Glossary of Website Terminology

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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We get it, if websites were your “thing” you would not be working with us. And for that we are grateful! We take our responsibility to educate you seriously which is why we have built a glossary of terms below (and will be writing more blogs to dig deeper into some of these terms).

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A Record

The A record is the DNS record that tells a server where to send website traffic. At GruffyGoat, when we launch a new website or take over hosting for a client, we typically have the client change their A record to point from their old hosting provider to ours. Changing the A record allows all other non-website related traffic, such as email, to remain intact and unchanged.

Above the Fold

This is a phrase referring to the content that is visible without scrolling. This comes from newspapers and the information you could see without unfolding the edition.

Account Manager

Your Account Manager (sometimes called Project Manager) is here to guide you along the whole project process! They are dedicated to your project and being an advocate for your team. They will be your main point of contact through your site build; ask any questions of them you may have. They are responsible for maintaining your timeline and making sure you know what is happening through all stages. There will also be an account manager assigned to you through the lifetime of your relationship with GruffyGoat. We want to make sure you’re happy and the AMs are the best at ensuring that.

ADA Compliance / Accessibility

ADA is making the internet available to people who need more assistance in using it. Compliance means we make sure screenreaders can grab all the text, all content is high contrast to be legible, and all functions can be used with keyboard controls. Those are the basic needs, but there are others that we follow to make the internet a better place for everyone.

Anchor Point

An anchor link enables you to create a hyperlink to a specific part of a page. Like when you click on a drop-down menu and it scrolls down the page to a different section of content. This is a great way to navigate information for the users. It’s best used on long-form content like a glossary of terms about internet jargon.

API

Application Programming Interface – This is a set of rules provided by software services that allow for websites to interact with a predetermined set of data. Ultimately, APIs make cool things happen without people doing them. Use cases include: job boards, interactive maps with live data, e-commerce experiences, and honestly so much more. If you use a lot of systems, there is probably an API you can use to open up your calendar a bit more.

ALT Text

This is part of SEO and ADA compliance. These are label for each image on your website that gives context or background on what the image is.

Back End

Technically this consists of a server, an application, and a database. It is used to dictate and power what happens when a user interacts with a site. A visitor to your site cannot actually see the back end of the site – site managers and admins can log into the back end to edit the site’s content and/or code. Back end functionality is entirely for internal purposes for the admin.

Backlink

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours! These are important for SEO – they indicate others find your content and/or company valuable enough to share with their audience.

Backup

A saved version of your site so that if something ever happens/breaks, we can revert back to a recently saved, properly functioning, version. We backup all of our hosted sites daily so nobody has to worry.

Bandwidth

The amount of data that a website can call from a server at an amount of time. More users on your site means you will use more bandwidth than a lower-trafficked site.

Blog

A post type that can hold your thoughts, ideas, or opinions. This is pretty standard if you are trying to be a thought leader within your space.

Cache

No doubt you’ve heard the phrase, “clear your cache!” No matter which browser you use, all of them temporarily store or “cache” files (images, audio, video, stylesheet, etc.) in a folder to help a previously visited page load more quickly. The process of “clearing your cache” is telling your browser to delete these temporary files so that you see the newest version of a website. Cache is good when your website is public. It allows your visitors to have a faster-performing experience with your website.

Call to Action

A link or button which is used to accomplish a goal of the user. This is for a specific action or purpose for the user like contacting you, subscribing to a newsletter, or purchasing a product.

CMS

Content Management System – The software you use to build your site. We are constantly learning about more and more CMSs, but a few have stood the test of time with us. We really like Wordpress because of it’s flexibility and scalability, Shopify for it’s simplicity and structure, and Webflow for it’s customization and ease of use. In reality, choosing a CMS is something you need to consider before starting your project, but we’d love to help you find the best fit for you.

Color Palette

The specific colors allowed to be used on the site. Should be limited to specific colors to keep a cohesive structure to the brand.

Content

All text and visuals that are part of the user experience. It includes text, images, sounds, videos, downloadable, etc. Content is a highly important portion of your project that deserves a lot of thought and time. Don’t skimp on thinking through what you have to say and why you are saying it.

Conversion

This is all about data and metrics. Getting your visitors to do what you want them to do, whether that is to buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, register for a webinar, download a whitepaper, or fill out a lead/contact form, etc. Conversion is the close rate for your website goals.

Cookies

Like cache, “cookies” are used to store information related to the user, like IP address, login information, shopping cart history, etc. These are also stored to enhance your user’s experience, but you need to ask permission before using this data. It’s just polite…. and politics.

cPanel

cPanel is short for “control panel”. This is a platform for back end admin used by some hosting providers where you can make changes to things like DNS records, SSL as well as access your site’s files and database. Some hosting providers, like WPEngine and Flywheel have their own admin screens for managing these items.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheet – A style sheet that is cascading. This is a language and a file on your web server that determines what your website looks like. From font style, to colors and layout — CSS code is added to a stylesheet to define your website’s appearance.

CSV

Comma Separated Values – These are widely used in migrations or data transfers from one system to another. Basically they are a spreadsheet of content types from your website.

Custom Post Type

This is a batch of unique content that has the same structure of information. This is typically associated with WordPress but is used in all CMSs. The use of custom post types are to group content together and display in a templated format. There is also the ability to categorize within custom post types for filtering or sorting on the front end. These groupings are very important to how your users interact with the content on your website. Examples are blogs, whitepapers, team members, recipes, projects, products, etc.

Database

A organized format of information. This is at the base of all CMS platforms. Vital in performing migrations of websites.

Design

The phase of a project involving visual planning. A website design contains all of the visual elements you see on the site and all the non-visual components like the goals and strategy. Good design is good business. From colors and fonts to layout and user flow, design covers taking your ideas and making them into an actionable plan.

Development

The phase in a project where the rubber meets the road. It’s where we land the plane. This phase takes the design or plan of the project and builds the final product. Developers take on the difficult task of meeting all the expectations discussed throughout the project. They get it done.

DNS

DNS is like a mail organizer at your home, receiving all types of mail from all different places. Your website constantly receives all kinds of “mail” in the form of web or email traffic, among other things. Each piece of traffic comes into a specific “mailbox”. DNS simply tells that mail where to go, in the form of a DNS records. Web traffic, for example is typically controlled by an A record, whereas email is controlled by MX records. The specific IP address of these DNS records tells that traffic where to go.

Domain Name

A domain is like the physical address of your house. To get to your house, you have to know your address. For a website, this is your URL, your www, the address you put in your browser to get to your website. Domains are purchased via a registrar, like GoDaddy, NameCheap, etc.

Domain Registrar

Where you purchase your domain name. There are hundreds of domain registrars out there, but the most common ones are GoDaddy.com, NameCheap.com and NetworkSolutions.com.

E-Commerce

Electronic commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions. This is typically associated with platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. E-Commerce can refer to many different types of products like physical, subscription-based, SaaS, downloadable products, online courses, gated-content, donations, and more. This functionality takes a lot of thought and strategy before you even start a website.

Email Provider

Like website hosting, but for your email. It’s where you go to login and access your email messages. The most common providers are Google/GSuite, Outlook.com or free email through your hosting provider.

External Link

External links are links from your website to another, altogether different website. The opposite of back links.

Figma

A platform for the design phase of a project. We typically use a prototype to get you as close to the real feeling of a website before we get started on development.

Footer

The global element at the bottom of each page of your website. Typically has a minimal sitemap, social, logo, and contact info. Also can include copyright info, legal disclaimers or policies, and website credits.

Framework

This is a prebuilt system or library of parts used to develop websites or applications.

Front End

What users see and interact with from fonts to colors to content. Basically anything publically accessible.

Git

Also know as a repo, this is a place for developers to store previous versions of site files to track code progress or changes in code.

GoDaddy

We’re getting real. From the quality of their products and services to their support — GoDaddy is terrible from top to bottom. Avoid them like the plague… Actually if you have to choose, get the plague. The only thing you should ever use GoDaddy for is registering your domains, and even then, support another company because… GoDaddy sucks. Did we have to put this in our glossary? No. Do they deserve this amount of shade? Absolutely.

Google Analytics

One of the most popular digital analytics software. This free web analytics service allows you to analyze in-depth details about the visitors on your website. It provides valuable insights that can help you to shape the success strategy of your business from the number of visitors to where they live, how they accessed your site, what pages they visited, and how long they stayed on each page. We offer GA reporting on a monthly basis, but this is best served with a side of marketing strategy.

Google Search Console

Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s search traffic and performance, fix issues, and ideally help with your Google Search Results. This is different from GA in that this focuses on your site and not on your users. Search Console will send you random emails telling you ways you can improve the experience of your users. It’s kind of nice but can be annoying.

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a system that allow you to manage “tags.” The whole gist is you can receive very specific information on user metrics and activities from using tags and GTM. If you are interested in this, start small and ask us for help. It can get very complex very quickly.

Header/Hero

Used to reference items at the very top of your website. Often it is used to only reference the first section that most websites have.

Homepage

The main page a visitor navigating to your website will see. The homepage is a visitor’s first impression, so get it right. The purpose, typically, is to elevator pitch the rest of your content. It’s the traffic control page of your website, where you highlight where your users should go from there.

Hosting

Hosting is like a lot of land – it’s where your website lives on the internet. Everything inside the “lot” is your website – its design, layout & functionality. When you “migrate” a site, in essence, you’re moving out and moving in to a different house/hosting provider. Just like real estate, some hosting providers are way nicer than others.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language – What the internet really comes down to. Basically the skeleton language of the whole metaverse.

iFrame

An iFrame is an HTML element where you can load an external website inside of a page. The content/data isn’t living directly on your site but is pulled in through a “frame” to display it. A good example of this is a YouTube video embed or Google Map embed — these are iFrames used to display content that lives on another site to your website.

Information Architecture

Organizing and strategizing over what you need on your website. IA is the process of figuring out what content you actually need and where your users will find it.

Integration

This is a very broad topic on the internet in the present day. Basically, this is how a website can talk to another system. A few examples are contact forms sending entry data to an email marketing software or a sales CRM. The goal of integration is allowing your website to do useful tasks automatically.

Internal Link

An internal link is a link on your website that directs to other pages on your website! (An external link would link to another, different website.) Google likes to see these – consider adding more to improve your SEO performance!

JavaScript

A code language that enhances how your users interact with data and your website.

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation – A file type that helps you exchange data from one system to another.

Keywords

This is an SEO term for what a user types to find your website on a search engine. Example is “thai food near me”.

Landing Page

A single page created to capture leads for a specific marketing campaign. This is to measure campaign success and user conversion metrics.

Layout

A website layout is a pattern (or framework) that defines a website’s structure. It has the role of organizing the information present on a site both for the website’s owner and for users.

Maintenance

The continuous process of updating plugins, frameworks, CMSs, and other code to keep the site up and running smoothly.

Meta Description

This is an SEO term for a short summary or description of a page. Every searchable page should have a meta description as best practice.

Menu / Navigation

A collection or list of links. The most common placement of a menu is at the top of each page. This is where your main pages are listed to help your visitors get around. There are different styles of menus that are typically discussed in the design phase. The goal is always useability.

Migration

Like geese and retirees flying south for the winter, “migration” is moving data from one location to another. The purpose of migrating a site varies. You might be changing hosts, starting a project with yours truly, or maybe you are combining content from multiple sites you own. Migration is tricky. It gets complicated due to the amount of data pulled from a database and where all that data goes in the end. This is a process you should consult a professional on because it can turn sour very quickly if it’s not thought through.

MX Record

MX is the DNS record that tells the server where to send email traffic. Each email provider (like GSuite, Outlook365, etc.) has their own set of MX records. By adding the providers MX records to your DNS settings, you are letting your server know where all email traffic needs to be routed to.

Nameserver

A nameserver is a special type of server that houses all DNS records for a domain. By default, when you purchase a domain, your website is automatically assigned the nameserver of that registar. So if you’ve purchased your domain at GoDaddy but want to host your website somewhere else (which you should definitely do!), you can change the nameserver of your domain to point to your new hosting provider. You can also use a service like Cloudflare to manage your DNS settings. Simply put, the nameserver’s job is to house all DNS records for a website.

Negative Space / White Space

Empty room surrounding and in between elements on a page. This is used to give breathing room and prevent visual claustrophobia. Best to use consistently and thoughtfully.

Organic Traffic

Vistors that come to your site from search engines without the help of paid advertisements. Ideally would be the majority of your traffic.

Off-page SEO

SEO factors like backlinks and social media shares that are not from your website.

On-page SEO

SEO factors that are on your website like content, title tags, and meta descriptions.

Payment Gateways

Services to collect money online. They connect your online shop to your online bank. Without them, e-commerce would not exist.

PHP

The programming language of several CMS platforms. This is very common to be used for templates or additional custom needs on a website.

Plugin

A group of files containing functions that can be added to a website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. Remember, plugins are always created by third parties and not all are created equal. We suggest doing your research before installing a plugin from the store.

QR Code

Really the only way I could get Q on this glossary. It’s just an image that functions as a link. Kind of cool, but mainly useful to check off my letter usage.

Registrar

A registrar a bit like a landlord – it’s where go to purchase and lease your domain name. Typical registrars are GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc. You can also purchase additional services through registrars, such as hosting and email. However, you do not have to host any services through your registrar if you don’t want to. These can all be hosted elsewhere.

Responsive

Adaptability of a website to respond to the size of the screen it is being viewed on. A responsive site will render well on a variety of screen sizes using flexible layouts.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization – This is a process of enhancing your website so search engines recommend it in their search results. Free tip: If you write great content and you are using best practices while building your site, you will be rewarded by search engines. This goes hand in hand with marketing, social media, and best writing practices.

Server

A server (or web server) is like the neighborhood where you live. For a website, it’s the physical/virtual place where it resides. The main job of a web server is to display website content through storing, processing and delivering websites to users through a browser. Server space is leased through hosting providers, like WPEngine, Bluehost, Siteground, etc.

Slider

A slideshow added into a web page, often as a rotating header image either on the homepage or at the top of interior pages. Mainly sliders are a fun way to display content in a condensed way.

SSL

SSL is like the fence surrounding your home, protecting it from intruders. For a website, SSL is the technology that establishes a secure/encrypted link between a web server and a users browser. SSL ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remain private.

Theme / Template

A theme is a starting point. Themes come in all shapes and sizes and also contain different levels of functionality; from flashy animations to full eCommerce themes. Themes are a great way to jumpstart a website project.

Typography

The type or fonts that are used on your website and in your brand. Consistency is everything although there are some typefaces that really drain the vibe of a brand no matter what. If you don’t love your current website, but can’t put your finger on why. You might need to give us a call and chat through some typography updates.

Updates

Referring to WordPress and plugins. They need to be updated! Most updates keep improving plugins by adding new features, improving code quality, and keeping them secure. You should always keep your WordPress plugins up to date to ensure that those changes are applied on your site immediately. When WordPress itself has an update, it’s probably a good idea to let a developer take care of that update as it can impact everything on your site especially if the update isn’t compatible with a plugin. We manage all updates as part of our maintenance plan.

Uptime

Simply the amount of time your website is live. Ideally, it is 100% of the time!

User Experience (UX)

Literally how a visitor or user interacts with each element of your website. It is important for visitors to have a great experience or they will leave. Good UX has an understanding of what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. User experience strategizes how to understand user goals in order to achieve client goals.

User Interface (UI)

UI brings together concepts from interactive design, visual assets, and branding. User interface dictates what your website looks like to accomplish emotions and user goals.

User Journey / Flow

This is the story of your user. The plan from when they enter your site to when they achieve their goals. The user journey is crucial to understand and plan for because it will directly relate to the effectiveness of your site.

Visual Builder

This is either given to you from a CMS or a theme. Basically this allows you to edit the content of your site by seeing the edits visually. Traditionally you don’t have the option to see live updates, so visual builders are a game changer for our clients. Examples of this are Squarespace, Webflow, Wix, Elementor, Divi, Shopify, and so many more. They are great, don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Website Strategy

Deserves a much longer narrative but for a very high-level overview, a website needs a strategy to be successful. Some elements of a web strategy are: knowing your goals & objectives, understanding users, knowing the market and competitors, knowing what tools are necessary, and having good messaging. This is where a marketing team should spend some time finding the purpose of the project.

Widget/Snippet

A small block of code. You can put it in random places and it’ll look nice on the front end, but on the backend, it looks really confusing.

Wireframe

For a website, a wireframe is very similar to a blueprint for a house. They provide an overview of a website’s page structure, layout, user flow, and experience. The wireframing process allows you to see the overall user flow and how the content will be presented prior to moving into full design or development of the site.

XML Sitemap

Extensible Markup Language – A list of all the URLs on your website with some additional data for each page. This is needed for SEO to let the bots crawl all the pages on your website.

Yuppie

A young urban professional was probably involved some where along the way on your project.

Zip File

A compressed folder of a lot of other files. A great way of sending a lot of things in a single thing.

Why Are Redirects Important?

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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First, what is a redirect?

A URL Redirect (or URL Forwarding) is a technique used to redirect your domain’s visitors to a different URL. You can forward your domain name to any website or webpage. This can be used for main domains and also internal pages. 

For example, let’s say you have 3 different domains purchased: (these are fake)
ilovewebsites.co
Eyelovewebsites.site
ilovewebsites.websites

Using redirects, each of these domains can take users to the same website. You would want one main domain where the site actually lives on a host server but the others will point to it.

This same technique can be used for redirecting internal pages. This becomes pretty important if you make any significant changes to your website’s sitemap or if you launch a new site with a new sitemap and/or new content. 

For example, let’s say you are redoing your website and instead of having your About Us page and Our Team page as separate pages (website.com/about & website.com/our-team) you’ve decided to combine them. In that case, you would set up a redirect from the old our team URL to the About Us page URL (website.com/about). 

Why Are Redirects Important?

Well, your website URLs have equity with Google which leads to a certain ranking based on Google searches. If you make changes to any of your page names and their slug then Google won’t know where to find that information without you telling them with a redirect. It’s like if you move houses without setting up mail forwarding through the post-office. Imagine how much mail you won’t receive and some of it could be important like bills that need to be paid. Stop paying your bills and there are going to be consequences. In this scenario, your search rank will be negatively affected.

There are different ways to create these redirects. Using a plug-in for a Wordpress site is the easiest! If we are hosting your site then we will take care of the redirect process for you! We will just need you to make sure you point out any specific changes that need to be made that might not be obvious to us. Remember, you are more familiar with your old site’s content than us! 

If you are not hosting with us, we recommend you contact your website host and find out how they recommend taking care of this. Good luck!

 

Cookies & Cache

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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Cookies – Yum!

Let’s talk about cookies, but don’t worry, we’re not talking about the delicious kind you eat. When you visit a website, cookies are those little pieces of text that your web browser stores. They help our servers recognize your browser and give us insights into how you use our services. 

Now, some browsers give you the option to turn off cookies. But here’s the thing: we recommend keeping them active. Why? They are used to remember your website configuration (e.g., language preferences), login details, and products added to the shopping cart, even after you leave the site. Still, because cookie data is widely used to collect certain pieces of information, it can also be used for advertising processes like behavioral profiling and retargeting.

Security & Privacy

There are strict data privacy regulations to protect users from having their personal data collected without consent. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) all require websites to get permission from users before collecting or using their personal information. Cookie policies are often available on websites as a way to comply with data privacy laws (see our 2023 privacy law update).

The Future

The future of third-party cookies is uncertain. What is a third-party cookie? They allow websites to track your online activity and collect data about you. The use of third-party cookies has come under scrutiny recently as user privacy concerns have grown.

They may be phased out by browsers or continue to exist in some form. After all, millions of internet users are now using ad blockers, which block cookies and other tracking technologies. Therefore, it’s important to be prepared for a cookie-less future.

Advertisers use third-party cookies to track people across the web. This allows them to show relevant ads and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Without cookies, advertisers would have a harder time showing relevant ads and measuring their success.

Some people believe third-party cookies should be phased out because they invade people’s privacy. Others argue that they are necessary for advertising to function effectively online. It’s still unclear what will happen with third-party cookies, but it’s important to be prepared for a cookie-less future.

Cache

In addition to cookies, another important aspect to consider when it comes to website performance and user experience is cache. Not cold, hard cash money! Cache refers to temporary storage that stores website data, such as images, HTML files, and scripts, on a user’s device. When you visit a website, your browser stores certain elements in its cache, allowing subsequent visits to the same website to load faster. Faster is better, right?

The purpose of cache is to minimize the need for your browser to fetch the same data repeatedly from the website’s server. By storing commonly accessed elements locally, your browser can quickly retrieve and display the website’s content, resulting in improved page loading times and a smoother browsing experience. Score!

However, it’s worth noting that cache can sometimes cause issues, especially when website updates are made. If a website’s files are modified but your browser continues to load the cached version, you may not see the most up-to-date content. In such cases, clearing your cache can help ensure you’re viewing the latest version of a website. We always recommend clearing your cache before checking on an edit our team handled. 

To clear your cache, you can typically access the browser settings or preferences menu. Look for options related to browsing history, cookies, and cache, and follow the instructions to clear the cache for your specific browser. Keep in mind that clearing your cache will remove stored data for all websites, so you may need to re-enter login credentials or customize settings again after clearing the cache.

By understanding and managing cookies and cache, you can optimize your browsing experience. Cookies enable personalized features and functionalities, while cache speeds up website loading times. Together, they contribute to a more efficient and tailored web experience.

If you have any further questions or need assistance with cookies, cache, or any other web-related topic, feel free to reach out to us. We’re here to help you make the most out of your online journey. Happy browsing!

What Are You Paying For With GruffyGoat?

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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We get it, you’re investing hard-earned money towards a website. Especially for our smaller clients, this is a big deal. We say we’re affordable, but that means a lot of different things to a lot of people. You can always find someone cheaper, but does that make it worth it? Let’s lay it all on the table and talk about what makes GruffyGoat worth it.

What is GruffyGoat’s value? 

Well harsh question, you should check your tone. We do ask ourselves this regularly so we can stay on top of our services and better our team. Here are the main things we’ve come to:

1. ALL-IN-ONE

With the rise of do-it-yourself websites, it is important to understand the difference between building a website yourself with a simple drag-and-drop builder versus hiring a development partner. It’s easy to go to a small design studio that can make you at cookie cutter website that looks great in their portfolio, but maybe doesn’t work for your business. GruffyGoat isn’t cookie cutter. We ask questions about your goals, your growth, your workflow because we believe if you are investing money to your website, it should help you in return. Websites don’t just look pretty, they can be business solutions, so at GruffyGoat we have the whole package. Our team understands your goals to make your site presentable and functional. GruffyGoat does it all.

Did we mention we do ALL THINGS WEBSITE? That means GruffyGoat takes care of your hosting, plugin updates, CMS updates, any content changes you want, functionality additions, custom marketing integrations, workflow implementations, basically anything you want, we can take care of it for you. We are your website partner, so we don’t just make it look nice and then dip.

2. PROCESS

We’ve all been there. The meetings that could have been emails. The emails that were questions instead of answers. The answers that were too confusing to be solutions. We can all agree, projects without process are a problem. At GruffyGoat, we love processes. Frankly, it’s sometimes disturbing. Process is everything and we strategically built our process to be efficient, structured, and focused. We make thorough plans to execute a project before we start it. We aren’t going to tell you an answer until we have one. The goal is no surprises. If we’re surprised, we’ll figure it out and communicate options, but the goal is to run a tight ship. Why? Because your time is valuable. Your energy is important. GruffyGoat respects that you have other things to do beyond sit through meetings about a website that you hired us to build.

3. EXPERTS

In a world full of knowledge, it’s easy to be knowledgeable. It’s easy to know vernacular or sound right. It’s hard to put action to ideas. Our team is knowledgeable, smart, and we talk good, but we also can get it done. We are constantly learning and growing our practices to keep up with the ever-growing web space. There’s a lot out there and we want to help you cut through the noise and find the solution you need. Expert is a strong title, so we try to earn it on every project we work on. GruffyGoat knows trust is not given, it’s earned. We have a lot of people who trust us on their websites, and that’s something we pride ourselves in.

Why does this matter?

Yeah, why does this matter again? Oh yeah, you are thinking about investing money in your website to make it better. We want you to know where your investment is going. GruffyGoat is an All-in-One website partner, a Process king, and an Expert you can trust. If you still have questions about why GruffyGoat, remember A.P.E. 🦍 and that should guide you to our next project together!

Website Theme vs. Custom Development

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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Does a Theme or a Custom Website Make the Most Sense For Your Company?

The two most common approaches we use to build a website are:
1. Using a child theme or
2. Fully custom website development (this usually includes a design phase)
(There’s a bit of a spectrum here with hybrid options but for the sake of this conversation let’s assume either/or.) 

Note: just because one list below may be longer or shorter than the other, you should weigh each item appropriately for its importance to you!

Some quick context: a fully custom site means either we design or you provide designs for your website. Then we code the website fully from scratch. A theme, or child theme, means you choose from an existing structure that already has an established layout and possibly some unique design elements. When we build with a theme, we change out basic aesthetics like colors, fonts, and content to match your brand. Check out some basic pros and cons about each option and let me say now – both choices are great depending on your company’s needs and budget.

Our favorite Wordpress child-theme libraries are: 
BeSuperfly
Elegant Themes
Theme Forest
There are also themes for Shopify, HubSpot, and more!

Pros & Cons

Theme Pros:

  • Already established layouts
  • A library of sections, modules, and assets built-in
  • Easy to edit and add onto (depending on builder)
  • Easier for visual people to envision their content prior to building
  • Faster to develop
  • Less expensive (usually) – this can change dependent on add-ons like 3rd-party integrations
  • Less decision making
  • There are so many child themes out there to choose from!
  • Easier to DIY (depending on builder)

Theme Cons:

  • Limited to the existing theme layouts
  • What you see is what you get
  • Can sometimes look or feel like a “theme” and lack that custom experience

Custom Pros:

  • You are in control of the design and layouts (dependent on existing code, time, and budget)
  • You can think outside of the box with designs
  • Often easier to add on custom or 3rd party integrations
  • Websites are “lighter” and not weighed down by a bunch of code you don’t need

Custom Cons:

  • Can take longer especially if you are including design time
  • More expensive
  • Adding on later can be harder if there are not existing designs to accommodate new content (but that’s why you hire us)

It is important to understand why and how you are spending your money when investing in a new site. Ultimately, is the return on investment worth it? For many dental and other service companies, a theme site is perfect for your needs. But, if you’re a creative agency that wants to show off your mad design skills, then a custom design and build may pay off. Talk to our sales team about your needs – they can help point you in the right direction for your business! 

Hosting, Maintenance, and Support

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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Understanding Hosting, Maintenance, & Technical Support.

What you’re paying for….

 

When it comes to managing your website, there are several important aspects to consider: hosting, maintenance, and technical support. But what do these terms really mean? What are you actually paying for? In this blog post, we’ll break down the differences between hosting, maintenance, and technical support, giving you a clear understanding of the services provided. Let’s dive in!

Hosting – Your Website’s “Physical” Space

Think of hosting as the physical space your website occupies on a server, just like the lot your house is built upon. At GruffyGoat, we offer semi-private servers, which means your website shares server resources with a limited number of other websites. This ensures better performance, security, and reliability compared to hosting directly with a server provider. We prioritize keeping them safe and secure, providing you with peace of mind.

Maintenance – Keeping the Backend in Top Shape

Maintenance is like the regular cleaning and upkeep of your house, including sweeping, mopping, and dusting. Similarly, website maintenance involves ongoing backend updates to keep your site running smoothly. At GruffyGoat, our dedicated team manually updates all plugins, theme files, and other components monthly. This ensures your website remains secure, up to date, and optimized for performance.

Technical Support – Tailoring Your Site to Your Needs:

Technical support is like giving your house a fresh coat of paint, changing furniture, or even doing a total remodel. It involves making specific changes and customizations to your website, typically referred to as “front-end changes.” Whether it’s tweaking the design, adding new features, or optimizing the user experience, our technical support team is here to bring your vision to life. We work closely with you to understand your requirements and implement changes that align with your goals. These items typically come to us in the form of support requests, in other words, you actively ask for them. Maintenance is regularly scheduled, not individually requested. 

Understanding the distinctions between hosting, maintenance, and technical support is crucial for effectively managing your website and making informed decisions. Hosting provides space for your website, while maintenance ensures smooth backend operations and updates. Technical support focuses on tailoring your site to meet your unique needs and preferences. At GruffyGoat, we offer comprehensive services in all these areas, utilizing our expertise to deliver a secure, high-performing website that reflects your brand. Feel confident knowing exactly what you’re paying for and how it contributes to your online success.

9 Marketing and Website Mistakes

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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We recently partnered with a local marketing agency for an event. For our presentation, we sat down and brainstormed some of the top mistakes we regularly see our clients make when it comes to their digital marketing. Below is our list!

Mistake #1

Making your marketing all about you instead of your customer.
The world doesn’t revolve around you but every sale does revolve around your customer. Know who they are, what makes them tick, and how they make purchasing decisions.

Mistake #2

Jumping straight to advertising tactics without building your foundation & strategy #firstthingsfirst.
Know your destination and directions before you hit the road. How do you ever measure success if you don’t know the end goal, even if short-term?

Mistake #3

Waiting until your content is perfect before building your website or other marketing tool.
Websites and other {digital} tools should grow and evolve with your business. Don’t let perfection hold you back! You can edit your website every day if you want.

Mistake #4

Not making your website mobile-friendly!
Explanation: 85% of adults think that a company’s mobile website should be as good or better than their desktop website. As of August 2022, 53.74 percent of the total web visits are currently mobile, compared to 46.26 percent coming from desktops. If you are unsure if your website is mobile friendly or responsive, contact us! We can help you figure that out!

Mistake #5

Have your website built in a way you can access and own you own stuff!
What is stuff? Your domain mostly. You need to be able to access your website backend, hosting, and domain. We have seen websites held hostage before so always have admin logins! We recommend you own your company domain. There are so many tasks that cannot be managed if you do not have that access, not to mention, if it’s not renewed your website will go down and there will not be much you can do. Also, ask for training on how to make basic edits so you have the ability to handle minor edits in-house.

Mistake #6

Using your own internal jargon instead of speaking to your audience.
Take a moment to know the level of understanding and knowledge your potential audience will have. Meet them where they are at. And, remember even if you’re a B2B business with highly technical customers, the decision-makers or door-keepers may not have that level of technical understanding.

Mistake #7

Not doing your own keyword research.
There are amazing free online tools like allow you to dig into how people are finding your website. If you’re not being found by the key terms you think you are, look at your content. Are those keywords present?

Mistake #8

Investing in paid advertising before organic.
Organic first, paid later (or never). You’re 279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest than click on a banner ad. Seriously, paid advertising has its place! If you’ve maxed out your organic potential or need to diversify, look into the true value of any paid advertising before investing.

Mistake #9

Only providing statistics without telling your client’s and your story.
Statistics are great supporting proof but you still want to appeal to emotions! Purchasing decisions are often emotionally driven. How many times have you opted to buy from a local small business or a company that gives back to the community versus a big store?

Website Revisions and Edits?

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This particular blog is meant to answer the following questions:

  • What is a round of revisions?
  • What is a round of edits? (same question as above)
  • What is considered an edit for my website?

What is a revision or edit?

In short, this is a change to your website. Depending on the type of website project you have, it can be a little more complicated than that.

If you are using a theme to build your site, changes like text, images, button colors, and simple theme layout replacements are included in scope. If you want changes outside of your selected theme that are not specified by your SOW, these can incur additional costs. This means that if you want a particular section of your website to be arranged or laid out in a way that is not already built into your theme, you are asking for a custom design element which is more than likely outside of your scope of work.

Ask yourself.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when you are completing a review of website:

  • Does everything look good on desktop?
  • Does everything look good on mobile devices?
  • Have all stakeholders involved reviewed the site?
  • Double check the accuracy of your content (text and images)
  • Are all of the links going to the right place?
  • Is everything functioning and responding the way you’d like?

One of the reasons we provide a style tile at the beginning of each project is to make concrete decisions based on provided visuals for style elements like colors, fonts, button and image styles. Once you approve these elements, changing them during development can be considered out of scope because we do use these as an outline for design.

If we are producing custom designs for your website project, then you have a bit more of a broad stroke for edits. You do need to know how many rounds of changes you have per your contract. This means that if your project manager has sent you your homepage design in XD, each time you submit a list of changes, that counts as a round. We recommend you consolidate all of your feedback and submit at one time so you control your rounds. Typically you will get 2-3 per your project scope.

For design projects in XD, you can submit your edits by clicking on the pin tool (upper right) and then selecting the specific item on the design you want to comment on. Once your project is in development (for all development project types), we ask that you use the feedback tool located in the bottom right of your website. These requests go into a trackable system that allows our team to keep track of your asks and their status internally. If you email us an edit, please note that it is more likely to fall through the cracks!

Why is it important to control your revisions?

For one, we can edit websites all day every day. It is very easy to find a tweak each time you look at it. If there’s not a line indicating the end of the project, your website may never get launched. The purpose of changes, especially past the first go, is to correct anything that is wrong. Not necessarily to make tweaks. Little changes can happen at any time. You want to make sure the website represents your company and brand, that the text is free of errors, typos or placeholder text, and you want to make sure there are no bugs and it displays responsively. We don’t want you to get stuck on minor cosmetics that can be updated at any time.

It also protects the developers and their time. If you were constantly being notified of this here and that there and constantly asked to stop what you were doing to take care of some other related task, not only would it impact your productivity but also just how you feel overall about your work. We want our developers to be able to focus on their projects and give them all of their attention without constant interruption.

Thank you for understanding our policy on edits and revisions! Please contact your project manager if you have any specific questions!

The 6 W’s of Content (And Website isn’t One of Them)

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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One thing we all remember from grade school writing classes are the 5 (make that 6) W’s – Who, What, Where, When, Why and the runner-up, How. When it comes to writing your website content, the same questions apply. So let’s channel our elementary self and ask:

  • Who is my user?
  • What do they need?
  • Where are they and where are their solutions?
  • When are they successful?
  • Why would they choose me?
  • And How does my site help?

Content and strategy are very important for your website to be helpful to you. These 6 questions are a framework to keep you focused on your user’s success. Let’s dig a bit deeper on these questions to strategize a journey for your website.

Who?

We always need to focus on the user, but who is that exactly? This question seems easy to answer, but try to really get specific.

Who exactly would come to your site? Do people who have never worked with you before visit your site? Does your site serve a function for your internal team like a sales catalog? If you have an existing site, look at your analytics. Is there anyone you are unaware of who is using your site? Who do you want to use your site? This is actually a different question than who is using your site.

Now let’s put everyone in a bucket and move into the next question.

What?

What is driving your users? Everyone has needs, so what is the need of your visitors? A great practice here is to look at the buckets of people we made above and put yourself in that bucket.

Let’s say you have a bucket of people who don’t know who you are. What they need is information, right? Give them information about yourself. You might have a bucket of returning customers who want to see what is new with you. You can give them an update in a blog or a new featured product.

Boil your users down to what they need, then strategize on how to meet that need. If you want to over complicate things, here are two main need groups users have: Digital and Physical. We are going to get pretty deep on this, so stick it out and it’ll all make sense in the end…. we hope.

Digital Needs

Almost EVERY user has digital needs. Digital needs are met online through education, scheduling, exchange of goods, etc. Most, if not all, visitors need education on who you are and what you do. Some visitors might need to schedule a time to chat online or meet physically. Others might be shopping for a product and they need to exchange goods (monies) for that product. What are your digital needs of your users? Remember EVERYONE needs information/education. That is the biggest need of every user. Make that problem easy to solve.

Physical Needs

Not every user has physical needs. Physical needs are met in person and offline. If you have physical needs that you solve for your users, ask yourself if you can make their lives easier by creating digital solutions to their physical needs. For instance, maybe your user needs a service done on a physical property. You can solve part of their problem by offering an easy digital way of scheduling and communicating a solution to that physical problem. Websites are great ways to take what your users need and start working with them to solve their needs.

Easy, right? 😅 To summarize all that mumbo jumbo, know what you solve and make it easy to do. Here are the next couple of questions to keep us moving.

Where?

Where are your users and where will you solve their needs? Let’s start with where your users are. Are your users local, global, or both? Big Misconception: Local audience does not mean physical needs. Take some time and think about where your website visitors are located. Then let’s talk about where their needs are met.

Where are your visitors’ needs met? Here we are mainly talking about digital needs (because physical needs are met offline). The main idea is to make it convenient for the user to solve their problem. Educate your users from the beginning, show them how to schedule communication quickly, and make exchanging goods quick and painless. Make your website simple and easy to navigate to the solutions they need. Don’t hide your solutions.

When?

At what point is your user supposed to leave? When is your website successful to them? When are they done? Find the endpoint of your user journey and make it easy to get there and rewarding when it happens. Congratulate your user for solving their problem on your website through a confirmation message that’s fun or something personal. Go out on a high note to remind them of the successful experience they had.

Another idea here is make sure they know when they are done. Confirm their problem is solved. Automate an email saying the meeting is booked. Send a welcome notification when they successfully sign up for more information. Confirm that their order is actually on it’s way. Make it clear that they won and solved their problem. It’s like a high-hive that is left hanging otherwise. Major party foul.

Why?

Let’s zoom out a bit for this one and look in the mirror. Why you? Seems harsh, but this is a big reason why users might leave websites or don’t give business to people. Why would they choose you to solve their problems?

The answer to this is your value and what makes you different from your competition. Are you the most experienced in the land? Are you more friendly? Do you care more than most? Do you have an office dog that greets people with a shake?? Go through your Google reviews or your company mission. Do some soul-searching to figure it out. What makes you you?

Find why people want to work with you and educate your users on your value.

How?

One of these is not like the others. How do you give your users the success they need? Start with going back to the top of this article and re-read it! Like we just went through this whole thing and you are still asking questions?? Bro, how are we still talking about this?

Seriously, if you need help with understanding the goals of your content and your website, we would love to chat with you. Sometimes it’s easier to work through this with an outside person, so please schedule a meeting with us and we can point you in a good direction.

A How-To Guide to Wordpress Hosting from GruffyGoat: Part 2

by GruffyGoat Team written on
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The following article is the second in a series exploring the topic of web hosting—specifically, Wordpress hosting. These articles are designed to help you determine your needs and make the best decision about your hosting solution. 

Part 1 of the series provided a general overview of web hosting, and discussed why you need it and what makes WordPress hosting different. In Part 2 below, we’ll review the different types of hosting services and give you some guidelines for determining the best fit for you. Part 3 will offer some advice on choosing the right WordPress hosting partner.

Do You Need WordPress-specific Hosting?

In part 1, we established that you’ll need hosting for your website, but does that mean you have to find a provider who offers “WordPress hosting?”

The short answer is: No.

WordPress has pretty minimal hosting requirements: PHP version 7 or higher, MYSQL 5.6 or higher -or- MariaDB version 10.1 or greater, and HTTPS support (SSL). Most hosting companies can handle those specifications and host a WordPress site. If they can’t meet all of them, then GruffyGoat recommends not using that particular host.

What makes WordPress-dedicated hosting desirable is that it’s optimized to run WordPress sites, which means that the server script is regularly updated to ensure stability, maintain a positive user experience, and integrate the most recent versions of any plug-ins or security updates. Simply put, quality WordPress hosting makes your WordPress site better.

A lot of the performance improvement of WordPress hosting really depends on the size and scale of your website. In fact, if your site is a small project with limited functionality (such as a personal blog), then you may not need a dedicated external host at all. You can simply host your site through WordPress.com—it’s free and easy to set up an account with them.

If your WordPress website needs to support a business or organization, however, there are a number of good WordPress hosting models available. In addition to free options, the two most commonly employed models are “shared hosting” and “managed hosting,” which we’ll get into below. There are alternative models as well for specialized organizations, but the model that will work best for you will depend largely on your needs, your budget, and your capabilities.

Here’s an overview of the most common WordPress hosting options…

Free WordPress Hosting

There are many free WordPress web hosts available online, but pretty much all of them offset the hosting fee by placing ads and banners on every page of your site. Your tolerance for that will determine if this is a good fit for you. Most businesses will not want to share marketing space with other companies, especially when the content of those external ads is out of your control.

Another downside to free hosting is that, unlike a dedicated hosting provider who charges a fee and has accountability to customers, the free web host is often simply renting excess server space to you. The host might not be that concerned with server performance and security, and their long-term service may not be reliable. Free hosts can (and do) fold up shop without warning, knocking their hosted sites off the internet until the site owners can find new hosts and transfer their files over. 

GruffyGoat does not recommend using free WordPress hosting.

Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress is a popular platform, so some web hosting providers now offer managed WordPress hosting. With this model, your site not only lives on a WordPress-optimized server, but also benefits from a dedicated technical support team. 

Depending on the terms of your plan, these experienced professionals will monitor your site for performance, keep it secure and updated, maintain regular backups of the data, and even evaluate plug-in compatibility.

Managed WordPress hosting is pretty much hassle-free, which makes it ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses who can afford a higher recurring services fee but  not the operational expense of an in-house IT staff. 

Performance-wise, your managed WordPress site will typically gain…

  • Faster speeds.
  • Improved server-side caching.
  • Superior security with regular server scans and updates.
  • Test sites to preview changes before committing.
  • And a lot more, depending on the plan you select.

The chief downside to managed WordPress hosting is the cost. It is more expensive than shared hosting, with monthly service fees ranging from around $25 for a single site at the low-bandwidth usage end to $100 or more for plans with multiple domains and high bandwidth limits.
GruffyGoat recommends WPEngine for high-quality, affordable managed WordPress hosting.

WordPress VPS Hosting

An alternative to traditional WordPress hosting models, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) partitions a physical server into multiple “virtual” servers, giving you dedicated space for your site with high levels of management and security similar to what you get when you own a private server.

VPS hosting is best for medium-sized businesses with sufficient in-house IT resources to manage the technical requirements. Be advised that it takes a fair amount of technical knowledge to make a VPS solution work on your own. Managed VPS hosting is also available, which is a good option for high-need, low-capability organizations.

WordPress Dedicated Server Hosting

Another alternative hosting model involves leasing a dedicated WordPress server from the hosting provider. Best suited for Enterprise organizations and extremely high-traffic, high functionality corporate sites, a dedicated server gives you and your IT staff full control of the server and site specifications. As with other hosting solutions, there are managed dedicated server services available if you do not employ a system admin or IT staff.

Which to choose?

When selecting the right WordPress hosting solution for your site, you must weigh the options against your needs: speed, reliability, security, maintenance, and cost are just some of the factors unique to your business that should impact your decision.

That’s why evaluating your hosting needs at the beginning of the website process can better inform the design and development phases, and ultimately save you critical time and money by aligning the development of the site to your hosting solution.

If you’re a serious website owner, then free hosting is not a real option; and if you don’t have sufficient budgets and IT resources, then VPN and dedicated server hosting options are probably not for you either. Shared hosting and managed hosting plans tend to be ideal choices for most companies because they are relatively simple to engage and deploy.

The good news is that there are lots of solid, reasonably-priced providers of shared and managed WordPress hosting solutions available. The “bad” news is that you’ll still have to search for one that provides a plan that meets your requirements.

More good news, though! Part 3 of this series will cover what to look for in a reliable web hosting partner.

The following article is the second in a series exploring the topic of web hosting—specifically, Wordpress hosting. These articles are designed to help you determine your needs and make the best decision about your hosting solution. 

Part 1 of the series provided a general overview of web hosting, and discussed why you need it and what makes WordPress hosting different. In Part 2 below, we’ll review the different types of hosting services and give you some guidelines for determining the best fit for you. Part 3 will offer some advice on choosing the right WordPress hosting partner.

Do You Need WordPress-specific Hosting?

In part 1, we established that you’ll need hosting for your website, but does that mean you have to find a provider who offers “WordPress hosting?”

The short answer is: No.

WordPress has pretty minimal hosting requirements: PHP version 7 or higher, MYSQL 5.6 or higher -or- MariaDB version 10.1 or greater, and HTTPS support (SSL). Most hosting companies can handle those specifications and host a WordPress site. If they can’t meet all of them, then GruffyGoat recommends not using that particular host.

What makes WordPress-dedicated hosting desirable is that it’s optimized to run WordPress sites, which means that the server script is regularly updated to ensure stability, maintain a positive user experience, and integrate the most recent versions of any plug-ins or security updates. Simply put, quality WordPress hosting makes your WordPress site better.

A lot of the performance improvement of WordPress hosting really depends on the size and scale of your website. In fact, if your site is a small project with limited functionality (such as a personal blog), then you may not need a dedicated external host at all. You can simply host your site through WordPress.com—it’s free and easy to set up an account with them.

If your WordPress website needs to support a business or organization, however, there are a number of good WordPress hosting models available. In addition to free options, the two most commonly employed models are “shared hosting” and “managed hosting,” which we’ll get into below. There are alternative models as well for specialized organizations, but the model that will work best for you will depend largely on your needs, your budget, and your capabilities.

Here’s an overview of the most common WordPress hosting options…

Free WordPress Hosting

There are many free WordPress web hosts available online, but pretty much all of them offset the hosting fee by placing ads and banners on every page of your site. Your tolerance for that will determine if this is a good fit for you. Most businesses will not want to share marketing space with other companies, especially when the content of those external ads is out of your control.

Another downside to free hosting is that, unlike a dedicated hosting provider who charges a fee and has accountability to customers, the free web host is often simply renting excess server space to you. The host might not be that concerned with server performance and security, and their long-term service may not be reliable. Free hosts can (and do) fold up shop without warning, knocking their hosted sites off the internet until the site owners can find new hosts and transfer their files over. 

GruffyGoat does not recommend using free WordPress hosting.

Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress is a popular platform, so some web hosting providers now offer managed WordPress hosting. With this model, your site not only lives on a WordPress-optimized server, but also benefits from a dedicated technical support team. 

Depending on the terms of your plan, these experienced professionals will monitor your site for performance, keep it secure and updated, maintain regular backups of the data, and even evaluate plug-in compatibility.

Managed WordPress hosting is pretty much hassle-free, which makes it ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses who can afford a higher recurring services fee but  not the operational expense of an in-house IT staff. 

Performance-wise, your managed WordPress site will typically gain…

  • Faster speeds.
  • Improved server-side caching.
  • Superior security with regular server scans and updates.
  • Test sites to preview changes before committing.
  • And a lot more, depending on the plan you select.

The chief downside to managed WordPress hosting is the cost. It is more expensive than shared hosting, with monthly service fees ranging from around $25 for a single site at the low-bandwidth usage end to $100 or more for plans with multiple domains and high bandwidth limits.
GruffyGoat recommends WPEngine for high-quality, affordable managed WordPress hosting.

WordPress VPS Hosting

An alternative to traditional WordPress hosting models, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) partitions a physical server into multiple “virtual” servers, giving you dedicated space for your site with high levels of management and security similar to what you get when you own a private server.

VPS hosting is best for medium-sized businesses with sufficient in-house IT resources to manage the technical requirements. Be advised that it takes a fair amount of technical knowledge to make a VPS solution work on your own. Managed VPS hosting is also available, which is a good option for high-need, low-capability organizations.

WordPress Dedicated Server Hosting

Another alternative hosting model involves leasing a dedicated WordPress server from the hosting provider. Best suited for Enterprise organizations and extremely high-traffic, high functionality corporate sites, a dedicated server gives you and your IT staff full control of the server and site specifications. As with other hosting solutions, there are managed dedicated server services available if you do not employ a system admin or IT staff.

Which to choose?

When selecting the right WordPress hosting solution for your site, you must weigh the options against your needs: speed, reliability, security, maintenance, and cost are just some of the factors unique to your business that should impact your decision.

That’s why evaluating your hosting needs at the beginning of the website process can better inform the design and development phases, and ultimately save you critical time and money by aligning the development of the site to your hosting solution.

If you’re a serious website owner, then free hosting is not a real option; and if you don’t have sufficient budgets and IT resources, then VPN and dedicated server hosting options are probably not for you either. Shared hosting and managed hosting plans tend to be ideal choices for most companies because they are relatively simple to engage and deploy.

The good news is that there are lots of solid, reasonably-priced providers of shared and managed WordPress hosting solutions available. The “bad” news is that you’ll still have to search for one that provides a plan that meets your requirements.

More good news, though! Part 3 of this series will cover what to look for in a reliable web hosting partner.