If your website is not big enough to need managed hosting from someone like Kinsta, but you also don’t want to use shared hosting, a good medium option is to host your own server.
You’re completely responsible for everything from performance to security, so this option is not something you want to decide lightly. But, today there is a number of great tools and services that make this option much more feasible.
Reasons to Host Your Server
Take your skills to the next level. Getting a deeper understanding of how to host your own WordPress website can teach you a number of skills that will make your a better developer.
Its all about Speed. Having control of the server allows you to make a configurations to optimize for speed. An important feature for user experience and search engine presence.
Simplicity leads to Stability. Hosting your own server allows you to strip it down to the essentials, making for a more stable and more secure server.
Keeping Costs down. Managing your own server, you can get the same features as a managed host, which a significantly reduced cost.
Keep the control. You have full control of the server, allowing you to set it up exactly like you would like too.
Sales opportunity. Especially if you are a designer or developer, you can use this to host websites for your own projects as well as client projects.
Step 1: Domain Registration
Don’t waste your time with all kinds of shady domain registrars that give you a cheap price upfront and then hammer you with upsells and huge cost increases when you renew your domain. Go straight to Hover.
Step 2: DNS
Create an account at Cloudflare and setup your DNS for your domain.
Step 3: Server
Create an account with DigitalOcean.
Step 4: Server Dashboard
Setup your control panel for your server with SpinupWP. SpinupWP sets up your server installing all the software you need to host WordPress websites. It managed SSL certificates, caching, backups and SSH users.
Another good alternative is ServerPilot which functions in a similar way but has some different features.
Step 5: Email
The new server will not have email integrated, which you don’t want anyways. But using WP Mail SMTP and SendGrid, you can still send emails from your website.
Step 5: Logging
It is a good idea to keep an eye on the logs that a server collects. The server logs will often tell you of different issues that your server is facing. We like to use LogDNA to easily view and manage those files.
Step 6: CMS
Setup your new site on SpinupWP.
Step 7: Theme
If you don’t already have a good theme, we are big fans of Genesis and Astra.
Step 8: Plugins
We have a great list of plugins for WordPress.
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