Managing a shared hosting account successfully: essential advice for new website owners

It’s possible that you’re on the hunt for a reputable shared hosting company or that you’ve previously made a purchase from one of their shared hosting plans. At this point, you have to be wondering whether or not it is simple to manage your own web hosting on your own. As a novice website owner, you can rest assured that maintaining shared hosting is not a difficult chore at all. Permit us to reassure you of this. In point of fact, it is not difficult and can be dealt with. 

First things first, you need to have an understanding of what aspects of management are most essential and how they might be accomplished. After gaining knowledge and comprehension of these components, you will be ready to proceed. With the aid of this post, we will assist you in comprehending important pointers that a new website owner ought to know in order to handle shared hosting. Therefore, without any further ado, here it is- 

1. Become familiar with the cPanel interface

If you want to take control of your shared hosting, the one and only dashboard you need to use is cPanel. You will need to familiarize yourself with everything that it has to offer before you can do anything from installing scripts to adding extra resources, if that becomes necessary. 

Because cPanel makes it simple to administer a hosting account, even those who lack technical expertise are able to put up websites with relative ease. The cPanel dashboard provides you with a number of extra features, including access to and control of other domains, FTP, the ability to enable security measures, backups of your data, and more. As a result, the recommendation is to first become familiar with it, which is not difficult at all, so that the path that lies ahead will be much less difficult.

2. Make sure you check how well your server is doing

It is of the utmost need to ensure that your server possesses a sufficient amount of space for the effective operation of the resources on your website. In addition, periodically analyzing the performance of the server might assist you in determining whether or not your host need more updates.

You may access information on your server’s CPU memory, file and disk use, resource management, and more by going to the cPanel and clicking on the server information link.

For instance, because you are now utilizing a shared host, you can discover that the majority of the space has been used up by other users. This is especially likely given that the space in question is a shared one. Another possibility is that when your website expands, the storage capacity available on your server becomes exhausted. In this situation, the most obvious option is to change your hosting package to one of the various types of hosting available, such as cloud hosting, so that your website can absorb the additional traffic. This change is feasible for you as the site owner since you have control over the performance of the server. As a result of this, your site’s performance will ultimately increase, which will result in happier consumers.

3. Make sure that the version of PHP you’re using is up to date

When your site is loaded into a visitor’s browser, the version of PHP that your site uses has an effect. If your version of PHP is not compatible with the version of PHP used by the visitor, there may be concerns with the site’s speed, security, and other aspects if this situation persists. As a result, it is essential to ensure that your PHP is always up to date. It has been argued that the most recent version of PHP, 7.4, is the greatest since it considerably increases the speed at which websites load. Do not worry if you do not understand how to upgrade the PHP version that is installed on your cPanel; the process is straightforward. All that is required of you is to follow the instructions provided by your hosting provider.

4. Make use of the power that analytics provide 

Even if there are a lot of analytics tools available on the market today, such as Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, CrazyEgg, and so on, not everyone wants to build their own analytics system from the ground up. Implementing analytics, on the other hand, is a solid decision, and you may get started with an analytics system that is built in. AWStats, also known as Advanced Web Stats, is an open-source analytic tool that comes included with cPanel. It delivers information on the sources of traffic, the volume and even the type of traffic, as well as the operating system of visitors, browser information, and HTTP codes, among other things. If you make use of such information, you will be in a position to effectively manage any additional resources that may be required in the event that there is an unexpected surge in the volume of traffic. 

The final word

As a new website owner, it is my hope that you have gained the knowledge and comprehension necessary to independently administer the shared hosting that you have purchased. Put your thoughts down in the box below if you feel as though you require further information.