Tag Archives: Site

Does It Really Make Your Site Faster?

[ad_1] WP Engine is one of the very first companies to start offering tailor-made hosting for WordPress websites. They’re also one of the most popular such services online today. In this WP Engine review, we tell you if their product is actually any good! Here’s what we’re going to cover: What WP Engine is and how it’s different from classic hosting 🤔 WP Engine is what we like to call “managed WordPress hosting.” Although there’s no rock-solid definition of the term, the way most people understand it is web hosting that either houses/allows only WordPress websites or is at least specially optimized to run WordPress websites. What those optimizations are in practice changes from company to company, and there’s no official list of features that a hosting platform needs to have in order to be allowed to call itself WordPress hosting. So that’s “WordPress hosting,” but what is “managed WordPress hosting?” The managed part means that the user doesn’t have to deal with any server-level tasks on their own but instead gets that handled by the hosting company itself. In simple terms, when you’re on managed hosting, your main responsibility is to take care of your website’s content and not worry about any technical aspects under the hood. What’s WP Engine’s part in all this? WP Engine is the most well-known WordPress hosting provider on the market. As of this writing, the company serves 150,000+ customers worldwide, and it’s also one of the best-reviewed hosting companies in the WordPress space. In a recent survey, users rated it at 8.69 / 10 overall (data). So, is WP Engine really that good? Let’s examine it up close in the next sections of this WP Engine review: WP Engine review: features and pricing ⚙️💵 You probably already know that WP Engine is not the cheapest host out there. I’m guessing that’s why you’re here – to see if the high price tag is worth it. With that, we want to highlight a couple of elements of the WP Engine pricing model that are easy to overlook. But let’s start from the top. Here are the main plans that you can choose from: As you can see, getting onto the WP Engine bandwagon is from $25 a month when paid annually (billed at $300 for the whole year). This is not a small amount, considering that you can get a setup that’s similar – on paper – for a third of this. However, there’s a lot that’s going on under the hood: Even if you go for the entry-level plan that allows just one website, you can still take full advantage of WP Engine’s multi-environment setup with a Production, Staging, and Development version of your site. You get access to 35+ premium WordPress themes by StudioPress, including the popular Genesis Framework. You also get built-in integration with Local – a tool for local WordPress development originally built by Flywheel (another host that WP Engine acquired). There are automatic updates for WordPress core. There’s a functional site migration solution available for free. There are some useful pro-level tools that we’ll talk about later on in this WP Engine review. Apart from that, the list of extras available across different price points with WP Engine is quite impressive. Even the entry-level plan gives you access to all of the following: PHP 7.4 support. Transferable sites – an option for developers to create websites for clients without making those websites count against the developer’s site limits. Evercache – a proprietary front-end cache by WP Engine. LargeFS – Large Files System to let you store and transfer large amounts of data. Global CDN provided to WP Engine by MaxCDN. Page Performance – performance analysis and improvement tool. Automated and manual backup features, plus one-click restore. Automated SSL certificates. SSH gateway – access to command-line tools for the pros. Git version control. On higher tiers, you also get perks such as 24/7 phone support, WordPress multisite, or even the option to include geographically customized content via WP Engine’s GeoTarget feature. In the end, while WP Engine is not the cheapest WordPress host on the market, it might just be the one that gives you the most bang for your buck – especially once you start doing the math on all the additional stuff you’d need to run your site. For instance, if you’ve been planning on using the Genesis Framework anyway (a popular option), plus you want access to staging sites for development, then WP Engine might just be the budget-conscious choice after all. How easy to use is WP Engine? 👐 Upon signing up and logging in to your account for the first time, you’ll be able to get a WordPress website spun up right away. There’s an Add site button in the top right corner. When you click it, it triggers a pop-up form that lets you install a new instance of WordPress in a really simplified manner (no need to deal with any database settings or anything like that): Right up front, it’s also quite apparent that WP Engine is a professional-level tool when it comes to WordPress hosting. For instance, you are encouraged to set up three environments for your site – Production, Staging, and Development – instead of just a single one. This helps greatly if you have a team of people working on the site and gradually rolling out changes. The idea is that you can work on building new elements of your site on Development, then roll them out to Staging for testing, and then move everything to Production for the world to see. WP Engine lets you create a new environment very easily just by clicking a single button and then providing some parameters of the environment. No matter if you’re creating your initial instance of Production or a new Staging environment, the process looks the same. You get to choose from a couple of options: As you can see in the image above, you can: create a fresh instance

Continue reading

Google Site Kit Plugin Ships Hot Fix for Critical Error That Caused Broken Websites – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Google published an update to its Site Kit plugin for WordPress this afternoon with a hot fix for a critical issue affecting an unknown number of users. Reports of broken websites were popping up on Twitter and in the plugin’s support forum on WordPress.org. Users affected by the issue reported having a critical error on all sites using Site Kit, which forced deactivation of the plugin in recovery mode. In some cases it prevented them from accessing their dashboards. “On Wednesday, August 11, we identified a fatal error in the Site Kit plugin that could be triggered by other plugins or themes using an unprefixed version of Composer,” Google Site Kit Support Lead Bethany Chobanian Lang said in a pinned post on the support forum. Version 1.38.1 contains a hot fix for this issue, since it was critical enough to take down users’ websites. The plugin’s maintainers began investigating the issue less than 24 hours ago but are still not sure which plugins trigger the error due to their usage of Composer. “The reports do not include which specific plugins or themes were causing this, but the error message clearly highlighted the code in Site Kit that was the problem,” Google Developer Relations Engineer Felix Arntz said. “Technically, that problematic code had been in Site Kit since several versions ago (months back), so maybe another plugin/theme recently got updated with new code that exposed the problem.” After looking at popular plugins, Arntz said he hasn’t been able to find one so far that would have triggered the problem. Given Site Kit’s broad usage, other affected sites are bound to turn up once users realize there is a problem. Google launched the plugin in 2019 and has since amassed more than a million active installations. The majority of the plugin’s user base is running older versions, which may or may not be affected by the current issue. WordPress.org shows 35.6% of the plugin’s users are on version 1.38.x. The hot fix is not backported for older releases, but users running Site Kit version 1.38 with background updates enabled should automatically receive the fix. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

Continue reading

“The Block Editor Gets Ready to Become a Site Builder” – WordPress Tavern

[ad_1] Matt Mullenweg and Matías Ventura joined WordCamp Europe to chat about what’s happening with the Gutenberg project and celebrate the progress contributors have made over the past four years. “For me, 2020 was the year that really felt like people started to see the vision of Gutenberg from four or five years ago, when it was very abstract and they saw it as kind of like the old WYSIWYG editor with some extra lines on it or something,” Mullenweg said. “The first 17 or 18 years of WordPress democratized people putting text into a box. Now we’re democratizing design, allowing people to control the boxes.” Ventura commented on how transformative patterns have been for making page design approachable for users. “Perhaps it was a smaller part of the roadmap initially but it’s becoming a centerpiece – especially because it allows…world class designers to provide a starting point for users and users get to learn design as they are interacting with themes,” Ventura said. He began his WordPress developer journey by “tinkering with themes,” as many others did, and believes that blocks can unlock a similar experimental learning experience. “I think we are getting into a chapter where people will be able to tinker with things that were sort of hidden for you in WordPress – more advanced things like queries and loops, that we can now expose through blocks,” Ventura said. “They can be stepping stones for people to learn how to work with WordPress.” Mullenweg commented on how things that previously would have required a fairly experienced WordPress developer to do, like creating a home page with a column that shows five recent posts from a particular category, and another column that shows featured posts in a different category, you can now do with just a few clicks. “It’s no code – it’s like expanding the layers of accessibility of what people are able to do with WordPress,” Mullenweg said. “That, to me, is very core to our mission.” Mullenweg and Ventura debuted a new “Gutenberg highlight” video that covers current and new features coming to the block editor, as it “gets ready to become a site builder.” These kinds of marketing videos are so valuable because users don’t always know what is possible, even if the tools are approachable for anyone to use. The video demonstrates new design features for different blocks, including the transform live previews, dragging media into container blocks, inline cropping without leaving the editor canvas, the template editor, duotone image filters, more customization options for navigation, improvements to the list view browser, and the new global styles design that is coming soon. Check out the video below and you can also watch Mullenweg and Ventura’s conversation that was recorded during the event. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

Continue reading

Review Signal Publishes 2021 Hosting Performance Benchmarks on New WordPress-Powered Site – WordPress Tavern

[ad_1] Kevin Ohashi has published his 2021 WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks report. The annual report is broken down into six different hosting tiers, from the most economical <$25/month, to the $500+ enterprise level. This is the second year the stats include WooCommerce-specific hosts as a separate category. After eight years of measuring peak performance and consistency for WordPress hosts, Review Signal has relaunched benchmarks on wphostingbenchmarks.com, a WordPress-powered site. Review Signal started using sentiment analysis to capture consumer reviews of hosting companies on Twitter in 2011 and launched in 2012. Ohashi added a WordPress blog but said it never really integrated well with the code and design of the rest of the site. He launched the benchmarks in 2013, publishing the first handful of tests via a simple blog post. “In 2020 it was dozens of companies, 6 full price tiers of competition, and a separate WooCommerce group as well,” Ohashi said. “It really has become its own product, and creating a dedicated site for them at WPHostingBenchmarks.com is recognition of that fact. It also opened the door for a rebranding effort and a much better presentation of the results.” Results on the new site are much easier to understand at a glance with honorable mentions and top tier companies denoted by a half star and full star. Visitors can click through to get more specific information about each host’s performance on the tests. Top tier performers in the <$25 tier included 20i, CynderHost, EasyWP by Namecheap, Eco Web Hosting, Green Geeks, Lightning Base, RAIDBOXES, and WPX, with a handful of honorable mentions. In the Enterprise tier (shown above), RAIDBOXES, Scaleforce powered by Jelastic, Seravo, Servebolt, Servebolt Accelerated, and WordPress VIP capture the top tier spots. Now that the new site is database driven, Ohashi can publish faster and reduce the amount of work it takes going forward. “It also lets me auto generate pages from the data – for example company profile pages,” he said. “I attempted to write a blog post in the past about companies that did well, but it was never really a success. Now, I can display all their historical results, pull up analysis, compare them all by year, etc. So I am happier, companies are (hopefully) happier, and most of all – consumers get better insight into the results.” WooCommerce Benchmarks Expanding WooCommerce benchmarks have expanded since their first time to be included separately last year. Five out of the 11 companies tested scored top tier results, including Lightning Base, Pressable, Servebolt, SiteGround, and WordPress.com. Servebolt scored 99.999% Uptime and the fastest Load Storm average response time, along with the fastest wp-login, Buyer and Customer profiles and second fastest Home profile. Pressable reprised its top tier status with perfect uptime and the second fastest Average Response Time on WebPageTest. WordPress.com posted perfect uptime, the second fastest K6 average response time, and a solid Load Storm test. On the WebPageTest results WordPress.com took 10/12 of the fastest response times and posted the fastest WP Bench scores Ohashi has ever recorded and the second fastest PHP Bench. In 2021, SiteGround slipped to honorable mention status in every other tier where it was tested, with the exception of WooCommerce. Lightning Base maintained its top tier status with a 99.99% uptime rating, very good flat Load Storm and K6 results, and no problems with the tests. “For WooCommerce I had seven companies participate last year and this year had 11 companies, which is a 57% increase,” Ohashi said. “The traditional WordPress benchmarks grew from ~29 companies last year to 35-37 depending on if you differentiate Automattic brands (VIP, WP.com, Pressable) which is at least a 20% growth in participation.” Ohashi said he is pleased with the mix of new entrants and companies that have participated for years, but the pandemic has slowed Review Signal’s business. “It’s been a bit slow revenue wise,” he said. “I don’t sell any products and don’t think I’ve found any advantage during the pandemic to make what I do stand out relative to what’s happening to the world. That is another motivating reason for creating WPHostingBenchmarks.com, I wanted to take that extra time I have and make the biggest change for Review Signal in years.” Review Signal’s benchmarks are one of the most thorough and transparent evaluations of hosting products in the industry. This is because Ohashi doesn’t accept any hosting sponsorship. Each company pays a small, publicly documented, fee for participation to cover the costs of the tests. These fees are standardized based on the pricing tier of the product entered into the testing. Consumers in the market for a new hosting company will find WPHostingBenchmarks a solid resource for comparing how companies perform at different pricing tiers. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

Continue reading

How to Set Your Site Icon (Favicon) in WordPress • WPShout

[ad_1] One thing every WordPress site should have is a site icon, also called a “favicon”—the little tiny image that shows up in your browser tabs to let you tell one site from another. Ours at WPShout is a orange circle with a bullhorn inside it, so you which tabs are us. For the more visually-inclined, here’s a relevant summary image of a site icon: Image illustrating a site favicon taken from WordPress itself, because they illustrated it so well ☺️ This video Quick Guide walks you through how to change your WordPress site icon. It’s easier now than ever, because WordPress has embedded this feature right into the Customizer. And WordPress’s standard site icon uploading process has you covered for all the less common uses for favicons (such as serving as retina-ready desktop app icons if someone saves a shortcut to your site onto her iPad homescreen). Here’s my video guide on how to set your site icon in WordPress: And here’s our text guide to the same information: How to Change the Site Icon of Your WordPress Site Collect the image that you’ll use as your site icon (if it’s not already on your WordPress site). Open the Customizer in WordPress. You can click “Customize” along the top bar (if you’re viewing pages on your site), or “Appearance > Customize” in the left-side menu (if you’re in your WordPress admin area). Open the “Site Identity” panel by clicking it from the initial listing panel. Open the “Site Icon” section. If it hasn’t been used before on your site you’ll click the “Select Image” button. There you will select an image already in your image library, or have the ability to upload a new one. (If you’ve ever used WordPress’s media library, this screen should be familiar.) You will have the ability to crop the image. If it was square, you’ll probably skip this by clicking “Crop Image” without resizing the selection box. (If you do need to crop, drag away.) With that, you’ll be set. Your browser tab may immediately update with the image. If it doesn’t, but you see something like this, you’re set: (Browser caching can be hard to debug, but refresh may fix it for you.) 🙂 And that’s how to change your WordPress site icon! Streamlining this process has been one of the default Customizer’s sweetest features. Let us know if you have any questions—we’re happy to help. [ad_2] Source link

Continue reading
1 2