Hi there,
this came to my mind last night when I was browsing random blogs,shops and websites.
Most of these sites are using a 'Shared hosting' Plan (Bluehost, A2 Hosting, Hostgator, etc.) and don't care much about the underlying system.
What is the problem with the underlying system:
Note: That is my point of view and my goal is to 'understand' it.
1) Security: Shared Hosting plans are having security concerns. With a plan like this you need to trust the guys behind the Hoster. With a VPS (Virtual Private Server) you have basically full control and therefore you need to secure your Server. If your Website is hacked on a shared hosting solution, other customers on the same server might suffer as well and vice versa.
Wordpress is used by 59.9% (Usage Statistics and Market Share of WordPress for Websites, August 2018) therefore Wordpress is one of the biggest targets for hackers.
Yes, you can install Plugins, but you shouldn't install every security plugin, because: Security Plugins: More of a Problem Than a Solution? - ManageWP (from 2014).
The other problem(s): It is pretty easy to find other Websites on the same server and a hacker could either target the whole server to screw up every website on the same server or target every website individually (And maybe still screw every website afterwards). If the hacker targets the whole server, the website owner needs to trust the hoster and just can hope it is secure enough (Updates, (Kernel-) Patches, secured/hardened SSH, etc.), website owners also need to trust their hoster in terms of configuration of the web server (Apache is used most of the times), if its misconfigured you might have a faulty website (Specific Bots, crawlers or user-agents are blocked for example). It is also possible to add a layer of security with the web server configuration such as block specific requests (SQL Injection blocks), block XSS (Cross-Site-Scripting), block Layer7 attacks (DDoS Attacks) or simply customize other configurations such as cache size/length, buffer and upload size (with timeout, if it’s a BIG file and depending on upload speed).
So you are able to tweak, customize and configure everything, IF you have full control.
2) Performance: Losing performance is bad for SEO. The faster a website, the better the user experience and therefore googles crawling frequency is faster as well as more requests per connections. It is not possible to always optimize a website with the underlying web server technology, sometimes it’s a faulty Wordpress Theme or even a Plugin, now, if you have a badly coded Theme or Plugin PLUS the lower performance of a shared hosting solution, your SEO will suffer from it.
3) Scalability/Traffic: Since it is shared hosting, you share all the Hardware with other website owners on the same server and with that said, you are limited. The problem here is, most of the hosting providers offering a 'Unmetered' usage per month. What that means: You don't know the limit and the Hoster can cancel your hosting immediately, if your traffic affects other websites on the same server.
But I have to say: Even with a VPS you share resources, but the resources are MUCH less than with a 'shared hosting' solution and you have full control over the system itself plus a much higher bandwidth limit.
Now, I don't want that you cancel your shared hosting solution and hire a sysadmin or to scare you away (even though it is pretty scary - but that might be me, working in InfoSec is scary nonetheless..).
I also don't want to bring down shared hosting or rant against them, because the market is there and many people appreciate and use the market.
I would like to know, how to deliver this message without too much technical insights to people. Because I have the feeling that the technical stuff scares most people or they simply don't care and wave me away.
Thanks!
this came to my mind last night when I was browsing random blogs,shops and websites.
Most of these sites are using a 'Shared hosting' Plan (Bluehost, A2 Hosting, Hostgator, etc.) and don't care much about the underlying system.
What is the problem with the underlying system:
Note: That is my point of view and my goal is to 'understand' it.
1) Security: Shared Hosting plans are having security concerns. With a plan like this you need to trust the guys behind the Hoster. With a VPS (Virtual Private Server) you have basically full control and therefore you need to secure your Server. If your Website is hacked on a shared hosting solution, other customers on the same server might suffer as well and vice versa.
Wordpress is used by 59.9% (Usage Statistics and Market Share of WordPress for Websites, August 2018) therefore Wordpress is one of the biggest targets for hackers.
Yes, you can install Plugins, but you shouldn't install every security plugin, because: Security Plugins: More of a Problem Than a Solution? - ManageWP (from 2014).
The other problem(s): It is pretty easy to find other Websites on the same server and a hacker could either target the whole server to screw up every website on the same server or target every website individually (And maybe still screw every website afterwards). If the hacker targets the whole server, the website owner needs to trust the hoster and just can hope it is secure enough (Updates, (Kernel-) Patches, secured/hardened SSH, etc.), website owners also need to trust their hoster in terms of configuration of the web server (Apache is used most of the times), if its misconfigured you might have a faulty website (Specific Bots, crawlers or user-agents are blocked for example). It is also possible to add a layer of security with the web server configuration such as block specific requests (SQL Injection blocks), block XSS (Cross-Site-Scripting), block Layer7 attacks (DDoS Attacks) or simply customize other configurations such as cache size/length, buffer and upload size (with timeout, if it’s a BIG file and depending on upload speed).
So you are able to tweak, customize and configure everything, IF you have full control.
2) Performance: Losing performance is bad for SEO. The faster a website, the better the user experience and therefore googles crawling frequency is faster as well as more requests per connections. It is not possible to always optimize a website with the underlying web server technology, sometimes it’s a faulty Wordpress Theme or even a Plugin, now, if you have a badly coded Theme or Plugin PLUS the lower performance of a shared hosting solution, your SEO will suffer from it.
3) Scalability/Traffic: Since it is shared hosting, you share all the Hardware with other website owners on the same server and with that said, you are limited. The problem here is, most of the hosting providers offering a 'Unmetered' usage per month. What that means: You don't know the limit and the Hoster can cancel your hosting immediately, if your traffic affects other websites on the same server.
But I have to say: Even with a VPS you share resources, but the resources are MUCH less than with a 'shared hosting' solution and you have full control over the system itself plus a much higher bandwidth limit.
Now, I don't want that you cancel your shared hosting solution and hire a sysadmin or to scare you away (even though it is pretty scary - but that might be me, working in InfoSec is scary nonetheless..).
I also don't want to bring down shared hosting or rant against them, because the market is there and many people appreciate and use the market.
I would like to know, how to deliver this message without too much technical insights to people. Because I have the feeling that the technical stuff scares most people or they simply don't care and wave me away.
Thanks!
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