Types Of Webhosting I Used to get Confused with – Part 2

3. Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting services

Dedicated hosting implies one server is dedicated to one website. There is no sharing whatsoever. Your website gets the full capacity of that single server so you have absolute control over the server and optimal site performance.

Pros:
Reliability and consistency: Thanks to having a server for yourself, you can shed off those worries about other websites eating up your bandwidth and performance speed.

Flexibility: Enjoy the freedom to control the whole space of a dedicated server and switch up its configurations as you like.

Cons:
Requires Maintenance and Technical Knowledge: This may lead to not only the cost of a dedicated server but with hosting professionals who can manage and maintain it.
Possible Wastage: Due to the large capacity available on that a single server has, there’s a possibility that some remain unused even if you’re paying for the whole server.

What we think: A dedicated server requires considerable investment. To justify the cost, your website should be fairly large (many web pages) with high-traffic.

4. Cloud hosting
Cloud hosting services

Cloud Hosting means goodbye to a single physical server and hello to virtual server hardware! This type of hosting is gaining popularity because of its reliability. Your web files won’t be stored on a single server but distributed across multiple networks within the Internet.

That means if one of the servers goes down or is underperforming, there are numerous backups. In addition to protection from malfunctioning servers, cloud hosting also promises unlimited resource expansion!

Pros:
Multiple servers: Ensures that your website’s performance remains optimal by moving it to the best performing server in its network.

Scalability: This setup allows you to scale up your resources if your traffic is high and scale it down if it’s low.
Varied prices: The prices you pay for cloud hosting services vary depending on your resource usage. In short, you only pay for what you use

Cons:
Downtime: Cloud hosting relies on a network of internet servers to function. Any issues with the internet connection of the hosting service will result in your encountering problems with your website.

Costly: Due to its convenience and flexibility, cloud hosting may be the most expensive option among the types of hosting. Although this is still dependent on your hosting provider.

What we think: This option offers you the ability to scale your website along with your business. Increased traffic, bigger bandwidth and RAM usage, all of these factors can be adjusted to suit your budget and website needs. But the most important factor? Stronger Security.

We also have another alternative for hosting website which falls under a different category. Sites like Wix and Shopify does not require any server. This runs like a SaaS model, which does not require the end user to know or have any technical knowledge. However in such arrangement, you dont own the asset of the website. There are also several limitations when it comes to customizations to the web design or functionality. Therefore these are the key few things that needs to be considered be fore making any decision.

All in all, a reliable web server is the backbone of your business website. If you have an existing website or are in the process of getting one – it’s time to start thinking seriously about your web hosting needs.

The different web server options as mention in this article should help you understand better in terms of options in the market. It is important that you don’t jump the gun and pick the first option you come across. Your website’s loading speed and performance depends on the hosting server. That’s why it is imperative to choose the right web hosting service that best suits your website’s specific hosting needs.

How to your harden WordPress the right way

A short guide to prevent you from being hacked

Below you find a list with some very good tricks to harden your server and WordPress installation which will help with preventing your system from being hacked by script kiddies and other lame bad people that which you mess up peoples hard work; including yours.
Remember that there isn’t a fool proof way to secure your system. Internet security is an on-going process and never stops.

• • Place .htaccess files in all folders that should not be accessed.

• • In your control panel shut down all directory listing and browsing access. Login to your control panel at your web host and search for “Indexes” and then chose the directory folders that needs to be protected
    

    

    

    

• • Prevent editing core files from WordPress itself. Add the code to your wp-config.php file in wordpress which then will disable the ability to edit WordPress server files from the WP dashboard.

• • Move the wp-config file above the WP root directory e.g. public_html
    

    

• • Move the content of the wp-config file to another secret location above the public_html so that the wp-config file is just a fake file.

    
    Once you done that then you need to create a new directory in C-panel (home/your-account-name/) where you place your real wp-config file in. The real WP-config should be locked with 400 file permission and the .htaccess file should use 404 file permission.

    

    

  • Delete the first user (The first administrator user) and create new one that do not have ID number 1. The WordPress admin user that is automatically created for you when you first install WordPress is known as WordPress user with id of 1. This is because in the _users database table, the record id for the admin user is 1. As you can see here:

    
    The user can be easily replaced that you create a new user in the WordPress control panel and then set that new user to be the administrator. Once you have done that then logout of the first admin with ID1 and login to your new administrator account and then delete the first account. This can of course be done from the database too and delete the user with ID1. But it just easier to do it directly from the WP backend.

• • Install and configure a security plugin/firewall such as for example:

    WPMU Dev’s Defender https://wpmudev.com/project/wp-defender/ or
    iThemes Security https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/.

    You can of course find other firewalls too here if you search at WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/firewall/

• • Harden the server itself. Use Patchman:
    

    If it is your own hardware/VPS server, (Which you should run anyway in the first place and not a shared hosting environment), then installing an additional security layer in Linux itself such as Patchman makes perfect sense: https://www.patchman.co ,
    (Patchman is a Premium service).

    Patchman will scan and monitor 24/7/365 not just your WPMU (WPMU=WordPress Multisite) or single/stand-alone WordPress installation, but the whole Linux server itself and all other web applications you might run off your server and Patchman does this down deep from the OS core itself. If any mischief things are found then Patchman will automatically correct and patch it to close the security hole. Pretty neat, right?

• • Also always remember to delete the files upgrade.php and install.php from your wp-admin and license.txt and readme.txt from the wp-root directory each time you upgrade.

• • Make sure to have access to real host backups:

    

    No backup plugin can ever substitute and beat host backups which is based on real server backup infrastructure taking full backups of your whole server on a daily basis, (and it makes your site faster too because one less plugin to bog down your server which is an additional bonus.). Having access to a reliable solid backup system with retention points that goes months back will save your sorry skinny butt when the sky falls down on you and it will.

    It is not a question of “if it will happen“, but when it happens. You need to be ready for that situation when things fail in regards to your website.

  • How to Configure Secure WordPress Database Permissions,(After WordPress installation):

    

    Never run your WordPress Installation with full database user permissions.

    The WordPress database is the most important component of your WordPress website. It contains all the content of your website, such as information about your users and all your posts, etc.

    In order to access the database, a database user should have specific privileges that allow him or her to manipulate it. The WordPress database is built using MySQL/MariaDB and contains privileges which allow users to make certain changes. The ‘grant access privileges’ give users full privileges. This is a very convenient option for a user if they want to have full control over the WordPress database.

    However, from the security point of view, this is extremely dangerous, since if a hacker gains access to the database then he or she will have full control over the WordPress database and the stored data, which can have catastrophic consequences on your website security. Therefore it’s not recommended to grant a user full access, unless the user needs to be able to use the DROP or DELETE SQL commands.

    Below is an example of the minimum privileges a database user needs to have. Other database permissions are regarded as “extra” privileges that in most cases are not needed. A typical WordPress user should be granted the following database privileges only:

    • SELECT
    • INSERT
    • UPDATE

    

    If you are upgrading WordPress, the above database permissions might not suffice between versions, WordPress might need to make further changes to the database. In this case, if you are only upgrading to the latest version of WordPress, add the below privileges to the WordPress database user:

    • CREATE
    • ALTER

    NOTE: Some plugins might require additional database privileges such as CREATE, DROP or DELETE and in those cases these privileges should be granted.

    In addition to securing your WordPress database permissions, you should make sure that each database of your website is accessed through a separate account and not through the root account.

    

• You should lock mission critical files with 400 or 404 file permissions

  You can read more about why that is so important here in this article: https://support.shorturl.gg/business-marketing-and-seo-forums/topic/why-you-should-lock-your-wordpress-mission-critial-files/

• Finally but last:
  Remember to set and apply the .htaccess files to your WordPress installation to further secure it and harden it:

  

  .htaccess | wp-admin folder
  

  .htaccess | wp-includes folder
  

  .htaccess | wp-content folder
  

  .htaccess | wp-content plugin folder
  

  .htaccess | wp-content MU-plugin folder
  

  .htaccess | wp-content theme folder