Exploring the CMS – Hosting Platform Connection
Sorting out the hosting of your website is often looked at as quite a laborious task when you first set up your online web presence, but it is an extremely important one nonetheless. If you don’t pay attention when you first set up your hosting, you could end up in a situation where you site is slow, unresponsive, or even worse, at times offline. All good buildings rely heavily on the foundations they are built on, and it is worth looking at your hosting company as just that, your online foundations.
If you are lucky enough to have randomly chosen a good web host, or spent enough time researching the subject, you will most likely never know the frustrations associated with having a patchy or total loss of service, and congratulations to you if you fall into that group! If however you fall into the other group of people who have experienced no end of issues keeping their website running smoothly, it may be worth looking into whether you should be hosting your website elsewhere.
Managing the Content
Another facet of running a website smoothly is your content management system, or CMS. This is basically the portal through which you build and manage your website. The two big names in the world of CMS at the moment are WordPress and Joomla. While WordPress may be the better known of the two systems, Joomla has a robust following, including some huge names in the business world (for example ww.nintendo.se), and is generally preferred if you are looking to create a website that doesn’t simply resemble a blog. While it is possible to create interesting and unique websites within WordPress, Joomla is king of this domain; so if you are looking to create something ‘a bit special’ on your site, it’s in your interest to check out Joomla and what it can offer.
Not only is Joomla the more customizable choice of CMS, it also has great SEO options built in. For any novices out there, SEO stands for search engine optimization, and this is what enables your website to be found in a search engine such as Google. It is widely regarded that if your website doesn’t show up on the first page of a Google search, it doesn’t exist at all. While this statement shouldn’t be taken literally, it should still be taken seriously, and SEO is the key to making sure your brand is easily accessible to anyone searching for it online. Most CMS providers offer this, but Joomla has made some amazing changes in the last five years than now place them above the likes of WordPress when it comes to getting seen on the world wide web.
Choose Your Host Wisely
If you are curious about using Joomla for a new or current venture, it is highly recommended that you select a host that is geographically close to the area you are serving. If you live in the UK for example, getting a UK Joomla host means support will also be location-specific, and will answer in a timely fashion. Web pages servicing locals should also load quicker than if they were hosted in another country. It is also important to check that the hosting packages meet or exceed Joomla’s minimum system requirements. You can also forget about bandwidth worries with unlimited monthly traffic and data, and for the new Joomla users out there a one-click install package takes the hard work out of your hands when using Joomla-specific hosting with your Joomla-based website. These hosts also give the consumer the power to tailor their back end servers with as much, or as little power as you need. In regard to scale – If you are hosting a local business site with minimal traffic then there is a package that would fit the level of investment you are taking on.
Alternatively, if you are looking to build the next big web phenomenon, then there are also packages that will supply the power you need. To sum it up – using such service, you would have the recipe for a very reliable, fast, and helpful service that is easy to scale up and down depending on your demand.
So whether you are a current or future Joomla customer, and do a lot of your business in the UK, find a platform-specific hosting solution and see how it could enable your site to flourish with little to no extra work on your side. If you are an unhappy customer of a less than impressive web host, transferring your hosting is a simple process, and even if you wish to move to Joomla from another CMS, there are plenty of tools available (see CMS2CMS) to help you do this with minimal fuss. So if your online foundations aren’t quite as stable as you would like, or your CMS is driving you crazy, it might be time to look at a new combination that simply, works!
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