your visitors and also helps to boost your search engine optimization value. With the growing use of mobile devices to access websites of all types— mobile use now surpasses desktop —website owners have to prioritize the mobile experience. In the early days of mobile, designers would often create a separate mobile website for smartphone visitors than the one that would load for desktop visitors. But as the number of device types and screen sizes available grows, that’s not a practical solution. In addition to the variety of screen sizes, you also have to deal with people’s ability to change the direction of how they hold their devices (landscape versus portrait) and the fact that people have varied preferences for how they size their web browser windows. In short, you could design a dozen completely unique websites to accommodate different screen sizes and still be missing out on a number of common use cases. Or you can design one responsive website that works on just about every device, screen, and web browser window—no matter the size. The Main Elements of Responsive Web Design You’ve likely encountered many examples of responsive web design without thinking about how it all works. In order to design a website that’s responsive, designers employ a few main tricks and techniques. Flexible grids Designers have always used grids to build websites, but for responsive websites they have to make sure the grid is flexible and can load differently based on the screen size. Flexible grids are therefore a core part of responsive website design. Breakpoints Related to flexible grids, breakpoints are the spots on the page you identify where the page can be cut off and the information to the side moved downward. Every website should have at least three breakpoints for the three main devices types people use, but most websites will have more than that. Flexible images and responsive media queries Text is pretty easy to move around based on screen size, but images and media features can be potentially trickier. There are a number of different options designers can employ to ensure images show up in the right size for the screen, without causing slow load times or looking strangely squashed. In most cases, it’s a matter of coding to determine how large the image will show up . In others, it could be changing the image itself (cutting unnecessary parts out, for instance) and telling the site which version to load based on the screen size. There are also coding commands designers can use to ensure any media included on a page loads in the right size. Responsive media queries allow you to set the maximum and minimum width for the media, as well as setting orientation for media on iPads. Visual hierarchy A big part of website design with a responsive layout is always considering which parts of a page are the highest priority. The images and messages it’s most important for your visitors to see should go higher up on the page, with any elements that are less important going further down. Visual hierarchy is a good web design practice in general, but it’s especially important in responsive design since visitors on smaller devices will be seeing less on the page at a time. You want to keep them on the page, so make sure the most valuable parts of the page are accessible higher up. Touchscreen and mouse friendly elements Another important consideration in mobile design is making sure everything on the page is just as intuitive and usable on a touchscreen as it is with a mouse . That means links that are big and obvious enough to select on a small screen and easy scrolling on all device types. Good responsive design includes user testing to make sure all elements of a page work just as well using a mouse as doing it all by touch.   5 Reasons You Should Use Responsive Web Design As a website owner, you know web design trends sometimes come and go. If you already have a website, committing to a professional website makeover  or redesign is a big deal, so even knowing what responsive website design is and how big of a buzzword it is, you may wonder if it really is important to build a responsive website. And for someone starting a new website, you may worry making it responsive could be more difficult or expensive. In either case, responsive web design really is the best choice for a few good reasons. 1. A majority of web users browse on mobile. Recent estimates put the number of people with mobile devices at over five billion . And as we already mentioned, more internet use now happens on mobile devices than on desktops. Mobile is clearly a trend that’s here to stay, and website owners need to adapt. You don’t want to alienate over half of your website visitors by delivering them a crummy user experience. For your website to work for everyone, you need to prioritize your mobile and desktop visitors equally. And responsive websites are the best way to make sure everyone that visits your website gets the experience you’re aiming for. 2. A mobile-friendly website is required for SEO. For several years now, Google has been telling SEO professionals that how well a website works on mobile is a factor in how they determine rankings. They’ve even gone so far as to develop a free tool to see how mobile friendly your website is. If you want people to find your website through the search engine, then making it mobile friendly is crucial. Not only has Google been upfront about mobile friendliness being an SEO ranking factor, but they’ve also said outright that they prefer responsive design. While expressing a preference isn’t quite the same thing as saying it will boost your SEO, if you care about where your website shows up in the rankings, following Google’s recommendations is just smart. 3.  It saves you time. Obviously you need a website that works on mobile, there’s no longer a debate on that point. But there are other options for making your website mobile friendly than going with responsive design. You can create a separate mobile version of your website, for instance. But having two websites comes with certain issues. Top of the list is that it takes more time to build two independent websites than it does to build a single responsive website. You’ll be doubling your efforts both when it comes to creating the websites and when it comes to updating them over time. And you’ll have to actively stay on top of the performance of each. There are more opportunities for broken links or pages that don’t load right when you have double the websites to monitor. 4. It provides consistent information across devices. The thinking behind building a unique mobile website is that you can figure out what people are looking for when they come to your website on a mobile device and build a site that answers those mobile-specific needs. Then, when building out your desktop website, you can build a fuller version of the site that includes everything you want to include, since you have more space to work with. The problem is that means your mobile visitors are missing out on some of the information your desktop visitors get to see. Either you’re padding your desktop website with information your visitors don’t really need, or you’re depriving your mobile visitors of stuff they might be interested in. Either way, you’re creating an unequal experience for your visitors based on the device they use. And you may be surprised by the way mobile behavior resembles desktop. An analysis found that people are willing to scroll on mobile devices almost as much as they do on desktop, and are, if anything, more engaged on mobile devices and more likely to click on links. If you kept all your longer pages and content to the desktop-only version of your website, you’re keeping them from mobile users who may well be more likely to read and engage with them. 5. It makes tracking analytics easier. This is just one more way having double the websites means having to do more work. You have to keep up with the analytics for both versions of your website, and analyze the results separately. In contrast, with responsive websites you can still see how your analytics differ based on the device people are using, but you’re able to make deductions about what’s working for your audience based on a consistent big picture view of your website. It’s just easier to track your analytics all in one place and make sense out of them when you’re dealing with a relatively consistent experience across devices. How to Create a Responsive Website As responsive web design has increasingly become the norm, website owners now have easier options for creating a responsive website. When trying to decide how to make your website responsive, you have two main choices. Option #1: Use a responsive template. Building a website today is much easier than it was in the early years of the internet. Even people with zero coding or design skills can pull together a good looking website in a matter of hours with the help of the right website builder . And because of how important responsive web design has become, the best website builders will include responsive templates you can use to make designing a mobile-friendly responsive website simple. If your priority is getting your website up in a way that’s quick, easy, and affordable, a website builder with mobile-friendly templates is the best tool for responsive web design . When trying to find the right website builder for your needs, make sure that it offers a number of well designed templates to choose from and that they’re all responsive. You won’t have to do any extra work to make sure your website works just as well for your mobile users as it does for your desktop visitors. Option #2: Hire a skilled designer. Your second option is more expensive, but it gives you more power to realize the specific vision you have of a website. While website builders with responsive templates make things a lot easier, you’re working from a design that already exists and that other websites start from as well. A good web designer can build you a website from scratch that directly matches what you have in mind. At this point, most professional web designers have the skill to build responsive websites, but do make sure to ask any designer you consider about their experience and make it clear from the outset that you want your website to be responsive. Ask to see other examples of websites that are responsive to make sure you like their work and trust them to create the website you want. One Last Step: Perform User Testing. Whichever option you choose for building your responsive website, in order to truly know that it works well on all types of devices, you need to test it out. Or more accurately, you need people in your target audience to test it out. User testing ensures you spot issues with your website’s usability in advance of when you release it. It’s better to know that your checkout process is difficult on a mobile device before you start losing sales because of it, and user testing provides you with that kind of valuable head’s up. User testing is a good idea for any website, but it can especially be useful with responsive websites so you can make sure your website looks the way you want it to on as many device types as possible. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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