Managed Wordpress hosting and design
Hi, a small organization I'm on the board of is looking for managed Wordpress hosting. We've got a budget but no in-house time to keep everything security patched. We are looking for a well-established, competent, reliable and responsive service provider. We want to be able to update text/blog entries/calendar ourselves, but are happy to hand off plugin management and the like.
Separately, I'm also looking for recommendations for a designer who can do Wordpress templates (sorry if I should have created separate discussions for each of these). Quality counts. We're not looking to go super-lowend and end up with something amateur.
If you've got recommendations from your own experience, I'd love to hear them!
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@armandorg
Oh, he is not yet here.
UpCloud free $25 through this aff link - Akamai, DigitalOcean and Vultr alternative, multiple location, IPv6.
Wordpress.com would be the obvious answer - they'll take care of the security & hosting of it for a monthly fee
https://wordpress.com/pricing/
Totally recommended!
What location are you looking for?
Organization has members globally. US or western Europe preferred.
VPS + Runcloud. Should set you back by @ $ 10-12/month https://runcloud.io/pricing. I had tired the free trial of Runcloud- and it was awesome. Based on recommendation by WP admins/ developers in a FB group, signed up for Gridpane instead. The (downside) requirement is- they both need a KVM VPS with Ubuntu 18.04. 2 G RAM recommended.
In the same group, many swear by (and other swear at!) cloudways and WPXHosting.
For templates look at Brizy Cloud. They also have a WP plan, awesome templates. I am absolutely loving it. Had posted link to the template in a different thread. This is static html, though they have a static to WP plugin also. Hosted on MRVM Singapore 128 MB NAT. Or another one, on Gullo's 2 Dolla Web plan - BF Deal. Both need lots of work of course.
Finally, take a look at Truly WP https://appsumo.com/trulywp/ - their $ 69/year plan for 1 site hosting is something you can consider. I dislike their "referral bonus" model. Kind of shady. For templates alone, there is a separate discussion on WP templates/ pagebuilders- I'm sure you have looked at it :-)
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Maybe Shared Hosting could do the trick? Better than having to manage a vps of you never have before. Have a look at BuyShared and Ramnode for that matter
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Thanks, but looking for something a bit more custom than page/theme builders, and willing to pay a graphic designer for that. Probably makes it a bit different from the other thread.
That is fine if we can raise a support ticket and ask them to install a Wordpress plugin for us, if they take care of all security updates and patches to WP and plugins, etc.
Can u please share your requirements about design
We can offer you both services WordPress managed hosting + design
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Replied via PM
A word of advice regarding 'custom themes' -- Many 'devs' use a white-labeled theme + page builder to give you shoddy work that fulfils your most basic requirement i.e. looking however you wanted it to look. However, this makes future updates difficult, slows down your site (despite being custom made) and you're practically being overcharged.
At the bare minimum, you want to make sure the guy making your theme DOES NOT use a page builder. If you truly want a 'custom' design, make sure they are not using a white-labeled theme. I have no statistics and am talking out of my ass, but if you went looking for a 'custom' designer haphazardly, more than 90% are going to give you a white-labeled theme + page builder.
Also, you may be asking too much because noone is going to take care of all security updates and patches to WP and plugins unless you are paying them for an entire package deal where they manage your entire site. (Which will be costly) You can however automatically update plugins and hope nothing breaks.
Exactly, I am not looking for someone who is good at choosing page builder themes. That's already been tried where someone hooks something off the internet and passes it off as their work product. To make that absolutely clear: NO page builder.
A package deal where someone manages the entire site is the ideal, depending what 'costly' means of course. Anyway, that's the starting point.
Can you PM the details? Not my/our line of work, but can check with the folks who worked on a nonprofit project I am associated with.
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Sent.
Nice but, thankfully my web application development company, deals with my hosting and design issues
You can enable auto-updates in WP, or ask them to enable auto-updates in Softaculous. Then there isn't much left to do. Or, hire a freelancer to initially install plugins for all your use cases, then go for shared hosting and enable auto updates.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
I disagree with you here. Just because your designer uses a pagebuilder like Divi, or Elementor doesn't say your site is gonna be slow. If he knows what he is doing and it's a decent shared host your site won't be slow.
For example @jarland built Mxroute's website with Divi Pagebuilder and it's super clean and swift. @Unixfy also built some snappy loading page with Divi.
It's the number of unnecessary plugins, options not ticked and bad shared hosts that result in slow loading time.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
I wanna preface this post by saying this isn't an argument. I did not say your site is going to be slow if you use a page builder. However, I did say it will slow down your site. If you achieved the same thing without a page builder, your site will be faster for sure. There's literally no argument here, that's just the way it is.
It is also true that using a page builder makes future updates difficult (unless you are used to the page builder) AND exceedingly difficult if you try to move on from the page builder. And my gripe here isn't really with page builders -- it's with self-proclaimed devs that overcharge people with shoddy work using page builders. If you're paying good money, and are not going for low end, say no to page builders.
I'm going to disagree there. While I understand what you're coming from, most if not all page builders use proper caching mechanisms where most of the web developers have got no clue as to how their code performs. I'm not a web developer but I've seen so much crap that performs significantly worse than any decent page builder or template engine. If done properly then yes, it will perform better. If not, then a page builder may very well outperform custom work.
That said, let's not further derail from this thread. I'm happy to take this discussion to a new thread or the cest pit.
LOL It all depends on the budget. But everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if it's wrong. A pagebuilder is just a tool. And we can agree that you're talking out of your ass.
Indeed, everyone is entitled to having their own opinions. Let me know where I'm wrong, there's no point in simply dissing me without explaining what's up. Page builders add a lot of unnecessary tags, load scripts/libraries that may not be used, and make it extremely difficult to update your site unless you continue using that page builder. Of course, page builders are merely tools that make life easier for devs. But if you had two competent guys, one working with a great base theme and another working with a page builder... It's obvious who's going to end up with a better performing site. (Yep, caching mechanisms make websites load faster with or without a page builder. Nope, they don't save you from the clutter that come from page builders)
Of course, in certain situations using a page builder barely affects performance. But if you're planning to go long term with any sites, using a page builder locks you in which is gonna suck.
The OP did say "Quality counts." I think that your advice is sound, assuming they have the budget. But I wouldn't exclude sites built with page builders for all scenarios.