A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. – Wikipedia

Every website needs a host to create a home for their website. Think of a host as an empty lot, and your website being the house that is built on it. Having good and secure hosting is one of the first things you need to get sorted when it comes to setting up your website.

We use WordPress and WooCommerce to run websites.

WordPress server requirements:

• PHP 7.4 or greater
• MySQL 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB 10.1 or greater
• Nginx or Apache with mod_rewrite module
• HTTPS support
• Memory: 512Mb

While you can run a small website with as little as 256MB of RAM, if you’re installing WordPress on your own server you’ll want at least 512 MB of RAM for your basic site if you want to ensure good performance.

WooCommerce server requirements:

• PHP version 7.3 or greater
• MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.0 or greater
• WordPress memory limit of 128 MB or greater
• HTTPS support

No. Why? Because we want you to own your website. By owning your own hosting and URL, you are in control of your website and server, not us. 

Once you have purchased your website, we will send you a checklist of all of the items we need. One of them will be logins to your hosting provider.

Well, we don’t recommend it. Most local hosting companies offer shared hosting. A shared web hosting service is a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. This is generally the most economical option for hosting, as the overall cost of server maintenance is spread over many customers.

This results in minimum server resources that are usually capped at 128Mb of memory. WordPress and WooCommerce server requirements only start at 128Mb, so having it capped at the starting point is not a good start for your site.

Having too little memory for your server to run on, creates error pages, takes pages or websites down, and can make customers run away faster than you can say “Trust broken”. In some cases, you even have to pay extra for an SSL certificate which is a non-negotiable when it comes to eCommerce stores.

If you do not want to go with one of our suggested hosts, we suggest copying and pasting the below, and emailing your preferred host to ensure the server requirements are enough.

Hi!

I’m interested in running WordPress and WooCommerce web software for my web project and I was wondering if my account supported the following:

• PHP 7.4 or greater
• MySQL 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB 10.1 or greater
• Nginx or Apache with mod_rewrite module
• HTTPS support
• WordPress memory limit of 128 MB or greater
• HTTPS support

Thanks!

SSL certificates are a small data files that cryptographically establish an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remain private.

They are a non negotiable for an eCommerce site.

Can be installed via your hosting interface.

We have a few hosting companies we recommend. To get hosting, and a URL, click on the link, and have a look at their pricing. Select the package that suits you, and subscribe for an annual pricing.

The below recommendations are for sites with less that 500 products, with no more than 25 000 views a month.

Siteground – this is our referral link

Kinsta – see plans

Cloudways – $10 a month – click here

WP Engine – click here

Dreamhost – Managed WordPress Option

Easily put, this is an address for a web page.

.com is good if you have an international business, but if you are targeting a specific area, rather choose a URL extension that fits that.

We recommend signing up with a URL at the same place you sign up with your hosting.

If they are with two different hosting companies, they hosting and URL will need to be pointed to each other, which could take an additional 48 hours to propagate (be live).

You can host your emails and your website on the same server, if your host allows that. For security purposes, we suggest not having them on the same server.

You can then either access your emails via Webmail, Outlook, or sign up for the Google Suite.