If you want to get the most out of your website, you’ll need to carefully manage several aspects of your web hosting, especially when it comes to balancing performance and affordability.
Make your website efficient, make sure you’re using all of the hosting resources you’re paying for, and eliminate any resources that are being wasted.
You don’t have to break the bank to build a responsive, highly functional website that looks great and gets you all the traffic you want by optimising your web hosting resources.
After you’ve gained a large following, you’ll have to make some tough decisions.
How well-equipped is your website to deal with an influx of new visitors?
Managing your web hosting resources is the best way to ensure that your site can keep up with increasing traffic.
You can easily build a platform that can handle your current traffic and grow with your user base as your business expands.
Aiming for the right balance of performance and cost is the goal of this article, and we’ll examine ten ways to achieve it.
Avoid Third-Party Assets
Images, videos, database connections, and other types of third-party assets are all examples of third-party assets. These services aren’t hosted by the same company as your website.
It takes longer for your website to load when third-party resources are accessed.
Users complain about the lag that occurs as a result of the longer load times.
The “Buffering” message will appear on your site if it links to external videos.
How many of us have found ourselves staring at this message while waiting for a video to load?
You’ll be able to reduce the amount of time it takes for your site to load by serving all of your content directly from your site.
When you host your own content, you reduce your reliance on third parties and increase your level of autonomy.
Use Website Caching to Reduce Load Times
All of your website’s elements must be sent to the visitor’s web browser each time they visit.
Because many of your website’s resources will be requested for each new page that a user visits on your website, the page load times will be longer than they should be.
Using caching, this issue can be resolved.
Users’ browsers are instructed to request fewer copies of resources they already have on their computer by website caching.
Your page load time will be dramatically reduced if you tell the browser to stop downloading the parts of the page that it has already downloaded.
There are a number of web tools that can assist you in determining whether or not caching is required.
To see if caching will improve your website’s performance, you can use these.
Set Up Spam Filters
When using your website to attract new customers and visitors, it is critical to keep in touch with your customers and visitors.
You most likely use a mailer to communicate with your website in order to receive and respond to inquiries.
How do you get rid of the junk email?
If you’re concerned about spam, installing a plugin that verifies comments is an easy solution.
Such plugins require users to answer security questions in order to verify their identity.
In order to prove that they are not a robot, Google Captcha asks users to identify pictures.
Using a professional spam filter service is a must if you have an email address that receives visitor inquiries.
Your email inbox will be significantly reduced and your communication channels will be more efficient.
Web hosting services will run more smoothly if spam is reduced.
Optimize Database Usage
A little database optimization doesn’t matter what platform you’re using—whether it’s MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or any other type of database.
The amount of time it takes for certain parts of your website to load is directly related to the number of database queries you run.
Check the efficiency of your current SQL queries if your site is experiencing performance issues.
Because MySQL is open source and extremely effective, many hosting providers will offer you database functionality through this open source database.
As a fast, nimble, and user-friendly database management system, MySQL is well-suited to web-based environments.
No matter what kind of database management system you’re using, there’s always room for improvement.
Query structure and syntax can be easily corrected, but it’s also possible that you’ll have to upgrade your software.
You can find out what your database queries are up to by employing simple optimization techniques.
To help users understand what their queries are doing when they run them, MySQL has a built-in ‘explain’ command that does an excellent job.
This will help you figure out why some queries are taking a long time to run, and it will give you an idea of the database’s efficiency.
Monitor User Input
If you’re worried about people abusing your submission form and leaving spam comments, you can set up some safeguards to keep them out.
Regularly monitor comments and take steps to ensure that only constructive feedback is allowed.
Limiting the amount of text that can be submitted might be helpful.
Make sure your comment form enforces a maximum-character rule for all comments so that they are all subject to a character limit.
It’s not good for the site’s reputation to have a comments section that isn’t properly moderated.
If you’re running a business on the site, you’ll want to make sure that your commenters are respectful and that their language is acceptable to you and your platform.
Scan for Large Folders and Files
As previously discussed, website caching can be a useful tool, but sometimes the backend of your site needs a little TLC.
Older versions of your website are frequently left on the web server, where they can be lost forever.
Storage space is needed for these files, and keeping them around can have an impact on your site’s performance.
It is possible to identify these resource squanderers with the aid of specific tools.
To help you deal with them, they’ll show you how to delete the files that you can and can’t.
To avoid accidentally erasing important data, make sure the files have been deactivated.
Keep only what you need and get rid of what you don’t.
If at all possible, automate this cleanup process by scripting and scheduling it to run on a regular basis.
Select the Right CMS
When it comes to your website, your content management system (CMS) serves as the skeleton.
It’s not easy to find one that’s both powerful and light.
This could be the difference between your website being great or just okay. There are many options out there.
Some of the most popular CMS platforms:
- WordPress:
WordPress started out as a simple blogging platform, but has since evolved into a full-fledged content management system (CMS).
Even so, it has since evolved into a full-fledged content management system (CMS) with a wide range of plugins (many of which are free), as well as a host of useful features.
- Joomla!:
As a content management system (CMS), Joomla! has always excelled at managing online content and plugins.
- Drupal:
Drupal began as a bulletin board service, but over time it evolved into much more.
Currently, Drupal is an open-source CMS with more than 114,000 active contributors.
Update When Necessary
While pressing the big Update button is always tempting in the world of computers and software, it’s not always the best course of action.
Having a custom-built website means you’re aware that software updates can break things from time to time.
There is a chance that a plugin will stop working or that images will not load.
It’s possible that anything could go wrong if the updates aren’t tested before being applied.
Test your site after you’ve made the necessary updates by creating a copy of your live site.
Instead of risking your live website with untested updates, use this method instead.
You’ll be able to fix any issues on your test site before updating your main site if something goes wrong during the upgrade.
Monitor Your Plugins
Remove unnecessary plugins.
For the most part, this is straightforward.
Be on the lookout for unfamiliar plugins when monitoring your system.
There could be a problem with your website’s security if you find plugins that you didn’t install yourself.
Keep an eye on any changes that may have occurred following a plugin update.
As a result, you should always conduct a test of any updates on an offline test site prior to making any permanent changes to the plugin.
Offload your System Logs
The system architecture of many websites already includes logging capabilities.
It aids site owners in collecting and storing useful data about the platform’s visitors’ behaviour.
Because of the size of this data, it can have a negative effect on the website’s performance, especially when it was already limited.
It’s a good idea to make regular copies of your log files and store them offsite in case you ever need them.
When troubleshooting or investigating a problem, it’s a good idea to keep a log of everything that goes on in your system.
Make the Most of Your Web Hosting Resources
Because hosting resources are often limited, it is critical that you make the most of what you have.
If you’ve published more content or seen an increase in traffic, you can spend money on more resources to keep up with the demand and keep your website running smoothly.
You could, for example, increase the amount of storage or boost the system’s performance with a faster CPU and more RAM.
In the long run, you’ll pay more money for a website that isn’t as effective as you hoped.
Optimizing your web hosting resources and periodically verifying that they are being used efficiently is a better strategy.
To ensure that your visitors return to your site time and time again, you must use your resources in the most efficient manner possible.
Is there anything you’re doing to maximise the resources of your web host?