Why choose a host which advertises as a ‘WordPress’ host?
Firstly, if you don’t know what a wordpress host is, you may be reading this thinking… yeah why? Well, WordPress has only a few requirements in order to be installed but those requirements are important to hosting a reliable content managed site. It helps to have cPanel hosting and full access to that. With cPanel hosting you can setup and create / maintain a mySQL database which is the foundation that wordpress sits on top of. It writes all its data for its pages and posts straight to the database and then refers back to them when displaying pages. You don’t need to know how it works though, as long as it does. So, in answer to this question, choosing a host which advertises as a ‘WordPress’ host will surely guarantee you an easy an painless installation. Normally a host offering this service will also have various options for easy wordpress installation, such as ‘One Click’ installers and / or a manual installation (normally for a small fee). Pivotal Hosting are a WordPress friendly host in case you were wondering.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is what is called a content management system, or C.M.S which it is also very commonly refer to as. This allows, in term of coding a unique and uniform code base and takes the effort out of adding content. This article you are reading now, for example was published using the WordPress CMS. It allows the user to edit their articles and pages as simply as using some of the most common text editing programs, such as Microsoft Word and WordPad. This particular content management system has also got the added benefit of being open source, which means that its ongoing development is community driven and new ‘plugins’ and updates come out for it all the time. Some of which are free and very useful, such as basic calendars and testimonial add-ons for your site.
What are the benefits of WordPress?
Quick publishing is one of the nicest features of WordPress. Once you create a page, you can literally edit the content in seconds. All it takes to do a simple edit, if you are logged in as an administrator at the time, is to click on the nearest ‘edit’ link whilst navigating your site. Then you make the change in the C.M.S. and click Update or Publish to see the results in your website or blog. We refer to WordPress as a website or blogging platform, but really it can do both side by side and rather efficiently if set-up correctly.
Are there any S.E.O. benefits to wordpress?’
There are many, for starters all the code that WordPress generates is clean and stuffed with your content. This means that when Google, Bing or any other major search engine crawls your site to see what gems are inside, it has no problems finding its way around. Even customised wordpress themes have to follow certain conventions which keep everything clean and digestible by the various search engine ‘spiders’. There are also lots of publicly available SEO plug-ins which are available for your use, these range from social networking tools to automated reciprocal link forms for your sites users. Setting up wordpress with custom options can also work in your favour. By telling your C.M.S. ping various sites every-time you post new content and update them with your update, you are helping to let all the big search engines know about your new content. The sooner you do this, the longer standing your content will be and the higher a priority it will be given so you get high search engine rankings.
Is there anything special about WordPress hosting?
As content management systems go, WordPress is actually the best all rounder. There are many niche content management systems out there which cater for differing needs. Generally the more niche the CMS, the more it lacks in other features. Because of the open development community which surround WordPress, quite a lot of these potential niches are also covered. You can, also, if you are a developer create your own too! To answer this question, it would be safe to say that WordPress is not niche and doesn’t on its own perform any unique tasks. It would also be safe to say that WordPress hosting is nothing special as it does not require anything major that hasn’t already been mentioned. WordPress is much loved by all who work towards making it a better piece of online software though and because of the love and hard of work of all the plugin developers WordPress itself is special indeed.
Automatic WordPress vs. Manual WordPress?
Manual. This can be said with much assurance as manual setup is the only way to make sure everything is being done in the correct fashion. Many of the automatic installers available have to modify core wordpress coding in order to be setup to run. If you look at your website as a house, the most important part of that house is the foundations as without them it would crumble very quickly. The installation of wordpress is quite simple, but must be done correctly and the only way to be sure is to either do it yourself or get a professional to do it for you. Pivotal Hosting offer this too so let us know if you need it!