Do you have your website and looking for the best website hosting out there? Let me tell you where self-publishers should host their website.
Having a website requires several decisions you're going to need to make. That's one of the reasons why we're going to discuss today's topic, Where Self-Publishers Should Host Their Websites?
Now, I can tell you from my own experience, I've been hosting my websites for several years on WPX and there are several good reasons I've chosen them as my main supplier. I'm an affiliate of theirs as well.
I originally tried all sorts of websites including Bluehost and some others. But WPX in particular stands out for several key reasons. One of the big ones that got me there in the first place was the fast loading time.
WPX hosting uses cutting-edge technology to ensure that your website loads quickly. It can improve your user experience and SEO rankings. And for me, it's the SEO rankings that mattered the most.
So, what I want is when people are on Google and they type in certain keywords and then one of my blogs shows up in the listing, I need to ensure when they click on that link it's going to load very fast. If it loads at all slowly for more than three seconds, most people will bounce.
They're just going to leave that page that they came to. Because they're just not willing to wait for the rest of it to load. So, it is incredibly important that I get the speed as fast as humanly possible when they get onto your website.
It’s one of the things to remember with your website, it's one of the few things you control. There are two main things you control in your business, and one of them is your website. Hopefully, you're using a WordPress website so it makes it very easy to use plugins and other things to make sure that it's fully working.
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But you own all of that, so even if the people who host it were to go down, you can move your website to a different location, with no problem at all. The second thing you own is your email list, these are the two big you own. Now, you may also own the ip2 if you have books for example, as an author you're going to have that.
You need to have a website so that if YouTube disappeared or these other sites disappear, you can even sell your book on your website. So, you want to start building up that traffic as an author as early as possible. Let's make sure that you're hosting it through something that's going to go very fast.
The second thing is it gives you free website migration. So, WPX hosting provides free website migration, making it easy to switch from another hosting provider. Sometimes, this comes at a fee.
It can be a substantial fee to move all of your previous WordPress site information over to the new location. They will take care of all of that for you and free. For me, it was fantastic, I was on Bluehost and they pulled me right over with not just the one website.
Provides A Secure Hosting
I have two websites that had moved over and a whole series of domains that I have bought over the years. The next thing is they have high-quality customer support. Now, I'm telling you, of everything I'm going to tell you, this is the main reason I like WPX.
Their reply time was within 20 seconds of your thing. Sometimes, it's as low as 10 seconds. You type in the chat your problem and there's somebody there within 10 to 20 seconds already looking it up and able to give you answers.
These people are not just hired and don't know anything about it. No, they know exactly which problems you have, and they can tell you how to fix them. They can look to see it, they're able to talk you through it no matter whether you're a technical person or not.
They take the time necessary to explain and I have never in my life for any other company experience tech service in customer support at the same level that WPX manages to deliver it.
The next thing is secure hosting, WPX hosting. It takes security seriously with Advanced DDOS protection and that's where they're trying to make it. So that they're hitting your website with so much traffic that it would take it down. They also do daily malware scanning.
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I had one of the authors inside of my Group Coaching and 1-On-1 Program who specifically had an issue recently with their website being attacked and having spam or scam malware loaded onto their site. But they were checking it daily when I transferred my data from Bluehost over to WPX.
They immediately said we're finding some malware on your site. Now, fortunately, they weren't stealing information from me or anything like that. But they detected things that Bluehost wasn't even detecting.
I appreciate that because if you're reading the news, hosts, and sites are getting attacked and hacked all the time. So, you need to make sure you are protecting your site from getting hacked.
The next thing is easy to use control panel. They don't use the standard C panel that's used on many other sites. They have their own set of control panels and they're really easy to use. Some things are a little harder to figure out sometimes.
But like I told you, if you combine this with the customer support, it's 10 to 15 seconds and they're going to have somebody who's going to be able to tell you exactly where you need to click. Usually, they'll even have screenshots they're sharing with you.
They don't send you some manual or you have to talk to a chatbot that doesn't know any answers to any of your questions. Rather, you're going to be able to do it with an actual human. It can tell you what to do.
But for the most part, their menus make sense. I'm old school, I remember using the C panel a lot and so I was able to navigate it. But clearly, theirs is superior if you're first getting started and not as tech-savvy.
Get Everything You Need In A Single Hosting
The next one is the multiple data centers and this is a important one. They have data centers across the globe. What that means is they're able to cache up your website, this is probably what they're best at.
How they get your website to go fast is by caching everything up. That means they're taking copies of your website and sticking it around the globe at these different locations. When a user comes to the website especially if they've been there more than once, it already knows what to serve.
So the loading speed is incredibly fast regardless of anything else. The website's already cached up and it looks for a data center that is as close to your target readers as possible. So when they type in these certain words in Google or other places up comes your website fast for them.
It doesn't matter where in the world they are because it's in so many areas. I also went away from Cloudflare which I had been using to speed up my website. Because it didn't make much of a difference when we already had a server on WPX. It is free. To ensure that I had the best caching possible or globally with these different data centers that they have.
The next one is your hand, which means they're going to provide all of the SSL certificates, the unlimited free SSL certificates you're going to need for your websites so that they are fully secure.
If it's not SSL, it's going to have a warning on your website which is going to cost your target readers to move away when they come to your website whether they consider it maybe it's not that safe.
The next one is scalability because WPX hosting provides flexible plans that can accommodate your needs based on your growth as you do it. Now, I have two main websites going and I have a bunch of domains that are registered against WPX. I don't have much of a need to expand beyond that at this time.
Mostly for authors, it's not so important to have scalability. You know, we're not having millions and millions of people visiting but getting the thousands and thousands, that's very reasonable.
The other one I appreciate is the money-back guarantee, they have a full 30-day money-back guarantee allowing you just to try out their services. If you don't like what's happening, you can always go back to your other provider. You are not stuck with WPX if you don't want to go with it.
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So, as we look at these different issues together where we got the extra speed that you're going to get because of the caching in the data centers, you have the customer support and easy menu system that they have. And if you look at the security where they're checking daily, they have the free SSL certificates they're willing to migrate your site for free.
All of these benefits make it a no-brainer for an author who's looking to set up their website and trying to find the right hosting platform. I am an affiliate of them and I stand behind them like I do anything that I vouch for, these other ones that I use and have used over time.
I tell you my personal opinion on why this one is something you should consider. At least click on the link and see what they have to offer you. Also, check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.