WordPress Hosting

About our WordPress Hosting Plans

There are many companies out there that offer web hosting. Pricing ranges from $2 to $200 and up. Many of these companies are great options for hosting most sites, and depending on your needs, you likely pay somewhere in between that range for your hosting currently. Security is of up most importance for most hosting companies. They devote major resources to ensure their network infrastructure, and servers are secure and not open to attacks from hackers. For the most part they are successful in keeping their servers secure, and most of their customers happy.

So why are so many sites getting hacked these days? Hackers are smart, they know the hosting companies put major resources into securing their networks, so instead of attacking the hosting company, they attack the web sites themselves that are running on those networks.

Many web sites today use web applications known as Content Management Systems (CMS). You may have heard of some popular CMS systems such as WordPress, Joomla, and Umbraco. When you use any of these systems you are in essence creating a new “door” that a hacker can “knock” on. It is important to understand that as soon as you use any CMS you are creating potential security holes that can be exploited by hackers.

Traditional hosting companies, are very good at securing everything on their network, but they usually will not get involved in securing your web site software. Some companies have “How to Secure WordPress” blog articles or how-to guides, and in essence they are expecting you as the owner of your site to complete these steps and keep your site secure.

To help owners of these types of WordPress sites we have created 2 hosting plans that we believe will greatly reduce the chances of getting hacked. They aren’t so much hosting plans as they are preventive maintenance plans. No hosting company out there can guarantee that your site will be 100% safe from hackers. We feel that by using every tool at our disposal to shut these “open doors” we can make sure that your site is at least one of the more secure web sites out there. Hackers like easy targets, and often they use automated tools that exploit some known security hole in WordPress. By fixing these holes we essentially send the hacker a “move on” message, and they will move on to the next vulnerable site. Our WordPress Hosting with Update Service consists of 3 components:

WordPress Security:

When taking control of your site we will preform a complete security audit and lock-down of your site. Strong passwords and encryption keys will be implemented and file permissions will be set to make it next to impossible for hackers to strike. Your help is needed here as well to keep your WordPress user passwords strong and secret.

Complete off-site Backup:

Your files will be backed up every night while you sleep. This means your entire site gets transferred to another data center every night. If your site does get hacked our first line of defence is to restore it quickly from this backup. If a data center goes down we can transfer your site to a new hosting provider quickly, using the nightly backup.

WordPress Updates:

A total of 10 updates to WordPress were released in 2011, with no sign of slowing down in 2012, the updates are likely to keep coming. Keeping your site up-to-date will ensure any security holes that were exposed in previous versions are fixed. You will also have the latest and greatest WordPress features as they are released. We will keep your site up-to-date with the latest version as they are released. We will also make our best attempt to update any plug-ins you may have, provided they are compatible with the latest WordPress version.

WordPress updates fall into 2 categories, Major and Minor. For maximum security we recommend quickly updating for every update both Major and Minor. We also offer a more affordable update option that includes Major Updates only, if you would like to handle minor updates on your own.

For major updates to WordPress we will preform a test update, in our offline hosting environment. This ensures that any changes to WordPress that may affect your live web site are handled and fixed before the update preformed on your live site. If we find any issues with the major update we will communicate with you and form a plan of action. There are 3 planned major updates for WordPress is 2012.

Monthly Pricing:

WordPress Hosting Base: $15/Month

  • Recommended for site owners who want to do their own WordPress updates and backups
  • This is essentially what most hosting companies offer, in terms of service

WordPress Hosting + Security, Backups and Major WordPress Updates Only: $30/Month

  • Recommended for site owners that want us to preform major updates only
  • Includes off site Backups
  • Major updates are preformed on the live web site and rolled back if compatibility issues exists

WordPress Hosting + Security, Backups, and All WordPress Updates: $50/Month

  • Recommended for site owners who want us to handle all WordPress updates
  • Includes off site backups
  • Major updates are preformed in our offline environment first to ensure compatibility

With all plans if you prepay for the year, a 1 month discount will apply.

Setup Pricing:

If you have a site currently setup on another host it will have to be moved to our infrastructure. The cost of this move depends greatly on the complexity of the site, number of users and the current state of the web site. For a simple site that is in good shape we can usually preform this work in about 1 hour. For more complex setups with multiple users this process can take longer.

FAQ:

Q: Can you preform the update service of my existing hosting? Why do I have to move hosting companies?

A: The tools we use to secure and backup your site are tested and work very well on our own hosting infrastructure. While we do prefer to work on our own infrastructure, we may be able to preform our services with your current provider. Please let us know if you would like to take advantage of the update service on another provider.

Q: Where will my site be hosted?

A: We use Rackspace (http://www.rackspace.com/) to host your site. Rackspace is a recognized leader in the hosting industry.

Q: Will I have access to a “Hosting Control Panel”?

A: If you would like, we will give you access to your Control Panel where you will have full control over your site.

Q: Will I have FTP access?

A: Absolutely.

Q: What happens to my email hosting?

A: We strongly recommend Gmail from Google for your email system, however we can work with your existing email hosting or look at other options when we setup your site. Organizations with less than 10 unique users can move to Gmail with no additional costs from Google. A setup fee from Ejambi will apply to cover the costs of moving your existing email infrastructure to Gmail.