Hosting & Domain
What Is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is an online service that allows your website’s content to be accessible on the internet. When you purchase a hosting plan, you are essentially renting space on a physical server to store all the files and data for your website. Web hosts provide the necessary technology and resources for the effective and secure operation of your site, ensuring the server remains operational, implementing security measures, and facilitating the transfer of data to visitors’ browsers.
What’s the Difference Between Web Hosting and a Domain Name?
After selecting where to store your website files, the next step is to choose and purchase a domain name. While hosting is used to store your site, a domain name acts as the website’s digital address, making it easy for people to find and access your site. A domain and hosting account can be purchased from the same or different providers. Many hosting companies, including Bluehost, offer free domain registration for the first year when you buy their hosting.
Recommended Hosting Services
1. Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the most preferred website hosting providers and is recommended by WordPress.org. An interesting fact: Bluehost powers more than 2 million websites worldwide! Plus, with your first web hosting purchase, you get free domain name registration for the first year.
2. MochaHost
MochaHost offers affordable hosting services starting at $2.45 per month. You can benefit from a 50% lifetime discount, over 180 free tools, unlimited email and FTP accounts, and PHP support.
Email Marketing Tools
1. Zoho
Zoho Campaigns is an easy and free tool for your first 2,000 subscribers. It allows you to create responsive designs, customize messages, deliver emails to inboxes, trigger automated workflows, and connect with new customers.
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a comprehensive marketing automation platform designed for businesses to reach their target markets via email. It allows you to manage mailing lists, create custom email templates, and automate your marketing campaigns. It is free for the first 1,000 subscribers.
3. MailPoet
MailPoet is the best email plugin for WordPress, used by over 300,000 websites. It integrates seamlessly with WordPress, allowing you to send emails directly from your dashboard and quickly add content and images from your media library.
Optimization & Plugins
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the most powerful caching plugin to optimize your website speed. It offers numerous optimization features and is easy to use, even for beginners, with over a million users.
Best WordPress SEO Plugins
1. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is the leading SEO plugin for WordPress, boasting over 16,700 five-star ratings. It provides a user-friendly interface and comprehensive tools for optimizing your blog posts and product pages.
2. SEOPress
SEOPress is a freemium SEO plugin for WordPress with no ads. It is fully white-labeled, simple, fast, and powerful, allowing you to manage all your titles and meta descriptions for posts, pages, post types, and terms.
3. Rank Math
Rank Math SEO is a comprehensive SEO tool for WordPress, combining the power of multiple plugins into one easy-to-manage and lightweight plugin.
WordPress Backup Plugins
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is the most popular free WordPress backup plugin, used by over 2 million websites. It allows you to create complete backups of your site and store them on the cloud or download them to your computer. The plugin supports scheduled and on-demand backups and can automatically upload backups to various cloud storage services. The premium version offers additional features like website migration, database search and replace, multisite support, and priority support.
WordPress Translation Plugins
1. GTranslate
GTranslate by Translate AI Multilingual Solutions is a freemium WordPress plugin that uses the Google Translate API to automatically translate your site. It supports over 100 languages and provides unlimited words and page views.
2. Loco Translate
Loco Translate offers in-browser editing of WordPress translation files and localization tools for developers. It includes features like native MO file compilation, string extraction from source code, and direct language file updates within your plugin or theme.