You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” If you’ve ever been victimized by pesky, covert computer predators, called hackers, no doubt you can attest to that.

You might wonder why a hacker might want to break into your computer system without your permission. Well, there are a number of reasons, which might include getting access to stored data, the mere challenge of breaking and entering or simply because they know they can. Once inside they can wreak havoc by defacing your website, stealing credit card or other confidential information.

Having your computer system compromised can have a devastating impact on your company’s reputation, as we saw with the major hack recently experienced by Target, the discount store, where 40 million credit and debit card accounts were stolen.

Regardless of whether you store classified information on your website or not, once hacked, restoring your computer system to its original state can be an arduous task that you’ll want to try avoiding at all cost. Here are 7 steps to safeguard your website from being hacked:

Monitor your website. Check your website daily as hackers have a tendency to deface your site or re-direct the URL to a pornographic or other questionable site. Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) can also detect if your website has been compromised by sending you a message with detailed information such as samples of harmful URLs.

Change passwords often. Website owners often make it very easy for hackers to break into their sites because their password and usernames are weak and easily accessible. It is critical that you assign strong passwords to your server login, website login and email accounts. Be sure to instill good password practices to all users of their accounts.

Back up your website regularly. Make it a practice to back up your website once a week or more often when updates are made. There are some free and fee-based plugins available such as Ready! Backup, Draft Plus and Backup Buddy for WordPress site.

Keep software updated. It might seem obvious but it bears repeating… if you access a content management system (CMS) from your computer, an anti-virus protection software is a must or you put system at risk. Hackers are quick to attempt to abuse cracks found in computer security software.

Limit login attempts. Hackers use millions of login combinations to break into your website. By installing login safeguard measures you can stop hackers in their tracks… or at least, make it very difficult for them to force their way into your website. WordPress users can installed the plugin, Limit Login Attempts, which keeps banning an IP address after a certain number of failed login attempts.

Use a security certificate. It is a good idea to use a SSL protocol to provide security over the internet when you are passing information between the web server and website. If the communication channel isn’t secure hackers could detect and capture this data to gain access to user accounts and personal data.

Select a reliable web host. Your web host is a crucial resource in your efforts to get your website back up and running as quickly as possible. In addition to their ability to provide emergency help, check to determine if they store recent backup copies of your website files.

WordPress was first introduced to the internet in 2003. It grew from the b2/cafelog designed by Michel Valdrighi in 2001. It was conceived in order to improve the layout and readability of content produced frequently and often. It started with less than 10 users but since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging platform in the world. So why is it also being used as a CMS running literally millions of full blown websites offering far more than just blogging?

As a blogging tool WordPress is/was imperious and still is. However as a website management tool it excels at many of the more mundane requirements for a website in the early ’10s of the 21st Century.

Take for example the templating or theming of a WordPress website. The tool has become so popular that there are literally thousands of free themes available for a web designer to use or alter to create a unique theme suitable for a client. But that, you might say, is available to many CMS’s such as Joomla. It is, but the theming of a WordPress site is so much more logical than many other CMS’s offer.

So what, any web designer worth their pay should be able to design a theme for many of the more popular open source CMS platforms. That is true, but it is the combination of this simple process and many other attributes of WordPress that build together a compelling reason for using it as a website CMS.

The fact that the hosting requirements are so simple to satisfy, the administration area are so intuitive, the sites run quickly and that there is a vast following of keen and skilled community members who often provide answers to sticky questions almost instantaneously cuts out so much design and development time that costs can be pared to a minimum.

Websites that are built on the WordPress open source platform are extremely easy to build into stunningly complex website management tools. Take for example ecommerce; there are a multitude of ecommerce plugins for the WordPress platform. Each of these plugins has its benefits and its restrictions but it lowers the entry skill level for a web sited designer/ builder to such a level that almost no coding skills are required at all.

Of course reducing the level of coding required for a web designer is good in one way, but it also provides problems in the future. Where will the future coders come from? Do we need to be concerned about the lack of coding skills? Maybe but yet again this reduction in work benefits both the client and the designer in that time is money and a reduction in time inevitably reduces the cost for the website as well.

Even complex ecommerce and CRM sites can be built using WordPress, but here the level of bespoke integration does begin to build. Many websites require secure transactions, multiple customer emails, inventory or file management systems and so on and so on. WordPress and its plugin structure work very well in this environment but like all large sites built on modular frameworks it is important not to overload the server with unnecessary workload. It is now that the web site designer, his coders and his site architects come to the fore front of the design and implementation process.

WordPress can become slower than it should be if the website is over burdened with multiple plugins, or even worse plugins that clash or even stop working in certain circumstances. A classic problem often experienced even by the better web site design team is the conflict between multiple code scripts being included on the website as a consequence of lazy plugin writing. Loading multiple versions of the jquery library, for example, is one sure way to break a page or its functionality.

Given that WordPress offers a powerful and resourceful environment within which to build sites it is currently the pick of the crop when it comes to which CMS to use. As a tool to build website on it has natural qualities that allow fast and cheap website construction, but should the client know what you are doing?

Selling a client an all singing all dancing website and claiming it is all built by you is fine but it isn’t entirely truthful. Some designers even go so far as to remove any reference to WordPress or the theme designer (if used) and produce a white label CMS which they then re label as there own. Again this isn’t entirely ethical but as long as the designers maintain it properly it isn’t a problem.

The problem of maintenance, either for the white label designer, or for the less skilled web site builder is that of security, maintenance and updates. WordPress is frequently updated both for security reasons and to include the latest and greatest new gizmos. White label products and to some extent other designers tend to build and forget their sites and their clients. Many clients won’t pay for continued maintenance on their site as they don’t perceive the need for it. Is there a solution to this? Well yes of course. Forcing the client to partake in a maintenance contract should solve that problem, but if a designer wants the contract it may be the first option declined by the customer.

The solution is proper training. This is where WordPress is almost at its best. It has the most intuitive and simple administration area of all the current crop of CMS/blogging platforms. Teaching a new client how to look after and add and edit their own content is ridiculously simple. there are a huge number of resources in video and on sites explaining all the simple and slightly more complex procedures. As long as a web designer encourages and makes simple the learning process there is no reason why a new web site owner can’t maintain their new WordPress site for a long way into the future.

WordPress comes out on top for so many reasons when deciding, as a designer, what platform to build a new website in. But if there is one thing that ought to be remembered is that the website belongs to the client. It is their site and as such they should have the easiest and simplest CMS to use. WordPress was designed from the ground up to be that simple CMS and so it is a perfect platform for new websites to consider as the CMS of the early 21st Century.

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms on the planet, and one of the easiest to use, but you do need to know some of the tricks and tweaks if you want a WordPress website to run at optimum speed. Here are some of the important things that you need to know if you want to optimize your WordPress website.

Install a caching plugin

The pages of WordPress website are dynamic, which means that they are created on screen for each instance. If you install a caching plugin, however, the screen view of a page is cached when it is loaded and then it is available again for other users to see without it having to be reloaded every single time.

Optimize your images

Images look great on a website and they do help to engage the reader, but they can also be very large files if you don’t optimize them for the web. Check the file sizes of your images and, for the large ones, edit them in a photo editing application and save them in one of the more efficient file formats, such as JPEG.

Don’t upload videos to WordPress

You can upload videos to your WordPress website, but that is a very inefficient way to display videos. It is much faster and it will take less bandwidth if you host your videos on a site like YouTube and then simply link to those videos from within your website.

Keep your WordPress website up to date

WordPress is frequently updated, as are some of the plugins that you are probably using, and it is important that you optimize your WordPress website by keeping up with those updates. Not keeping up with the updates could make your website slower and it could leave your site vulnerable to security threats.

Use slider plugins that have been optimized for speed

Slider plugins are great for adding a professional look to a website, but some sliders are very badly coded and they can slow up a WordPress website significantly. As a general rule, it is better to use fairly straightforward slider plugins and not the ones that have lots of flashy animation effects included with them.

Split very long posts into multiple pages

If you have very long posts, they can take a long time to load, especially if the post contains images as well. However, if you use the “next page” tag in WordPress, it will split a long post into separate pages that each page will be loaded only when the user clicks “next page”.

Use fast gallery plugins

If you are using a photo gallery plugin on your website that too could be slowing performance, so look for photo gallery plugins that are optimized for speed and test them first, before you start using them on your own site.

Limit the number of comments displayed

If you have lots of comments on your WordPress website that’s great news, because it means that you have an engaged and active audience, however, all those comments will be taking time to load. There is a simple setting in WordPress that you can change so that comments are split into separate pages rather than one big long list. Using that feature will speed up the loading of your content.

If I mention WordPress and all you can equate it to is blogs or if you still think that WordPress is limited to being an exclusive blogging platform – you have been left behind in the Digital Age my friend! From its blogging roots, it has been branching out for many years and today you can create a website for your business right in WordPress. Why should you choose it when there are so many other options out there? What are the benefits in deciding to go with WordPress? Here are my top 5 ways it can work for you and your business:

Make use of its easy Customization.

Hire a WordPress Designer to customize or create a theme especially for your company or business. WordPress can be used as a Content Management System (CMS) and this means that after your Designer has developed the site for you, you can login at the backend yourself when there are simple changes to be made to your website. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to do this, if you know how to use Microsoft Word or any other software, you can pretty much update your site content via WordPress as well. It is user-friendly and uncomplicated. This saves you a lot of time and money. It also gives you control on the way your site is ran.

Pick the most useful Functionalities.

Because it is Open-source, many built-in tools and plug-ins have already been developed and if there is a functionality you need on your website, you are sure to find it! You can pretty much add a host of features you have on your list. Do you need forms on your site? How about YouTube videos? Or perhaps you want Google Analytics to track your outbound links and site downloads? Say you want your site to be easily translatable in different languages? Or you intend to sell something on your site? All these and more can be done in WordPress, just be precise in your website needs and mention these desired functionalities to your WordPress Designer, and you need not look any further.

Be friends with its robust Support.

Apart from its reliable maintenance and security tools, WordPress has a very active online community where you will find robust support. There are keen WordPress designers and developers everywhere who are experienced, have tried and tested and written about it. So, if there is any specific help you need, support is just a click away. Visit forums, design and tech blogs exploring the many different ways WordPress is used. Problems and issues tackled are discussed everywhere. So there are no worries when you feel you have hit a glitch. It is most probably been dealt with by so many others! Your WordPress Designer is very likely to be an active participant in these forums and communities and knows where to look for ample support.

Implement effective SEO.

Get a WordPress Designer that also understands Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that from the very beginning your website is developed with SEO in mind. If you want a lot of traffic on your website, you want a first page Google ranking, and you want a substantial amount of subscribers, then your Designer should definitely optimize your WordPress website and develop it to be very search engine-friendly. This type of Internet Marketing should be right at the forefront of your website plan so you can achieve the goals of broadening your reach to not just current customers but to the tens of thousands of potential customers. Let people find you in one Google search.

Turn on continuous Interactivity.

As it was originally a blog publishing platform, WordPress has perfected the art of building a community base of blog or website followers. On all the pages on your site and every article you post, a follower or subscriber can post comments. This is your chance to interact with your customers and clients on a regular basis. Build a following by continuously interacting and conversing on areas affecting your business or the industry at large. Content is targeted as these are articles written for your company blog. Spam attacks are not a problem as you can also turn on the ability to moderate the comments before they are published. The simple act of opening the floor for comments and diligently replying to them opens many doors of possibilities for your business. Your followers spread the word about your products and services, they also give life to your company, and generate new business. Just remember to hit the reply button.

There’s a reason why WordPress is the choice of most people when it comes to blogging, or putting up a website. In fact, there are several. Let’s take a look, and see if we can break this down into a WordPress Design Guide for you.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a user-friendly website creation tool. It has a ton of users. In fact, 24% of all webpages are created on WordPress. Over 500 new sites a day pop up… all courtesy of WordPress. If you are thinking of starting a website, and you don’t have a lot of experience, WordPress is probably your best option.

Professional Themes

Themes determine the look and feel of your website. WordPress seems to have something for everybody. They have a ton of free themes that you can choose from as you begin to design your site. If you don’t find anything you like, browse the paid themes (Premium themes). You want to pick a theme that represents your business. If you can’t decide between a couple, you can change it later. Once you’ve developed a certain look that corresponds with your brand, you will want to keep it the same. Your best bet is to play with it in the design phase before you go live

Plug Ins

Ask anybody about designing a site through WordPress, and they’re likely to respond by telling you that it’s all about the plug ins. These are software and programs that can be used in conjunction with WordPress sites. Because they’re designed to “plug in”, they’re all ready to interface with WordPress. These are designed to give you tools to monetize your site, expand your marketing, and interact with your audience.

The Dashboard

In WordPress, the Dashboard is where it all happens. It’s the place that keeps everything together for you. You can access posts, pages, stats and analytics… run the show from the Dashboard.

Your Domain Name

One of the first things you’ll do is decide on a domain name. You have three main choices you should consider:

• yourname.com
• yourbusinessname.com
• descriptionofyourbusiness.com

Work towards a domain name that identifies you uniquely. If you choose your personal name, it’s great name recognition, but what if you sell your business, or even the domain name itself? Will a buyer want your name as their domain name? Spend some time thinking about this.

Web Hosting

After your site is designed, you’ll need to decide which hosting company you will use. They will give your site a place to live.

Here are some options for finding a web hosting service:

Shared Web Hosting –

The server is shared by other websites. This is the least expensive option and make sense for most small sites.

Reseller Web Hosting –

This is basically shared hosting with extra tools, such as billing software and management tools.

Cloud Based Web Hosting –

The advantage here is that the server will be able to handle a huge influx of traffic instead of crashing

Virtual Private Server –

The Virtual Private Server represents a compromise between shared hosting and owning your own server.

Dedicated Web Server –

In this scenario, you are leasing one physical server from a hosting company

Managed WordPress Hosting –

Here, the hosting provider helps keep things up to date to deter security threats and hackers.

WordPress Designers

Some people enjoy the creative process. Others… not so much! You probably know which camp you’re in. If designing and creating your website sounds daunting, there’s help for you!

Most website designers are using WordPress to design professional websites, so you won’t have any trouble shopping for one that does.

They will take your ideas and vision, and get it up and running for you!

WordPress Legal Pages

Legal pages for your website are an absolute necessity. Luckily, WordPress has them available as one of the many plug ins that they offer. You be able to include a privacy policy and other legal notifications on your site, based on your business model.

WordPress Support

Another nice thing about using WordPress for your web design is the support they have. If you have any questions, or need help staying on track, contact these folks and they’ll get you fixed up!

Things to Keep in Mind When Designing Your Website

1) Try to keep your website focused on your client and what you can do for them! Talking about yourself, or your company – “I did this. I do that.” Isn’t engaging and won’t attract customers. What problem of theirs are you going to solve?

2) Keep It:

• Professional
• Prospect Focused
• Persuasive

3) Make sure the overall look is clean and modern

4) Be certain that any media on the site ties into your business

5) Include a clear Call to Action – What do you want your customers to do from there? Click? Call? Sign Up?

6) Avoid too much text, especially on the home page.

Let Your Website Be Your Ambassador

Your site should be designed to attract customers and prospective customers. Keep it engaging. Create different types of content for it. Maintain a blog to keep folks up to date on your company, any promotions, etc.

Make sure you promote your site on social media to drive traffic to it. It doesn’t matter how awesome your site is if nobody sees it.

Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools, available on WordPress and through Plug Ins to boost your page’s rankings. When people search your business, you want to be on the first page. Very few searches make it to the second page.

Offers visitors something in exchange for their email address and opting in to your mailing list. It will be a digital report, eBook, or white paper. Make it something they will be interested to get.

Happy Designing! You’re on your way!

In this overview I will be discussing self-hosted WordPress software as I feel that is the best blogging platform available.

WordPress is available for download from WordPress.org. It is also “built-in” to many (if not all) web hosting packages because of it being in such high demand. Usually with these hosts you are able to do one or two click installs to get WordPress running.

Out of the box WordPress is considered “decent” in terms of search engine optimization (configured for increased visibility in search engines), security, speed and “look”. Because of it’s popularity though, thousands of developers contribute by providing “plugins” and “themes”, often for free, to enhance WordPress.

There are plugins available, as well as recommended settings, that when applied will improve search engine optimization, security and speed. Also, while the “default” theme is decent, it provides a starting point for countless other designs.

The great thing about WordPress is that it is not just a blogging platform, it is used as a robust content management system, meaning it allows for all types of web site hybrid systems, including membership and eCommerce systems and combinations of them all.

Also available, out of the box, is the ability to create a network of web sites very simply. This allows you to create a community allowing people to create their own blogs or sites attached to the main site, all being controlled in one central location. This opens up the door to many possibilities.

WordPress separates design from functionality from content, allowing a quick “theme” change or functionality change without “breaking” anything else. This “separation” is improved constantly by the core team of developers as well as independent developers contributing to the “WordPress vision”.

The introduction of “custom post types” in WordPress is one key thing that opened up the doors for much larger applications than just a standard blogging system.

In general, when creating a post, one would provide a title, the body, the category and perhaps some “tags”. Well, extending that for unique types of content such as “recipes” for example would allow the web site owner to add recipes as posts and have unique fields that are specific to recipes. Separating the data out like that allows for easier input on the backend, as well as the ability to sort and filter the “recipes” or other posts that have a unique style, for visitors to the web site.

The idea of ​​WordPress cloning is not new, and it can be a great way for site owners to keep from losing information and data that really matters to them and their clients. Whether you've just created a site or you've had one for years, making a clone of it means being able to restore it easily if something goes wrong and the site is lost. Otherwise, the loss of the files needed to re-create the site can leave you devastated. You definitely do not want that.

Need to Clone Your Site?

You should not have to ask if you need to clone your site. If you have a site that's powered off of WordPress, then WordPress cloning is essential. While you're using a good platform, accidents, problems, and data loss can and do happen. It's so much better to be safe rather than sorry. That's especially important when you're dealing with a business' website, because the site being down could cause a serious loss of income.

With WordPress, Cloning Can Be Easy

One of the great things about WordPress is that it's easy to get a program that will clone the site, and you do not have to pay an arm and a leg for it. You'll be getting a lot of value from the right program, too, because you can set it up to do cloning, security, and automatic backups. Peace of mind will be yours when you do not have to worry about your site being lost to some kind of unfortunate data glitch.

Do not Risk Losing Your Data

The risk of losing your data can be very real, but you do not have to take on that risk. Instead, make sure that WordPress cloning is part of your routine. You can set the software up to back itself up automatically, so you'll have a frequent clone of your site. Any data loss would be very minimal, and you will not have to worry about trying to recreate an entire site from scratch. That's good news for anyone who has a WordPress site and wants to make it work.

Many business owners use WordPress for their sites because they see how easy the platform is to use, and because the end result looks very professional. Because of the growing popularity of WordPress, the need for a good cloning option will only become more prevalent. Do not wait, and do not put your data at risk.

Comparing Magento with WordPress is like comparing apples to oranges because these are two extremes that cannot be compared. Both of them are equally good and discussed a lot in the world of Website development.

When we start peeping in the hole, we come across many similarities, differences and some limitations that are related to Magneto development and WordPress development.

What are Magento and WordPress?

Magento is a powerful open-source e-commerce solution. It is designed to customize, manage, set-up and run your online portal. It provides maximum flexibility, scalability, and control.

WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. It is probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today. It allows you to create a beautiful website that truly represents your business.

Also, WordPress emerged as the most widely used blogging platform. It still is! But now it has also emerged as a leading content management system that supports much compliance and delivers optimal performance in various scenarios.

WordPress Vs Magento — Similarities

On the surface level, these two platforms might seem to be very similar as they both are very SEO friendly, highly customizable, can be extensively themed, and provides a strong online support community. In addition to all this, both Magento and WordPress are a content management system that enables addition, modification, and management of the content in simple yet highly effective manner.

Magento Vs WordPress — Differences

When we analyze in more depth we come across many vivid differences between Magento and WordPress that are key deciding factors when we make a choice between them…

1) Difference based on programming language: WordPress is an open source website tool that has its programming contained within a set of sequenced PHP scripts while Magento is specifically developed for e-commerce and is object-oriented. It is spread across a great number of files and folders.

2) Security: Magento is also more secure than using WordPress third party plugins.

3) Development Scenario: Magento files are set up across a number of files and folders that share the same name. Where in WordPress all the files are largely contained within the same folder but have a unique naming convention. WordPress has its famed “Widgets” – objects that control the structural elements and design within a template. Magento has both CMS static blocks and widgets – while widgets offer a higher level of overall functionality.

4) E-commerce Plugins: Magento was developed specifically for eCommerce. Just by navigating through the Magento Admin Panel, you’ll notice that an overwhelming majority of it is devoted to eCommerce capabilities like shipping options, payment integration, inventory, price management, gift cards, or order fulfillment whereas for WordPress e-Commerce plug-ins are limited.

5) Based on Selling of products: If the sole purpose of your website is for blogging and content management and you are not intended to sell more than 20 to 25 products then the suitable platform for you is WordPress whereas if your goal is to sell products, then using Magento is highly recommended.

Although WordPress started out as a simple blogging system, today it has developed into a complete content management system (CMS) that can be used not only for blogging but for practically anything, with millions of people using it as a personal or business website. This is mostly due to the hundreds of plugins and widgets that are available for use. The freedom that WordPress has as a self-hosted platform implies that you can use it to create any website, simple or complex, different blogs, and so much more, while being incredibly easy to use.

In order to achieve all this, WordPress uses many different plugins, especially when it comes to SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important tools used to increase traffic on a website.

One of the best known plugins for SEO is the Yoast plugin. This plugin has over 14 million downloads as their website claims. It is a widely spread belief that your WordPress website will never have enough search engine optimization (SEO) if you don’t have the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin installed.

However, a huge flaw has been discovered in this plugin that might put your website in danger and cause leakage of confidential data.

How secure is SEO by Yoast?

Last week, an important Yoast vulnerability has been discovered which could have put millions of websites at critical risk to be attacked by hackers. This Yoast vulnerability was discovered by a developer of the WordPress vulnerability scanner Ryan Dewhurst, and it applies to almost every version of the plugins that go by the name “WordPress SEO by Yoast”.

This vulnerability is called a Blind SQL injection, or SQLi, which could cause leakage of confidential information, deleting information, or modifying important data.

According to The Hacker News – “Basically in SQLi attack, an attacker inserts a malformed SQL query into an application via client-side input.”

Explaining how a SQLi attack works!

An important thing to know is that not every user of the SEO by Yoast plugin can become a victim of hackers. Evidently, in order to abuse this Yoast vulnerability, the hacker will need the help of social engineering in order to trick authorized users which have access to the ‘admin/class-bulk-editor-list-table.php’ file (this is where the vulnerability is found) to click on a link. Authorised users which can access this file are the Admin, Editor, or Author privileged users. This means that the only way a hacker can use this flaw is if the authorized user is tricked into clicking a link (URL) which will then allow the hacker to create their own new admin account and mess up or abuse the WordPress site.

If the authorised user doesn’t click on any dangerous urls, there’s no risk of exploiting this recently discovered Yoast vulnerability.

This Yoast vulnerability has been found in most versions ending with the 1.7.3.3. version where two Blind SQL injection vulnerabilities were found.

What’s the best way to protect your WordPress website?

When something like this comes up that puts at risk millions of websites out there, a quick solution is often necessary. Immediately after this information was spread all over the internet, many quick fix-ups were offered to users.

Luckily, the team of developers of the Yoast plugin managed to rapidly issue a new, fixed and improved version of the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. The latest version of WordPress SEO by Yoast 1.7.4 is now available for downloading and the developers promise that this version has “fixed possible CSRF and blind SQL injection vulnerabilities in bulk editor.“

The team of Yoast and Joost de Valk (the owner and creator of yoast.com) have issued a WordPress SEO Security release where it states that all the flaws have been fixed. Furthermore, there will be a forced automatic update due to the seriousness of this issue. This update will be available for both free and premium users.

However, if you are a WordPress administrator and you have the auto-update feature disabled, it is recommended that you immediately upgrade your WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin manually!!!

Are you considering hosting your new website or blog with a reliable web hosting company? DreamHost VPS, Dreampress 2 and the DreamHost Dedicated Servers hosting services can help give your site the security, speed and ease it deserves. The kind of company that hosts your website has a way of determining how far your site is able to compete with the big shots and how much traffic and money you get in the long run. With DreamHost, your site is sure to compete favorably with the big shots on the internet.

Located in Brea, California, DreamHost was founded by Josh Jones, Sage Weil, Dallas Bethune and Michael Rodriguez. The company was launched in 1996 and has remained a very good and reliable web hosting service provider for developers and entrepreneurs ever since. With three data centers in downtown LA, Ashburn (Virginia) and Irvine (California) in the United States of America, and with a cloud computing platform, the issue of speed and data security are handled effectively.

This company has had to struggle with some vital issues in the past. One of those issues was the server downtime of 2006 which resulted from two outages at their data centers, and the second was the hacking of their site in 2007 which resulted in about 700 websites accounts and FTP accounts belonging to about 3500 sites being compromised. However, DreamHost seems to have put the past solidly behind them and are now providing quality, uninterrupted services to their customers. They have won the PC Mag’s Best Web Hosting Service for the second year in a row. They’ve been hosting over 1,500,000 websites since 1997.

Why Choose DreamHost VPS and Dedicated Servers Hosting?

DreamHost has four major packages which include Shared Hosting, DreamHost VPS hosting, DreamHost Dedicated Server hosting services, and DreamPress 2 Hosting mainly for WordPress websites and blogs. Let’s briefly take a look at the four different hosting packages available for you as a webmaster.

Shared Hosting: $7.95

DreamHost shared hosting starts at $7.95 monthly (if billed triennially). It has the following features:

• Unlimited bandwidth per month
• Unlimited disk space
• 1 free domain
• Hosted on Solid State Drives (SSDs)
• Unlimited domains hosting
• Unlimited MySQL 5 databases
• Unlimited e-mail accounts
• Debian Linux operating system
• 97 Day money back Guarantee

DreamHost VPS: $15 to $120

The DreamHost VPS DreamVPS hosting cost from $15 to $200 monthly. The VPS hosting package is good for e-commerce, Business, developers, and designers. The package comes with some important features amongst which are:

• Custom Built Control Panel
• Scalable Up to 8GB of RAM
• From 30GB to 240GB SSD storage
• Unlimited SSH/SFTP/FTP/Full shell users
• Unlimited MySQL 5 databases
• Unlimited domains hosting
• Unlimited e-mail accounts
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
• Debian Linux operating system

DreamHost Dedicated Server hosting: $109 to $249

The DreamHost dedicated server hosting contain six packages, and they include the following:

• New Moon 2: $109 monthly. The features include 2GB RAM, 500GB Disk, and Desktop grade CPU.
• Half Moon 2: $129 monthly. The features are 2GB RAM, 500GB disk space, and Server grade CPU.
• Half Moon 4: $139 monthly. It comes with the following features: 4GB RAM, 500GB Disk space, and Server grade CPU.
• Blue Moon 4: $169 monthly. Its features include 4GB RAM, 500GB Disk space, 1 RAID, and Server grade CPU
• Blue Moon 8: $209 monthly. It comes with the following features: 8GB RAM, 1TB Disk space, 1 RAID, and Server grade CPU
• Blue Moon 16: $249 monthly. Its features are 16GB RAM, 1TB Disk space, 1 RAID, and Server grade CPU

Apart from the individual packages listed above, all dedicated server hosting packages have the features listed for the VPS hosting above. Get quality hosting for your site right now by subscribing to one of the dedicated server hosting packages.

DreamPress 2 (Managed WordPress Hosting): $16.95

The DreamPress 2 is a package that is specifically meant for hosting WordPress blogs or websites. And it is the fastest and most reliable way to do so. It goes for $16. The features of this package are:

• Hosted on Virtual private Servers (VPS)
• Optimized WordPress Installation
• 30GB of SSDs storage
• PHP 5.6 with OPcache and Optional HHVM
• Automatic WordPress Install and Core Updates
• Use any WordPress Theme or Plugin
• 24/7 WordPress Ninja Support.

More DreamHost Features

Easy to navigate control panel: DreamHost VPS and Dedicated server hosting or any other of their hosting packages have a control panel that is easy to navigate by users, making it quite easy to configure and review options to your service, and also manage your hosting account without any problem.

Automatic Updates: In order to protect you from all forms of security risks, DreamHost uses the latest stable version of WordPress to keep your sites up to date.

Unlimited E-mails: You can create as many email addresses as you wish for your account. You can also use their new atmail web client to access and read your emails.

Rock-Solid security: DreamHost makes your website/blog security is a matter of top priority. They employ a WordPress-specific firewall to block brute-force attack and other forms of vulnerabilities.

eCommerce-Ready: DreamPress 2 offers you a private IP address. A combination of the private IP address, free Let’s Encrypt certificate, and the eCommerce plugin makes your site ready for eCommerce.

Easy Installation: DreamHost has a quick installation of packages like WordPress, Joomla, eCommerce, Moodle, Wikis, phpBB, Drupal and user forums.

Excellent Bandwidth: There is always enough bandwidth to handle the traffic spike from your site whenever you run a giveaway or contest.

My take:

DreamHost has reliable and robust packages. DreamHost VPS, DreamPress 2 and the DreamHost dedicated Servers hosting are all trusted and able to deliver on a promise. The packages are good for developers and businessmen. Support is great and available 24/7 except for the fact that telephone support is lacking. I would advise you to also do a bit of comparison with other reviews before making your purchase. Nevertheless, if you chose to go for their package, visit their site and get more detailed information regarding their products.

Pros

• Several hosting packages to choose from.
• A free 2-week trial.
• Unlimited domains per hosting plan.
• 97-day money back guarantee.

Cons

• Hosting packages are a little expensive.
• Support is slow to respond to tickets.
• cPanel is a bit difficult to understand.
• No phone support

DreamHost Affiliate Program

Apart from the DreamHost VPS, DreamPress 2 and the DreamHost Dedicated Server hosting, there are special programs that Dreamhost prepares for those who are interested in leveraging their services to make money. They allow you to join their affiliate program for free and make money as you refer customers to them. You make $97 if you refer a customer per month (if they pay for DreamHost Dedicated Server hosting). If you can continue with that for a full year, you earn a total of $1,164. You don’t have to own a hosting account before participating in the affiliate program.

However, if the customer buys a Shared hosting plan, you earn a one-time payment of $30. The VPS also earns you $30 while the DreamPress 2 earns you $50. Note that the recurrent affiliate payment has been stopped since February 16, 2016. For the affiliate to be qualified for payment, the referred customer must maintain an active account for the free trial period and /or money-back guarantee periods applicable. If the customer cancels his hosting plan, receives a refund or becomes suspended, the affiliate loses his affiliate reward. You will be paid after the 97-day holding period.

Once you are registered for their affiliate program, they will give you promotional materials like banners, affiliate links, etc which you will place on your website/blog. If any of your site visitors clicks on the links to purchase a hosting package, you will be paid a commission because the sales came via your site.

It is quite easy to make sales by telling your site users about the DreamHost VPS service or the DreamHost Dedicated Servers hosting, all because a lot of people are looking for where to get those services online. Since DreamHost is a trusted web hosting service provider, it is easier to convince your readers to visit and buy hosting packages from their site.

The cookies life is just 30 days; and in the situation where the customer clicks on multiple referral links, the credits goes to the affiliate whose link was last clicked before making the purchase. Join the DreamHost affiliate program today and begin to earn substantial passive incomes.