The design and development phases of your website project are only two-thirds of the process. The third major component you’ll need to launch your site to the Internet is a web host. Most organizations don’t have the IT resources and dedicated servers to host a site themselves, so they opt to partner with a third-party company that provides hosting services.

But what does a web host do, and how do you go about finding one to fit your website’s goals?

There are several important factors to consider as you move forward, which will impact both how your site functions and how it is maintained over the long-term. This article is the first in a series that will explore the topic of web hosting—specifically, Wordpress hosting—and help you make some decisions about your hosting needs.

Part 1 of the series, which follows below, is an overview of web hosting: What is it? Why do you need it? What is WordPress Hosting? Part 2 will look at the different types of hosting services and give you some guidelines for determining which type best suits your specific needs. Part 3 will explain how to find a good web host and give you some tips on what to look for in a reliable hosting service.

What Is Web Hosting?

In the simplest terms, a web host provides the technology and services needed for a website to be “live” on the Internet—that is, visible and usable by your intended audience.

Websites are hosted on specialized computer servers, where the software files that make up your site are stored and connected to the Internet. Each hosting server has a specific “address,” a series of numbers, letters, and symbols known in technical terms as the Uniform Resource Locater (URL), but which most people recognize as a site’s “www-dot” or “http” address.

When web users type your site’s URL into the address bar of their Internet browser, they go to the server address where your site is hosted and can then access your files, which display on their screens as your website’s design, navigation, and functionality features.

Why Does a Website Need to Be Hosted?

Larger companies can sometimes afford the infrastructure and staff needed to run a web server, but most don’t or can’t do it themselves. Without someone hosting your website, however, it doesn’t actually exist.

At the beginning of a website project, a lot of attention is paid to the site’s design and development. Hosting is often thought of as a “we’ll deal with that later” decision. As a result, some of the factors that might inform the design and development phases are overlooked. Factors like:

• How will your site’s underlying software be updated?
• How will your site be optimized for search engine ranking?
• What sort of bandwidth usage requirements will your site have?
• What are your requirements for transmitting and securing site data?
• How will your site’s content be refreshed?
• How will your website needs (and costs) scale as your business grows?

If your website’s designers and developers know the answers to these questions, then they can provide better guidance as to how the site is built and interacted with by visitors. If your project partners don’t bring the topic up, then you should start the conversation, because the decisions you make are important to your site’s ultimate success.

Choosing the right web hosting partner for your needs can improve your site’s search engine rankings, increase sales, generate more contacts with your audience, and help secure your site against malware, hackers, and outages. You also want a stable and professional hosting partner because, unlike the design and development phases which mostly end once the site goes live, the web hosting phase continues for your site’s entire lifespan. Once hosting ends, the site is no longer accessible on the Internet.

What Is WordPress Hosting?

Your GruffyGoat website is built in WordPress, which is a fairly simple programming script compatible with most web hosting companies. We recommend partnering with a web host provider who specifically offers WordPress hosting, which is optimized to WordPress’ high performance and security standards. A WordPress web host also typically offers one-click installs of the software, and many providers will automatically update your WordPress software as new versions are released.

There are a variety of WordPress hosting models, but the two most commonly employed are “shared hosting” and “managed hosting.” In a nutshell, shared hosting involves putting your website on a secure server alongside many other websites, who all share the server’s resources and connections. Your site’s speed and performance will vary by provider, as will your level of participation in operating and maintaining the site.

Managed hosting services are similar to shared hosting, but the hosting provider handles all of the back-end maintenance, including software and hardware updates, data backups, antivirus and malware protection, as well as a variety of physical and virtual security features. Your site’s speed and performance are typically better with a managed hosting solution.

Ultimately, the model of WordPress hosting that will work best for you depends on your organization’s requirements—including budgetary needs—as well as your tolerance for performing the maintenance tasks of a live WordPress site.

Now that we’ve established some of the basics, we’ll get more into the WordPress hosting models in Part 2 of this series, and give you guidance on how each model addresses specific goals. Ideally, this will help you have a productive conversation with your site developers about your hosting needs.

If you have questions about WordPress websites and hosting services, then contact the GruffyGoat team. We’ll be happy to talk with you about your needs.

It’s a reasonable question. There are lots of tools out there—some are even free—that let enterprising companies and individuals build and manage sites with sophisticated functionality options. There are also many premade, easy-to-use design templates available online to drop all your content into. Even hosting can be a simple online transaction with no real expertise needed to attain.

So why would you ever hire a professional web developer to do it for you?

Probably for the same reason that, despite the proliferation of big-box home improvement stores and YouTube how-to videos, people still hire contractors—plumbers, electricians, carpenters—to do even simple home projects. 

Instead of trying to do it themselves, many folks would rather pay someone who knows what they’re doing, to enjoy professional results in a fraction of the time, without the headaches and frustrations involved in a specific project.

Even if you have the competency to learn how to use all the “free” development tools out there, the time and effort you will expend to learn how to do everything isn’t free at all. If it were, there would be no such thing as professional web developers.

A professional firm like GruffyGoat is comprised of people who have dedicated their educations and careers to understanding how all of this works, and they’ve learned the best practices to design and develop websites efficiently and affordably.

What might take an amateur web developer hours or even days to fix or update, our team can often do in a matter of minutes. We do it all day, every day, and we’re really good at it.

So when you’re considering trying to build your website yourself, ask yourself an important question first: “What is my time worth?”

If you have other, more pressing things that need your attention—such as growing your business—then your best option is to partner with professionals like GruffyGoat. We can save you and your organization valuable time, money, and effort, and you get to achieve amazing results!

If you’re in the business of providing website design and development services, at some point, the need to hire one or more full-time developers will become critical to your sustained growth. The question for you, at that point, becomes: “Do I hire employees in-house, use third-party contractors, or partner with a development firm that can provide a range of scalable back-end services?”

The answers to all three questions involve some sort of cost to your company, and whichever answer appeals to you most is likely to be directly related to the cost burden your company can support.

Hiring someone in-house understandably involves all the costs of onboarding and maintaining a full-time employee. Those expenses then multiply as your staff grows over time. The chief advantages of an in-house developer for you are their responsiveness to internal circumstances as they change, as well as a strong level of management oversight on the employee’s work. One major disadvantage is that as experienced personnel leaves your organization, they take their accumulated knowledge with them, which can take time to replace and get back up to speed.

Third-party contractors can be an affordable, flexible alternative to hiring an employee. However, the lack of control over a contractor’s production schedule could affect delivery schedules. Most third-party developers are individuals who are subject to the regular interruptions and delays of life. As a result, if your solo contractor goes down for any reason (illness, family emergency, internet outage, etc.), your entire development schedule can suddenly grind to a halt.

An ideal solution—and one that is more affordable than many business owners may realize—is to partner with a highly-trained team of back-end developers and support personnel who can not only help you outsource all your needs but also scale with your business as it grows—a team like GruffyGoat. We work with WordPress, Shopify, HubSpot, WebFlow, just to name a few. 

You can hire us on an “as-needed” basis, or as an ongoing service and support partner for an extended period of time. Our experts can cover any aspect of a Wordpress site—from building the architecture and providing hosting and maintenance, to offering full technical support and management of customer requests and changes. We can even provide supplemental design and content services if needed.

You get all the business benefits of a full-service, in-house development team, all without having to pay expensive salaries and benefits, without having to manage your developers taking time off or calling in sick, and without having your CTO leave for four months to go surf when you need them the most. Even if you already have in-house developers, we can supplement your internal capabilities by helping manage overflow tasks as you grow!

We work behind the scenes to support your business and keep operations running smoothly. We can be as visible or invisible to your clients as you wish, and you can even repackage our services under your own branding.  Best of all, you can focus on landing more website projects and growing your business and worry far less about how you’re going to deliver your next Wordpress project on-time and on-budget.

Whether you need front-end assistance with simple, theme-based marketing sites, or you need a “full-stack” developer to build high-end, integrated sites with complex functionality, why hire a full-time employee when you can partner with a team of professionals who cost less and can do more?

If you’re asking yourself, “Should I hire an in-house developer?”, then the answer is, “No…you should hire GruffyGoat!”

So we all know about the great stressors of life: getting married, having kids, moving… these cause us to get stressed, not because they are bad, but because they all take an unimaginable amount of work. You have to clean up, get organized, declutter, spend unplanned amounts of money, make hard on-the-spot decisions, plan for years down the road but also keep your daily duties under control. It’s absolute chaos for months.

So how do we combat the craziness of these stressors? It comes down to good ole fashioned preparedness. It takes months of boxing up your attic, trash bag after trash bag, dusting, repainting, overall hard work. There is no better solution than effort. Working consistently for an appropriate amount of time before the project helps everything to flow smoothly and easily.

This is no different with a website. There are tons of issues that can cause stress during a build. There are things you, as a business owner, have no reason to worry about, but you will still worry about them. There are decisions that you will have to think about that you have never considered before. This is uncharted territory. Territory with wallet-ravaging monsters who want to leave you deserted and helpless (more or less). Websites seem harmless. YouTube ads make them seem so easy, almost too easy to be true. But listen. If you get a month into a web build, you will be feeling some sort of stress.

This post is a resource to help business owners be prepared. Take as much as you want. Some of this might not apply to your scenario, but some of it will.

1. Content

This is a killer for some people. If you don’t like to write, you should find someone who does. Websites are made up of words and images (yeah, super simplified). If you don’t have any words that you think can represent your company, you need to get someone to write for you. As a general practice, each page of a website should have anywhere from 300-500 words on it. You should also include relevant original content. If your website’s copy doesn’t benefit visitors with good information, your visitors will leave.

There are tons of people who are great at writing website content. You can find freelancers that are expensive but will do an incredible job, or you can let someone within your company do it. You are going to get out what you put in.

If you enter a web build with content in hand, that means your designer and developer can start sketching out your site after the first meeting. If you don’t have content when you come in to get started, be prepared to spend time working on it before you get into the fun stuff – design.

2. Images

This is a form of content but needs to be talked about separately. Photography is a huge element online. This not only affects the style of your site, but also the usability. Thankfully, there are tons of options when it comes to imagery.

If you have no budgetary constraints, design is limitless (mostly) if you have a limitless budget. Custom illustrations and professional photography are a dream for a designer to work with and can make your site look awesome.

For the rest of us though, the options usually consist of stock vs. real photography. I know this is a trigger for some designers out there, but there isn’t much of a difference. Whichever option you as the client choose, keep it consistent. If you use stock, use all stock. It is hard to make sure the quality of your own photos are edited as well as the professional photos. If the quality is inconsistent even the untrained eye can tell. We like using stock photography because it saves time and money for our clients in the end. There are great free stock photo sites like pixabay.com and unsplash.com but istock.com and other paid sites will have many more options and often better quality.

Warning to all clients: if you use real photography, this means you are responsible for taking or paying someone to take real photos of real employees around your real facility. This is a lot of work between cleaning your workspace, scheduling a photoshoot day, and finding a reliable photographer. Just be warned. This option also requires an extra week or so for your photographer to edit and prepare the photos they took. All this time adds up.

If you have all of your imagery in hand at the beginning of the project, you will be cutting the length of the project tremendously. Just make sure your images are the appropriate size and file type for the web (i.e. full screen images are usually about 2000 pixels wide). Services like tinypng.com can help you optimize your images for web.

3. Products

E-Commerce is a big deal with websites now. Online stores are everywhere. There are many benefits that can come from an online store, but there is just as much work to think about while building it.

Here are some things that we suggest you do before starting your online store.

• Get your products organized.
• Categorize them into groups.
• Name them appropriately.
• Set your prices.
• Assign product SKU#s.
• Photograph your products.
• Create a payment option account (we love Stripe).
• Choose your shipping options.

This is not an exhaustive list. There are lots of decisions that need to be made on this front, but one serious warning and suggestion to come with this. Discuss your shop primarily with your developers. The reason for this caution is, you as a business owner have great aspirations and lofty dreams for your ideal site. In your mind, everything you think of will work. The reality is, you are getting the site you are paying for. If you have a lower budget, your shop will need to be minimal. Talk to your developer to make sure what you are planning is within your project’s scope or even possible.

Structuring your shop before a project helps, but the hardest battle is not setting your expectations higher than your developer’s abilities or budget.

4. Committees

This tip is not like the others. This is not an item for your site, yet it is equally if not more important than finishing your project efficiently and with little to no hassle.

There are sayings such as: “Too many cooks spoil the soup” and “A camel is a horse designed by a committee.” These are both so true for websites. Too many opinions on design and development kill a project. Everyone is a critic.

We like when clients have one person as the leader and point man for communication. This allows for profitable conversations and constructive criticism throughout the project. There are definitely times for larger scale feedback, but we find that the length of a project is related to the number of people who are needed to approve a decision.

If you are starting a website build, think about whether or not certain people or even departments within your company should have a say in a decision. You want to be efficient with your time and your money, so don’t let personal opinions hinder your goals.

Before you start panicking about all the work to be done, know that this is a great step for your business. A website is a sign of legitimacy today. You are about to be a higher functioning business because of the project you are working on. This is a great thing. Also, know that web designers and developers are on your side. They want you to succeed and do well. We are all on the same team. We are professionals that are working to help you reach your goals.

There are a ton of other things not in this post that you will need to consider before beginning your project, but these are really big ones. This post is just to get you to think about the work ahead, but also think about who your team is. We at GruffyGoat are a full-service web studio which means we do it all for you. If you are interested in learning more about us, follow the links below and follow us. We would love to help with your next project.

One of my teammates sent us this article for tips on blogging. It was a great read for bloggers but as I was reading there were several items on the list that I felt applied to building websites.

A website is often the first impression for your business so it is important to understand who will see it, why they are looking at it, and also what you want them to do with it. You can have a beautiful design but if you don’t think through its use from a deeper level, your website will not function as a tool for your business. Ultimately, you need a strategy that encompasses all of these things and more… (see #13 on the link above). Why do you need a website and how does it work within your entire business toolkit?

Thanks to Dreamhost for this content that I am unashamedly borrowing – you get all the credit. Let’s pull out some of the more significant items on the list.

Who is your audience?

This is important for any business, website or not. It is a foundational piece of your marketing and sales which are necessary for growth. Know who you are selling to and talk specifically to them. This goes for your website, your pitches, and even how you answer your phone.

What value are you offering?

This goes back to knowing your audience and customer. If you understand who you are talking to you can directly appeal to them by clearly communicating the value you bring to their life. This information should be on your homepage. Make it clear and hard to miss!

What credibility do you have?

There are a few ways your website offers your business credibility. In some ways, just having one is the first step! Professional design and images are another way to make people understand you are legit. Offering testimonials and client logos are great to immediately illustrate credibility. We often recommend having these as a small section on your homepage.

What is your call to action?

This goes back to knowing what you want your client to do while on your site or what their next step is. Do you want them to contact you directly? Fill out a form? Buy something? Determine your call to action(s) and make it very easy for a visitor to follow through.

Think mobile

People will visit your website on their mobile device before and more often than your desktop, especially B to C sites. (See this study.) It is important to understand how interactions change on those handheld devices. Some things just don’t translate well. We design and build websites with a “mobile first” mindset, knowing that is how most people will interact with each site.

Invest in professional equipment.

I would be remiss in not stating that your website will benefit tremendously by hiring professionals, from the photography to the copy to the design and code. More than likely you are not an expert at all of the necessary elements to building a strong site so if you can, hire help. There are certainly ways to minimize the financial investment and we make sure that we work with our clients within their means and make recommendations to be budget-friendly. Not sure what this means, contact us.

It doesn’t take long in a conversation to realize that people don’t know a ton about WordPress or theme-based web design. The average person gets a particular look in their eyes when you start using words like “CMS,” “web-builder,” or “child-themes.” We get it, not everyone is a web developer. So through working with a variety of clients who vary in “tech-fluency,” we have found ways of explaining important terms that might be foreign or misunderstood.

There are 3 buzzwords that we are going to walk through in this article. We will move from broadest to most specific in order to explain their relationship. The comparison that we use most often is building a house, so hopefully, this analogy will help your understanding.

To start us off, WordPress. It makes up over 30% of all the internet according to a technology survey by W3Techs in 2018 (a 5% increase since the end of 2015). It is the most used CMS (content management system) globally. We at GruffyGoat only use WordPress. We do this for many reasons, such as reliability, familiarity, sustainability, and functionality. The other options are custom coding, Squarespace, Weebly, Shopify, Drupal, etc. WordPress is like a plot of land when building a house. You can find a plot of land that has certain amenities and features that aren’t found anywhere else, but ultimately you want to build a house on that land. WordPress has familiar amenities like an easy media library, a native blog, an ecosystem of free plugins that allow for very complex functions. There is a lot to love about the overall structure of WordPress, but it’s just the lot where you build your house.

To build your house you need a contractor and an architect. Someone to show you what your structural options are and how things could look and work in your new house. Websites are no different. Enter themes. Themes are just ways to build your house. Some themes are very open to customization and can do pretty much anything you want, but have higher price tags (very similar to actual contractors and architects ????). Themes that are less expensive usually have less design and functionality options. At GruffyGoat we use a theme called Divi. This is an Elegant Themes builder (S/O to Elegant Themes…send the check!) that allows for fully custom design. There is very little that Divi cannot accomplish. Divi is to web development, what Joanna Gaines is to a house. We love Divi because of the custom design abilities, the easy-to-use visual builder, and the functionality/versatility of the modules.

Here is where some confusion can come in with the analogy and the breakdown of our terms. Remember, a theme is a builder. The construction or development of the site happens with the theme you choose. Some themes, however, don’t have our final vocabulary word (child-themes). When building with these themes, you are given minimal options for customization so your final site looks exactly like the other sites built with that theme. Similar to how some contractors build houses in massive subdivisions. The contractor has one blueprint and his job is to build that exact house over and over again with little variation other than siding and door color. This results in a nice new affordable home that is aesthetically identical to all of its neighbors.

Finally, this is where the child-theme steps in. A child-theme, sometimes called a template, is where the builder of your house lets you choose the floorplan, pick paint swatches, customize your cabinets and countertops, and choose your light fixtures. This will separate your house from all the others on your street built with the same contractor. Child-themes only come with certain themes, as mentioned above. Templates are pre-built sites that have set typography, layouts, and smaller functional parts (i.e. contact forms, email opt-ins, menus, etc.) which are stylized together. They allow you to pick which sections you like from a builder and use them to form a completely designed website. The typical child-theme comes with premade layouts that can work for multiple types of content and pages. They also come with individual sections, like header, contact form, testimonials, etc. that are styled and easy to insert anywhere.

The benefit of using a child-theme is simple. The child-theme site is already styled cohesively with all the functional pieces completely developed, so building the site will be faster and more efficient.

We have friends that specialize in making child-themes for Divi. If you are still a little confused about the differences between themes and child-themes, you should check out BeSuperfly.com. They use Divi Theme builder, but the final products are all so different. There is a ton of variety in Divi which allows for a multitude of unique Divi child-themes.

If you have a question about where to start on your new website, check out some of our other articles or contact us. We would love to work with you on your next project.