How To Find The Best Web Hosting Site For Your New Travel Blog
I am not the most tech savvy person in the world, so I was relieved to find out that there are dedicated web hosts that can help you with the specific technologies and services needed for a blog to be viewed online
I signed up with one that was recommended to me, but after a few months I found that it wasn’t a good match for what I wanted to do. As a travel blogger I needed certain things from a web host.
Here’s what to look for when picking a web hosting service for your travel blog…
WordPress Knowledge
If like me, you are not gifted at coding but want a site that looks professional and is easy to set up and maintain, then WordPress is almost certainly the best option to power your blog.
There are a number of reasons why I say this, and you can find 10 detailed reasons here.
A host whose customer support teams have a good understanding of WordPress is crucial because it means you can go straight to them and don’t have to spend hours trawling through different forums to find the answers to your problems.
Backup and Security
As a ‘professional traveler’ I often find myself in places that do not have reliable access to the internet. Therefore, I am not always able to get online and check my website for possible hacks or perform daily backup procedures.
A good host will keep up to 30 days of backups for you. So if you get hacked or find that your site has been seriously compromised, all you need to do is restore your site to its previously backed up state.
Support Availability
Having a great support team is no help if they are not available when you need them. As a travel blogger, it’s likely you will be all over the world and working outside of the standards 9-5 Monday-Friday business hours. Therefore, you want your support team to be available around the clock, preferably 24/7.
Response times shouldn’t be long, and a host that offers a Live Chat service where you can talk directly to technical experts is invaluable. As you will be traveling around, working in different countries, you will want to have an unlocked phone so as you can get a local sim card and avoid incurring huge data roaming charges when you contact the support services. Here is a guide to unlocking your iPhone.
Speed
If it takes more than 3 seconds to load a page, you will lose 40% of your visitors, so having a fast website is important as you don't want visitors to move on to your competitors.
Some web hosts will perform well under light traffic but then falter under heavy loads. This may be fine when you are first starting up and don’t have many visitors, but if your site takes off (as is the aim) then you may run into some serious performance issues that affect your visitors' experience.
Uptime
As well as being speedy, your blog needs to be accessible to visitors all the time. Clearly, it is very difficult to guarantee things at 100% because occasionally things do go wrong, but you don’t want your blog to be offline on a frequent basis. Choose a web host that promises 99% uptime or better.
Cost
For new travel bloggers, I would suggest starting with a good shared hosting account. A shared hosting account is cheap, easy to maintain, and sufficient for most new sites. It will allow you to concentrate on building your blog without getting swamped with technical development tasks that you can learn later when you are ready to upscale
There is a lot of competition between hosting companies and you will get what you pay for. My advice is to take some time to research the different options and try to find out what rival websites in your niche are using. Here is a site that gives good advice on hosting options and offers tons of really impressive discount offers.
Scalability
If you are serious about becoming a successful travel blogger then the growth of your blog should be your main priority. As you produce more content and develop ways to draw visitors to your site, scalability becomes a factor.
So before you choose a web host, think about today, tomorrow and the long-term future. All it could take is one piece of content you have produced to go viral and your blog can go from a tiny little startup to a rankings monster. Look for a web host that will give your blog room to grow with good variance across their plans.
I’ve been obsessed with the beauty and the wonder of this wide world since before I could walk or even talk. I was always exploring as a toddler – much to my parents’ dismay – and things haven’t changed since. As soon as I finished school, I was off and around the world. I’ve spent the last 3 1/2 years (and counting) writing my way around every corner of this incredible globe, and I don’t plan on slowing down any time soon.
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