After several huge headaches and near misses in a row, we moved our own site to a managed hosting for WordPress<\/a>\u00a0solution specializing in WordPress, and we began urging our clients to do the same.<\/p>\n That turned out to be one of the best decisions we have ever made. Not only did it free us up to focus on the work we do best, it meant we no longer had to worry about downtime, security breaches, or even version upgrades.<\/p>\n You can invest huge amounts of time and money on advertising, social media marketing, and offsite SEO, but if you don\u2019t invest in quality hosting and management \u2013 all of that effort can go down the drain overnight.<\/p>\n My aim here is to briefly describe the events that led us to decide to turn the job of WordPress hosting<\/a> and backend management away from the \u201cBig Boys\u201d and over to a team of WordPress professionals.<\/p>\n My hope is that you learn from our experience and consider your own move to managed hosting for WordPress. Don\u2019t let the calamities that happened to us happen to you.<\/p>\n Generally speaking, WordPress is a non-technician\u2019s dream. That\u2019s why it\u2019s the leading content management system on the planet.<\/p>\n My No. 1 job at White Rabbit Marketing<\/a>, though, is to make sure my business is running smoothly, and our clients are happy and performing, all while taking care of things like website design, content management, and technical SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n WordPress management not only isn\u2019t the best use of my time, but there are many situations where focused technical management is imperative.<\/p>\n To illustrate what I mean, let me share a few real-life stories.<\/p>\n One of our clients was updating plugins on her site, but closed the dashboard before the update finished. That somehow caused a malfunction that took the site down. Visitors could no longer access it at all, and we\u2019re talking about an ecommerce site.<\/p>\n Our client was losing money every minute, and she called us for help.<\/p>\n I called my lead developer and went looking for a backup. That\u2019s when I found that someone (on the client\u2019s side) had turned backups off and trashed the backup history. My staff and I used every bit of WordPress savvy we could muster, but couldn\u2019t get the site back in operation.<\/p>\n You see, there\u2019s a difference between frontend developers and backend developers. The former make webpages come to life, and the latter make life come to webpages by controlling the guts of WordPress.<\/p>\n I started calling everyone I could think of who might be able to help. Several hours and a pile of cash later, my client\u2019s site was back up.<\/p>\n Strike one was human error. We met with the client and put a process in place to make sure that kind of thing could never happen again. But a few weeks later, we got hit from a different angle with a different client. Within a month, we faced another crisis: A hacker gained access to a client\u2019s site (a breast surgeon) and posted a \u201cWatch This\u201d link that led to an obscene site.<\/p>\n Once again, my team and I did our best to solve the problem. We couldn\u2019t pull it off, though. I called on a WordPress security expert I work with from time to time, and it wasn\u2019t cheap.<\/p>\n The good news here is that we acted quickly enough to clear the hack overnight. As far as I know, none of the visitors to the page clicked the link.<\/p>\n Can you imagine what a hoopla something like that could raise? Think of the damage it could have done to the reputation of our client. It was a close call\u2026 too close for comfort.<\/p>\n I began seriously searching for a way to better protect my clients and relieve myself of a giant headache (short of hiring a dedicated WordPress security expert).<\/p>\n While I was still pondering the situation, I got another call. One of our clients, a New York chiropractor, was invited to appear on a segment of the Dr. Oz television show. He didn\u2019t tell me about it, though. He wanted it to be a surprise, and it definitely was.<\/p>\n His dreams of bringing in dozens of new clients came crashing down when the spike in visitors overloaded the server his website was hosted on. We were able to get him back online fairly quickly, but there\u2019s no doubt he lost business from the ordeal. It was another live and learn moment.<\/p>\n WordPress backend problems can take a big chunk out of revenue, leave you open to hackers, and wreak havoc with your SEO standing. I\u2019m in business to support my clients. They depend on me to help them navigate online hazards and optimize their sites for sales. I knew that we needed someone to help us manage the technical intricacies of hosting our WordPress sites. I made a list of the tasks I wanted covered. (Given our recent harrowing episodes, the list pretty well made itself.) Here\u2019s how it looked:<\/p>\n The undesirable link on the surgeon\u2019s site was a nightmare in the making, but it was minor compared to what can happen. I\u2019ve heard of hackers completely taking down sites.<\/p>\n Sometimes the bad guys demand ransom<\/a> before letting you regain control of your own site. And sometimes, you have to start over from scratch with an entire rebuild.<\/p>\n My research turned up some mind-blowing facts. For instance, if you were aware of how frequently hackers, scammers, and bots try to access your website, you\u2019d be scared spitless. WordPress is regularly updated to patch security holes, but it\u2019s not perfect.<\/p>\n Someone still needs to guard the castle.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s something else to consider. Those low-budget hosting accounts are cheap, but they stick your site on a shared server that\u2019s pretty well available to anyone who wants to host there.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a way to find out who those neighbors are: Check Domain Neighbors<\/a>. Are you a bit surprised at the results? I sure was.<\/p>\n I knew we wanted a hosting management team capable of looking after my site and my clients\u2019 sites 24\/7. We also wanted to know that backups would be taken before any update and immediately after any changes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a wild world out there, and the hackers keep working while you sleep.<\/p>\n The hosting service we were using is one of the world\u2019s largest. Not only did they have our sites situated in \u201cbad neighborhoods,\u201d their service department seemed more like a sales department.<\/p>\n Their \u201ctechnicians\u201d kept putting us on hold while they went looking for answers to the most basic questions. They were great at reviewing our account and suggesting upgrades, but my confidence in their technical abilities was fairly non-existent.<\/p>\n We needed a company with service agents and technical support that knew what they were doing and understood the intricacies of WordPress.<\/p>\n This is a factor that often gets overlooked. Slow-to-load websites<\/a> drive customers away and put a dent in your ability to rank on the search engine results page (SERP). Today\u2019s online user doesn\u2019t like waiting<\/a>. I reasoned that a vendor with professional backend developers and WordPress experts on the team would surely be able to keep our sites both secure and speedy.<\/p>\n The chiropractor\u2019s server crash was an eye-opener.<\/p>\n Most hosting companies allow you only so much bandwidth. In normal, day-to-day operations, all is fine. Hit the bullseye, though, get featured in the news or watch one of your videos go viral, and your host can bail out on you just when you need the exposure most.<\/p>\n I hoped to find a managed hosting provider for WordPress who could handle extra traffic and keep our clients\u2019 websites running even when visitor numbers soared.<\/p>\n The search didn\u2019t take long. I kissed a few frogs, but one name kept popping up: WP Engine. They had already been around for a few years, quietly growing in the background, but had not reached my ears until a colleague sent me a link to their ebook, The Four Ss of Managed Hosting for WordPress<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Reading it, I discovered that WP Engine\u2019s primary services matched my must-have list exactly:<\/p>\n That\u2019s a micro-survey of our findings. There are more benefits to WP Engine’s managed hosting for WordPress, but I\u2019ll stop at the basics. To find out more, just check out their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the way, I\u2019m not getting paid by WP Engine to wave a banner for them. As I said earlier, my aim here is to be helpful to my peers and maybe even help someone else avoid the situations we encountered.<\/p>\n Yes, we had to increase our hosting budget a bit to make the move, but that small investment is way beyond worth it. WP Engine earns every penny of their fees, and we\u2019ve more than made up for it by being able to focus on OUR primary capabilities.<\/p>\n![\"wr-blog.1\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/wr-blog.1-1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhy We Decided to Switch to Managed Hosting for WordPress<\/h2>\n
The case of the missing backup<\/h3>\n
\n![\"wr-blog.2\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/wr-blog.2.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe surgeon whose website suddenly became too graphic<\/h3>\n
This chiropractor\u2019s five minutes of fame crashed the server<\/h3>\n
\n![\"wr-blog.3\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/wr-blog.3.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Criteria We Used to Search for Managed Hosting<\/h2>\n
Security provisions must be world-class and sites must be constantly monitored<\/h3>\n
Customer service calls should be addressed quickly and clearly 24\/7<\/h3>\n
Backend capability must include optimizing for load time<\/h3>\n
The host should be able to keep us and our clients live under heavy traffic conditions<\/h3>\n
![\"wr-blog.4\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/wr-blog.4.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhy We Decided to Trust WP Engine for Managed Hosting<\/h2>\n
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This Could Happen to You \u2013 Why We Switched to Managed Hosting<\/h2>\n