Most packages available today would be looked at managed to some extent. Why? Because running a website is certainly far more complicated than you’d think. Many people can create and run a WordPress-powered website without too much trouble, but just how many folks have network management skills, or can create Nginx files and/or apply operating-system upgrades with their own servers via SSH?
All websites are stored on computers, which have memory, a processor, a difficult drive, ports that take care of internet traffic etc – plus they all have to be looked after on an operating-system level. If there’s a bug in the operating-system, it needs to be addressed. If malware has made its way in to the machine, it requires to be cleared – and that’s just scratching the top out of all the day-to-day things that require to be done to keep your site ticking over.
This is a level of management that virtually all hosts offer nowadays. Actually, it’s in their best interest to take action. Most users have absolutely no need to regulate their low-level web host environment – and, if given the possibility to achieve this, would most likely make chaos of things really quickly. This might lead with their website heading down and blame probably located on the variety, who then likely be tasked with getting things ready to go again.
In other words, by managing your server for you, hosts kill two birds with one stone: Helping you save from yourself, and saving themselves from hordes of support tickets.
Let’s call this kind of management server-level management – and, unless you specifically search for bare metal servers, you’ll probably see all such features included in your selected hosting package.
There is certainly, however, another branch of managed hosting services which allows you to execute many common higher-level jobs on your server, for example website backups. Let’s call this second branch of services application-level management.
Application-level management services will be the type offered in managed WordPress Hosting plans. Features will likely include:
server-level caching (and a great many other performance-specific services)
automated daily site backups
main WordPress updates
website migrations
malware scanning
the capability to efficiently create staging sites
on-demand WordPress-specific one-click backups
plenty more (we’ll go through several in a moment).
The advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting
Essentially, the overwhelming benefit for a managed WordPress hosting environment is the fact that everything about it is completely designed to working WordPress. Basic hosts (i.e. the sort that host all types of websites jogging on all types of platforms) can’t truly optimize their systems to 1 specific platform because they have to be able to run so many different types of software. Exactly the same server may be running a WordPress site, a Joomla site, a custom-made site using Laravel, a Node server etc. There’s just no chance to optimize for everything all at one time.
Managed WordPress hosts, on the other hand, work exclusively with WordPress, and, therefore, they can tailor all their servers – from the operating system and record system to command line tools – for optimal performance. A great exemplory case of this kind of optimization is website caching – something that may be designed to work a lot more effectively at a server-side level than it can by simply using front-end WordPress plugins.
Security is another sector where managed WordPress hosting excels. It’s much simpler to create a system that’s secure when you understand exactly what’s working on it and the particular disadvantages of a specific software (in our case, WordPress) are. Because hosts know how WordPress reacts when someone tries logging in with incorrect details, they can build specific tools in to the server that lock out any malicious attempts automatically.
The consequence of all this is a significantly faster, better, more stable hosting architecture. A good analogy is the reason why your Tv set won’t crash, however your PC can do so every once in awhile. Despite the fact that modern TVs have little computers included, they’re used for just one, very specific, task. PCs, on the other side, support a huge variety of operations – making them susceptible to unexpectedly seizing up or going wrong in a few unforeseen way.
Managed WordPress hosting systems need only concentrate on an individual system: WordPress. This enables them to use WordPress’s various strengths and dampen down its weaknesses, leading to a host that does a very important factor extremely well.
Top features of Managed WordPress Hosting
At the moment, managed WordPress hosting companies give a number of different features. The following is a selection of some of the most useful ones.
AUTOMATICALLY MANAGED UPDATES
Automatic updates have been an attribute of WordPress for a long time now. However, handled WordPress hosting can take these a step further by automatically making use of security fixes when they come out – in the same way as they apply major WordPress version updates to sites. Where possible, some companies will even notify you before such updates to make sure you will have ample time to get ready.
With almost all managed WordPress hosts, using the latest version of WordPress is usually enforced. This not only makes your website better (by shutting any known security holes as fast as possible), it also makes the host’s network better as a whole – the benefits of that may trickle down to you as a person (more overall uptime, fewer attacks, etc).
AUTOMATIC AND MANUAL BACKUPS
Due to the acceptance of WordPress, specialized hosts can make the backup treatment faster, better and more reliable. What’s more, having the variety make regular backups also makes your site much easier to restore should things be fallible (in the end, what good is getting a backup if you’re struggling to put it yourself for whatever reason).
Having your host make regular backups that may be easily used can be done because they’re in the perfect position to understand the set structure of WordPress. This also lends itself to your next feature…
BETTER WORDPRESS SUPPORT
Your mileage with support will change from company to company, but I believe it’s safe to say an average managed WordPress coordinator support will (or at least should) know a lot more about WordPress when compared to a regular non-specialist host’s support. Again, since WordPress is just one system, it’s a great deal better to solve any issues that arise.
AUTOMATIC WORDPRESS SETUP
A feature which allows you to get up and running with a fresh WordPress site in seconds. After you desire a new site, an entire WordPress install (and the necessary database interconnection, etc) will be created automatically. All you have to to do is complete a short form with some admin and site details. Easy!
STAGING ENVIRONMENTS
This is a great feature for developers and/or site managers. A staging environment starts out as a perfect copy of your existing site, which is only accessible to you (or it comes with an obscure URL), and it is super handy for trying out new plugins/topics or updating/modifying code before making use of any changes to your live site.
FINELY TUNED DASHBOARDS
Regular hosting dashboards aren’t usually very user-friendly because they don’t actually know which software you’re using. Because of this, some will give you a whole coordinator of options – a lot of which simply aren’t suitable to WordPress – while some are so sparse that they may have are a few basic links to manage your database or your files.
Managed WordPress hosting dashboards, on the other hand, can do all sorts of useful things, such as offer you specific statistics on usage/visitors, give others access to your account, show you if you have out-of-date plugins, let you know exactly which version of WordPress you’re using etc.