Everyone wants the perfectly designed, sleek website, but what many people don’t realise is that this, while crucial to a site’s usability, is just the tip of the website-performance iceberg. Having a website that runs smoothly and is able to do so continuously is just as important. What many people don’t know is that there are two key elements to this: a good web host and a good CMS. Here we will explain what they are and why they are important to you.
What is website hosting?
In the most basic of terms, this is where your website is filed. Imagine that, in the almost infinite biosphere that is the internet, the web host that you choose such as Wix, Squarespace, dreamHost and Network solutions, to name just a few, are their own little landlords, owning the space in which your website resides. In order to earn your place as a citizen of the internet and for browsers to know you exist, you must effectively rent your space via a web host.
Why you need a good web host
- Locked out of the internet: A Web host that is always offline is like a landlord that constantly keeps the doors to your shop locked. Even for the most streamlined of businesses, it will be hard to maintain customers if they are not able to access your site. Often clients can become unhappy with their web designers when this happens leading to a long round of the blame game.
- Time is money: we’ve all done it, clicked on a website then quickly escaped after the loading time took too long. Now, think how many potential customers you might be driving away if your loading time is just a fraction too long. This is a prime example of why a good web host can be crucial to your business.
- Bad ratings: slow loading times and large offline periods will cause search engines to band your website as “low quality”. Once marked with the dreaded scarlet letter, it will be very hard for your website to rank highly in searches, no matter how brilliant your content or optimised your SEO is.
- Fending for yourself: I know that I used the analogy of a landlord to describe web hosts earlier, but, in some cases, a bad web host can be way worse than a couple of leaky pipes. If your web host goes out of business, so do all your files, hard work, time and money and it will be very hard to get them back. Through no fault of your own, you’ll be seeing ‘404: Page not found’.
- Security: not only should your web host have good security in terms of your webservers, SSL renewals and keeping firewalls up, but they should comply with your own country’s security and speed regulations as well as local restrictions on how they can store your data.
What is a CMS?
CMS stands for a content management system and it is an intermediate application that allows you to easily create, manage, store and publish your website’s content. It is often accessible to multiple members of your team and allows those who don’t have much experience in web design to create and manage content. At the moment, the popular ones are WordPress, Joomla, Magento and ProteanCMS. Squarespace and Wix also act as CMS support.
Why you need a good CMS
- Ease of access: gone are the days where you had to call up your web designer and wait for your changes to take effect. A good CMS should be accessible enough for every member of your staff to be able to make changes to your website, if appropriate. But if anything were to go wrong your designer and their team should be able to help.
- Availability: COVID has made us realise the invaluable nature of systems that can be accessed from anywhere at any time. The same is true for your CMS, especially if you are a business that operates internationally.
- Adaptability: In this fast-paced world, I doubt that any of the current CMS’s will be able to cater to every website’s needs. However, a CMS will have regular updates, extensions and add-ons, so that it can meet your needs as much as possible. WordPress in particular has a third-party plugin called wordfence which offers protection from hacking.
- Support: Technology is weird, even for tech-nuts like us. The team at Eonic are always willing to lend a helping hand but your CMS should provide a good customer service and be able to sort out any major issues you have as soon as possible.
- Protection: A bad CMS is potentially one that is easily hacked which, in itself can be detrimental to your brand and reputation and may also affect SEO and your rankings in searches
- Back-ups: regular back-ups are a crucial part of any website and should never be hindered by your CMS.
How Eonic can help
We use Microsoft’s Azure which is not only an excellent host but also supports our use of the best and most popular CMSs available, such as ProteanCMS, WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Azure ensures streamlined domain registration, FTP, email and DNS management. Working in conjunction with our expert consultants, as well as Azure’s experts who are available to assist 24-7-365, systems like Azure can be optimised for your particular needs.
We’ll also help with your CMS, from fixing bugs to providing a better user experience and we’ll aim to empower you to easily be in control of your website. Our favourite CMS is ProteanCMS due to the extremely easy and sleek user experience, but we can also support a host of others.
Behind all this is a client-oriented team of experts to support any questions that you may have. We pride ourselves on the transparent, proactive approach we take with all our clients: keeping you and your website up to date with the latest advancements in standards, software and technology.
To find out more about Eonic’s CMS & hosting support packages, get in touch and we can discuss the option best for you.