What to look for in a WordPress web host

WordPress is the world's long-standing content management system (CMS) of choice because of its user-friendliness, SEO-rich features and innovative tools. According to W3Techs, it has a 61.3% market share and powers 43.5% of all websites today.

People also love the fact it’s free. You can install WordPress on your own domain and hosting provider without paying for the CMS.

WordPress offers free hosting, but this comes with all sorts of limitations, hurting the user experience and your brand identity. For example, you can’t use your own domain, which is basic to any business.

Tip number one is to avoid free WordPress hosts. They are a classic case of getting what you pay for: no guarantees about your site’s speed or performance; no team of experts to help you when the going gets tough; and often other issues like ads you can't remove or "freemium" models that suck you in with a free start but result in you overpaying for an average-at-besty experience.

That’s why professional web hosting services will be necessary to get your website running at its best. The right web host will provide you with the infrastructure and tools you need to optimise your site's performance. Web hosting plans are so affordable that paying a few dollars a month will be much wiser than stretching yourself thin as you work around all the shortcomings of free hosting.

Choosing NZ's best web hosting services for WordPress

There are hundreds of WordPress hosting providers out there but the best always place a premium on these qualities:

• Convenience. Your hosting provider must make it easy for you to install your WordPress site on their platform, and then manage your site, domains and even email. With MyHost you get access to a full WP Toolkit, so installing and managing WordPress is super-easy.

• Speed. Servers that are old, poorly configured, or overloaded can slow down your website (or make it crash altogether). And speed matters: More and more users abandon a website that takes over two seconds to load. Google and other search engines penalise slower websites by pushing them down in the search results, which means lower traffic and sales. A lot of this is down to your hosting provider and infrastructure. To take one example, super-fast NVMe storage is standard with MyHost, but you won't get the same hardware everywhere.

• Location. The location of your hosting provider’s data centres affects your website's loading time. The shorter the distance between a visiting browser and your website's server, the quicker the connection. So if kiwis are your target customers, New-Zealand-based WordPress hosting works best for you. You’ll enjoy local support, too, which can make a big difference when you need to get any issues sorted out.

• Security. WordPress security is critical, especially if you are collecting and processing your customers’ personal data or payment information through your website. Look for hosts that offer advanced security and are proactive in keeping your data safe. There’s a lot that goes into security, but two big things to look for are an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate for your website, which encrypts data being exchanged between a server and a client, and the kind of hosting professionals who regularly patch and tune your system.

• Responsive support. Every now and then, you might have a problem that needs to be solved quickly to maintain your site’s performance. Ideally, support from your WordPress hosting providers should be available around the clock. Check reviews, check opening hours, and check whether you'll be able to talk to real people when you need to. Our 24/7 customer support is also one of the things that makes MyHost different from the rest. We have competitors who take days to even begin responding to queries. Meanwhile we measure our own response time in minutes.

• Scalability. Your hosting needs to be able to grow with you as your site gets busier with more visitors. So it’s important to be able to readily access resources, such as storage space and bandwidth, once you need them. With MyHost you can increase your web hosting package size whenever you want, and without making any changes to your site or migrating to a new server. And any time you need help making changes to your hosting, or advice on when to scale up or down, our support team is ready and waiting.

• Price. Obviously you'll compare the headline price of different hosting packages, but be sure to look deeper than that. Our Web Hosting Shopping Guide explains some common tricks, like low introductory prices that last for a month or two then turn into massive costs. When we took a look at WP Engine, one of the most popular WordPress hosts in the world, we literally couldn't decipher their pricing. Please take care.

Why pick MyHost for hosting WordPress in New Zealand?

Integrating smoothly with WordPress was one of our top considerations in designing our hosting services. That’s why WordPress is the most popular CMS with our web hosting customers.

We're WordPress fans ourselves, and we're here with helpful advice like these 25 WordPress Speed Optimisation Tips.

Our WordPress hosting offers speed, reliability and security across all three plans. Build your WordPress site on our hosting platform and see for yourself why thousands of customers love us.

How to install WordPress on MyHost

How easy is it to install WordPress with MyHost? Almost too easy.

Once you have a new Web Hosting package, you’ll have access to cPanel. And when you open cPanel, you’ll see WordPress Management in the main menu. This opens the WP Toolkit, where one of the first things you'll see is an Install button. Done.

Now you can log into WordPress straight from cPanel and start working on your website.

How to transfer WordPress site from one host to another

Transferring your WordPress site between hosting providers is easy. After you’ve set up a new WordPress site on MyHost, download (export) a copy of your site, then log into your new site and upload (import) the same file. WordPress has more advice on exporting sites here.

Once that’s done, you need to point your domain to the new site. Establishing new hosting is often easier if you also move your domain registration to the same provider.

Wrap-up

Your choice of web host can make a big difference to the overall performance of your WordPress website. Your hosting provider should focus on speed and security, make it easy to scale up (or down), and offer 24/7 customer support. On top of all that, they need to be serious about WordPress. If your business targets customers from New Zealand, go for local hosting.

MyHost fits all these specifications and even exceeds expectations, specifically where security, speed and reliability are concerned. With just a few clicks, you can build a new WordPress site on MyHost, or transfer your existing WordPress site content into our platform. And if you need any help along the way, our local team is available 24/7.

In all, our hosting services will give you a stress-free and cost-effective way in giving your WordPress site and overall online presence a boost.