This article is the first part of a series on 100 Things You Need to Know About WordPress. Ten Things You Need to Know About WordPress and Web Hosting.
1. Read various “bad reviews” on the official forum before choosing a host.
If you want to choose a foreign web host, you will first look for various "reviews" about the host. When you click on any web hosting review website and register through their link, these review websites will receive a certain fee.
What you really want to know about are the shortcomings of these consoles. Most web hosts have their own official support forums, and most of these forums are open to the public (and searchable through search engines). Go to the hosting forum you care about and see what are the biggest problems reported by other users and what kind of support services are provided by the hosting provider. In addition, you can also enter keywords such as "problem", "problem", "trouble" and "bad" in the search engine to learn about its negative information.
2. Unlimited hosts are not really unlimited
Unlimited hosts are not truly unlimited. Some hosting providers state in advertisements that the host is equipped with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited databases. This is of course not truly unlimited. Every hosting provider will implement appropriate controls to prevent users from occupying too many resources, memory or CPU. If you do take up a lot of resources, the hosting provider will not ignore it.
3. Register the host and domain name separately to facilitate future transfer
Many hosting providers also provide domain name registration services, tying your domain name and hosting into the same account. This approach is not good, and it is recommended to register the host and domain name separately for several reasons.
The first is the consideration of cost. Hosting providers such as Godaddy provide bulk domain name renewal services, which can save you a lot of money. Most hosting companies charge very high domain name fees.
Second is the consideration of safety. If you bind the domain name to the host, when your host account is attacked, the attacker can access your domain name by the way. They can easily transfer the domain name to their own name, but it will be difficult for you to get it back.
Thirdly, when you want to change hosts, the host provider may set up obstacles for your domain name transfer. Register the domain name and host separately, and when transferring the host and changing the DNS, it is you who has the initiative, not the host provider.
4. Backing up your website is the best way to recover from a disaster
The hosting provider will back it up for you. They will store all the data on the server in a hard drive unit. When one of the hard drives is damaged, the hosting provider can promptly replace it with another hard drive. But what if the controller of this hard drive unit is damaged? All data on your hard drive will be affected - possibly losing all website backups. Last year, a large hosting company encountered the above disaster, and almost all data was lost.
So it’s best to make an offline backup of your website to ensure nothing goes wrong.
5. Change all passwords every 30 days
Use strong passwords and change them every thirty days—especially for WordPress admin accounts and Hosting Control Center login accounts. Changing the database password is also a good idea. There are so many ways to gain access to your account, including an unscrupulous host employee, a compromised computer, a public Wi-Fi or mobile phone connection, etc. Changing your password ensures that even if someone gets your password (without you realizing it), they won't be able to keep it for long.
6. Turn off directory indexing
Many mainstream hosting providers regard "directory indexing" as a function and it is turned on by default. This allows attack scripts and spammers to track your domain and look for folders to learn what programs you have installed (and how to break them). It's like providing a map of your home to criminals so they can map the terrain in advance. You can easily find "Turn off directory indexing" in most hosting control panels.
7. Cache the website to minimize resource usage
Naturally, the faster the website loads, the better. Needless to say, there are benefits. Every time WordPress loads a page, it will "look up" the information in the database. If you "cache" your WordPress installation as static pages, you can minimize (or even eliminate in some cases) database queries. You can also load and "unload" content to other places.
The two best WordPress database caching plugins:
WP Super Cache
W3 Total Cache
8. Update other software in time to avoid WordPress being attacked
After you install forums, other CMS systems, and various scripts on your website, you must upgrade them in time. Like WordPress, other software developers frequently fix various security vulnerabilities. If you leave a software program on your site unattended, hackers and spammers can take advantage and attack your WordPress site.
9. Automatically optimize database tables
Database tables sometimes get overloaded, and optimizing them can make them run smoother. You can install the WP-DBManager plug-in to automatically optimize the database regularly.
If you are technically proficient, you can also delete the remaining database tables of disabled plug-ins through phpMyAdmin in the host control panel for optimization.
10. Self-detect website running time
Do not trust the effective running time of the server provided by the hosting provider. Choose a free external detection tool so you can be notified immediately if something goes wrong with your website.
To be continued…….
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Article source: WordPress