What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

We offer a type of WordPress web hosting at IDP called Managed WordPress Hosting. It is full service web hosting for WordPress sites. With our managed WordPress hosting plan we take care of everything for you so you don’t have to worry. Managed WordPress hosting means that we actively manage the web hosting environment and the WordPress sites keeping them up to date, secure and backed up, while you focus on other aspects of your business.

Why do you need Managed WordPress Hosting?

WordPress is a fantastic content management system to use for your business website, especially when it is paired with reliable hosting. Most of our web design projects are WordPress web design projects. Our clients are happy with WordPress and how easy it is to use. However, a WordPress website is not one you can just build and forget about it for a year or two and ignore it. The WordPress site needs maintenance, security and backups. Setting up and managing the maintenance, security and backups can get technical. Most organizations do not have the time or expertise to manage the WordPress hosting so let our managed web hosting plan and IDP developers do it all for you.

WordPress software is a huge target. Over half of the websites in the world today run on WordPress. That means hackers and spammers spend a lot of time focusing on the most popular CMS website program in the world, as well as servers running WordPress Hosting. Our managed web hosting plan will protect your WordPress site from the bad guys. If your website is compromised, we will restore it from our backups and clean it of any Malware.

WordPress Hosting Tips

• Keep your website updated. The WordPress software and all plugins need to be updated at least once a quarter. If a serious WP vulnerability occurs then it needs to be updated immediately.
• Keep your plugins under control. The goal is to use the least amount of plugins possible. The more plugins you install the more potential security holes you create and the more software bloat you add to your website. Keeping plugins under control will maintain security of your site while also increasing speeds.
• Backups- At IDP we do the backups for you so you do not have to worry about it. Most web hosts only backup the entire web server and they cannot restore individual WordPress sites or individual files, which impacts hosting. Users often don’t backup the WordPress database at all. You need to use a WP backup plugin or have some other WP backup service running.
• Passwords and WordPress Users – Check your WordPress users and delete any accounts that you do not need access. Delete any account with “admin” as the username. Use complex passwords.
• SSL Certificate – Install an SSL certificate on your website and make sure all of the content is secure. You should get a lock in the address bar. The SSL cert is good for security and good for SEO. IDP will install and SSL Certificate for you, free of charge, as part of our WordPress Hosting.
• WordPress Security Plugin – Every WordPress site must have a security plugin installed. There are several good ones such as Sucuri Security and Wordfence.
• Hardening – Most WordPress security plugins will perform file hardening to lock down your file permissions. It is a good idea to look at your file permissions in your hosting control panel and lock them down. Nothing should ever be 777 file permissions. We run 640 permissions on files and 750 permissions on directories.
• Monitor your website – Setup an uptime monitor service like uptime robot. Login to your website routinely and look around. Check user accounts. Check your security plugin log activity. Check your plugin list of installed plugins. Remove unnecessary plugins.
• Pay Attention to WordPress Security News – We follow the Sucuri blog and Wordfence blog so that we can stay up to date with the latest infections and trends in malicious activity. Sometimes certain plugins become vulnerable to attacks. Other times there are new security measures that need to be implemented.
• Secure, Up to Date Web Servers – Make sure your web hosting is running on new updated operating systems and the latest version of PHP as part of a comprehensive WordPress hosting strategy. No matter how many security steps you take on your web site, if your web host is running your site on an old outdated web server running an old version of PHP then you are vulnerable to hacking.

About IDP

IDP is a Kansas City Web Design firm. IDP has been hosting websites since 2003. We do not outsource our web hosting because we manage it ourselves. Web developers at IDP build and host WordPress sites, with a focus on reliable WordPress hosting. We understand both the software side of how WordPress sites work and the web hosting side. If you’d like to a year of Managed WordPress Hosting you can purchase it right here on our website.