Nobody likes a slow website. Poor website performance results in fewer visitors. For online merchants, slow-loading pages lead to shopping cart abandonment and loss of sales. Underlying the experiential problems, website performance has a huge impact on SEO and search rankings. When your page rank falls, the number of visits decrease, and your revenue stream will suffer. Unless you have optimized your site, it’s highly likely that some elements of your code are leaking page load time. Milliseconds add up, and the fixes may be simple. First, you need to identify the leaks.

What is Slowing Down Your Blog?

As you prepare to optimize your website, it is important to determine what is impacting page load times. To test the speed of your website, go to http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/speed/ and enter the URL of a web page you would like to analyze.

Once the speed test is completed, have a look at the Performance Grade and PageSpeed reports. Those reports will provide you with various tips to improve the performance of your website.

Don’t Spend Your Money… Yet!

As you analyze the results of the speed test, you will see that are many on-page factors that can contribute to increased load times. Before you start spending money on content delivery networks and other online optimization services, it is advisable to make all the on-page adjustments possible. If your code is resource-intensive, optimization services won’t make a significant difference, and your return on investment will fall flat.

On-Page Optimization Tips

For this tutorial, our example site is a vanilla WordPress installation on a Bluehost shared hosting account with only the Akismet plugin installed. We generated fictional content with the WP Example Content plugin and then removed the plugin.

Before we start optimizing our WordPress blog, let’s see how it actually performs. Here are the summary results from the speed test:

As we perform the optimization tasks described below, we will constantly monitor the website’s speed it to determine which changes have the most impact.

Let’s start optimizing our WordPress blog.

Optimization Tip #1: Reduce and Compress Images

For your images to load as quickly as possible, it is important to resize them before uploading them to your website. Don’t upload images larger than what you actually need to display. Scaling images in the HTML code might display them as desired, but it won’t reduce its original file size. For example, a JPG image that is 800×800 pixels with a 100kb file size will take just as long to load when coded to display at a 200×200 size as it would if you displayed it at full size. If you optimize the JPG to only 200×200 before you upload it, you might be able to get it down to 20kb and reduce the load time significantly.

The PNG image format is actually the best choice as it allows to store high quality images with a high level of compression. Unfortunately, PNG files are usually large due to the simple fact that they are not compressed.

To compress PNG images, you can use TinyPNG.org, a free online tool that allows you to compress PNG files without losing quality while preserving alpha transparency.

By compressing island.png, the only PNG file on our blog, we saved 324 KB, reducing our file size from 409 KB to 93 KB. Below you can see the difference in loading times for both versions of the image. Notice that the transferred image size is not the actual size of the image, since it is compressed using Gzip by the web server. The actual image size is much larger. There is still an improvement in load time; the compressed images loads about 27% faster than the original one:

Optimization Tip #2: Reduce the number of requests

When a browser retrieves all of the elements of a web page, it will not simultaneously download more than five (5) elements from the same host. Therefore, the more files that your web page has, the longer it will take to load it, no matter how small the files are.

If you have multiple CSS and Javascript documents, it is a good practice to combine them to reduce the number of requests made to the web server.

Optimization Tip #3: Minify HTML, Javascript and CSS

Remove extra spaces and line breaks from your source code to reduce the amount of data transferred and decrease the load time. The following plugins are some of the easiest ways to dynamically minimize the documents:

1. WordPress Compress HTML: This plugin will compress HTML content exclusively and requires no configuration. Simply install and active it.
2. Better WordPress Minify: This plugin will “minify” Javascript and CSS documents exclusively and is completely configurable. A “minify” process combines multiple CSS or Javascript files, removing unnecessary whitespace and comments, and then serves them with gzip encoding and optimized client-side cache headers. If you decide to activate Javascript compression, make sure to test your website thoroughly, as it could break your scripts. This plugin also gives you the possibility of excluding certain files from the compression process.
3. WP Minify: This plugin can minify HTML, Javascript and CSS documents.

If you would rather not use a plugin to compress CSS and Javascripts documents, it is also possible to minify them by using some online tools such as these:

• CSSMinifier.com
• Javascript-Minifier.com

If you use online tools to compress your files, make sure to keep a copy of the original sources files in case you need to edit them later.

Here’s how compressing HTML and CSS files translates into load time reductions:

Optimization Tip #4: Leverage Browser Caching

By specifying a longer caching period for your web page components (HTML, images, Javascripts, CSS documents, etc.), web browsers will cache these elements locally so that they don’t need to be downloaded from the server each time the page is accessed.

In order to leverage browser caching, create a file named .htaccess at the root of your blog (ie.: /public_html/path/to/blog). If an .htaccess file already exists, append this code to the end of it:

AddType image/x-icon .ico

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
# YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|flv|pdf)$">
 Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400"
</FilesMatch>
# WEEK
<FilesMatch "\.(js|css|swf)$">
 Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800"
</FilesMatch>
# 24 HOURS
<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|txt|php)$">
 Header set Cache-Control "max-age=86400"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

Another option is to add an Expires header by appending this code to your .htaccess file:

AddType image/x-icon .ico

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif A29030400
ExpiresByType image/png A29030400
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A29030400
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A29030400
ExpiresByType application/pdf A29030400
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A604800
ExpiresByType text/plain A86400
ExpiresByType text/css A604800
</IfModule>

Using the htaccess directives above will instruct web browsers to cache files for a period based on file type:

• Image files: 1 year
• Javascript, CSS and SWF files: 1 week
• HTML and PHP files: 24 hours

Optimization Tip #5: Enabling GZip Compression

By enabling GZip, the web server will compress files on the fly before sending them to the web browser. This significantly reduces the total size of a web page. In some cases, GZip is enabled by default by the web hosting provider. But if that’s not the case, you can add this code to your .htaccess file:

<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/gif image/png image/jpeg image/x-icon
application/pdf application/javascript application/x-javascript text/plain
text/html text/css text/x-component text/xml application/json
</ifmodule>

Optimization Tip #6: Add a Caching Plugin

Caching pages on your WordPress blog will significantly decrease processing time. When a web page is generated by WordPress, the caching plugin will store the output in a database. The next time the page is requested, it will be retrieved from the cache for faster rendering. Another benefit of caching pages is that it decreases server load, leaving more resources available for other processes.

There are various WordPress cache plugins that can accomplish this, but the best one, by far, is WP Super Cache. From my experience, it is the most efficient caching plugin and it plays well with other WordPress plugins. Here’s a quick and dirty step-by-step guide to installing and configuring WP Super Cache:

1. Download and install WP Super Cache from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/
2. Activate the plugin and go to Settings > WP Super Cache.
3. Under the Easy tab, select Caching On and click Update Status.
4. Click the Advanced tab and check the following parameters:
   • Cache hits to this website for quick access.
   • Use mod_rewrite to serve cache files.
   • Compress pages so they’re served more quickly to visitors.
   • 304 Not Modified browser caching. Indicate when a page has not been modified since last requested.
   • Don’t cache pages for known users.
   • Cache rebuild. Serve a supercache file to anonymous users while a new file is being generated.
5. Click on Update Status.
6. Scroll down the Advanced settings page and click the Update Mod_Rewrite Rules button below the Mod Rewrite Rules section.
7. Scroll down to Expiry Time & Garbage Collection and select Timer next to Scheduler. Click on Change Expiration.
8. Click the Preload tab set the preload cache process to be executed every 720 minutes (twice a day). You can decrease this value if you have a lot of activity on your blog.
9. Click the Update Settings button.
10. You can chose to preload the cache right away by clicking on Preload Cache Now but this is optional.

Caching pages will increase the first byte time of our speed test because there’s less processing involved.

Let’s see how that translates into performance improvements, compared to our initial results:

By simply applying these on-site optimization tips, the load time has improved by 89%.

Using a Content Delivery Network

If your website has a high level of traffic, you might want to take things a step further and use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN will replicate the content of your website on multiple servers that are located around the world. Visitors will download your website from the location that is geographically closest to them.

There are several CDN services out there that employ various technologies. Some CDN services will only cache CSS documents, Javascript, and media files (images files, videos, etc.), while others will cache the content of your pages, too.

For this tutorial, we’ll be using Cloudflare, a CDN that can cache all of the static resources of your website and decreases load time for your visitors, no matter where they are geographically located.

Here’s how to use CloudFlare with your WordPress blog:

1. Go to your Bluehost control panel and click the CloudFlare icon.
2. Enter your email address below “Enable CloudFlare” and click on Next.
3. Once your account is created, you’ll be prompted to enter your website’s domain name.
4. Cloudflare will be scanning your website for a while, so you can watch the video in the meantime. Click on Continue when the scan is complete.
5. Cloudflare will present you with the suggested DNS records for your domain. If you need to add any records manually, you may do so now.
6. Click on I’ve added all missing records, continue.
7. Select the plan that you wish to use. For this tutorial, we’ll be using the Pro Plan.
8. Choose the performance level that you wish to use. We’ll select CDN + Full Optimizations for this tutorial.
9. Set the security level to Medium and click on Continue.
10. On the Confirm SSL page, click Continue to the final step.
11. Go to your domain registrar’s control panel and change the nameservers for your domain name to those given by CloudFlare. If Bluehost is your domain registrar, then you don’t need to update your nameservers, as your Bluehost account will be linked to your CloudFlare account.  Once you’ve updated your nameservers, it can take up to 48 hours before the traffic is directed to CloudFlare’s network.
12. Click on I’ve updated my nameservers, continue.
13. One the page titled My Websites, click the gear icon next to your domain name and select CloudFlare settings.
14. Select the Performance settings tab and set the following parameters:
    • Caching level: Agressive
    • Autominify: Check JS, CSS and HTML
    • Rocket Loader: Automatic
    • Website preloader: On

Let’s see how our WordPress blog performs after implementing CloudFlare:

Notice that the number of requests and the total size of the web page has increased since implementing CloudFlare. This is because CloudFlare pushes three (3) additional files: cloudflare.min.js, rocket.js and oracle.js. Fortunately, there is still an improvement of about 25% in load time. The real gain in using a CDN will be much more apparent for high traffic websites.

There are many other things you can do to improve the load time of your website. We’d love to hear how you optimize your site and what works for you!

Stephane Brault is a veteran web developer and system administrator. He is the owner of TheWebHostingHero.com, a website dedicated to providing tutorials, reviews and news about the web hosting industry.

As they announced in February, Posterous has been acquired by Twitter and as of April 30, 2013, the platform will shut down. To accommodate Posterous users that are looking for a new place for their content, Bluehost’s expert WordPress developers have created an import tool for Posterous users to transfer all of their content from Posterous to WordPress on Bluehost without a hitch. And to make the transition even smoother, Bluehost is offering all previous Posterous users a special hosting price of $3.95/month if they transfer to Bluehost before April 30.

Using the Bluehost import tool is easy. Follow these steps and you’ll be ready to go on WordPress in no time.

Instructions for using the Posterous-to-Bluehost importer: 

1. Request your backup from posterous.com.

   

    

   

    

2. Install WordPress on your Bluehost account using Simple Scripts with the following steps:

3. - First register for a Bluehost account here for a special price of $3.95/month. 
   - Then using the credentials emailed to you from Bluehost, log into your control panel.
   - Find the icon under site builders that shows WordPress and click.
   - You will then be taken to a SimpleScripts page.
   - Find WordPress and click the icon.
   - When you reach the next screen select “Install” not import(you will need the plugin mentioned later for that).
   - You will then reach a screen with some options, select any of the options you would like.
   - check the terms and conditions checkbox
   - click “Complete”
   - You can then use the login credentials to your WordPress admin to login and install the importer.

4. Download the Posterous importer here.
5. Install the plugin using the upload method.
6. Activate the plugin.
7. Goto Tools-> Import and select Posterous from the list.
8. Select a user to assign the posts to. (If you need to create a new user do so first)
9. Select the .zip file you got from Posterous
10. Click Start Import.

Note: if your export from Posterous is too large you will need to follow the Advance import instructions.

Advanced Import Instructions:

1. Request your backup from posterous.com.
2. Install WordPress on your Bluehost account using Simple Scripts.
3. Download the Posterous importer here.
4. Install the plugin using the upload method.
5. Activate the plugin.
6. Goto Tools-> Import and select Posterous from the list.
7. Click “Goto Advanced Form”
8. Upload your UNZIPPED export from Posterous to the posterous folder in the current month (ex: wp-content/2013/04/posterous) using your FTP program.
9. Select a user to assign the posts to
10. Click Start Import.

Note: the “Start Import” button will be disabled unless the folder is detected.

And if you have any trouble, just give our support team a call at (888) 401-4678 any time 24/7 and we’ll be there to help you.

How do I move my WordPress website to Bluehost?

At Bluehost, many of our customers use WordPress for their sites. So here is a step-by-step guide on how to move your WordPress site from another host to Bluehost with almost no downtime. There are a lot of steps in this process, but if you follow them one after the other, you should be able to transfer your website in no time.

1. To start, log into your current host and use a provided program (such as phpMyAdmin) to export your site’s database.
2. Use your preferred FTP program (such as Filezilla or Cyberduck) to download and save your wp-content folder (a.k.a. the files that make up your WordPress site.)
3. Log in to your Bluehost control panel.
4. Install WordPress using the SimpleScripts, one-click install tool.
5. Create an FTP account in your Bluehost control panel so you can upload your files to your new WordPress site folder. When creating your FTP account, keep in mind that you might want to change its designated directory to something easily identifiable.
6. Launch your preferred FTP program and open a new connection. Log in with your new FTP account info.
7. Overwrite the existing wp-content folder with the one you downloaded from your previous host.
8. Open phpMyAdmin in the Database section of your Bluehost cPanel.
9. Select the database to which you want to import your data. You may need to look up this information. (To do so, go to the File Manager in your control panel and open your public_html folder. Then scroll down to find the wp-config file, right click the icon, select “Code Edit”, and then “Edit.” In the code edit window, scroll down to identify the database you should use.
10. Back in your phpMyAdmin window, once you’ve selected the correct database, you will see a list of tables. Drop these tables before you import your new data by selecting the “Check All” option at the bottom of the list and then selecting “Drop.”
11. Now it’s time to import! Go to the “Import” tab in phpMyAdmin. Choose “Browse your computer” and find the SQL database file that you exported from your previous site. (It should be named something similar to “bluepm1_wor2.sql”.) Make sure the SQL format is selected and click “Go.”
12. Here is an important step after you import your database. After your database is imported, check to learn the new table names. If your table names begin with ‘wp_’ then you don’t need to make any changes. However, sometimes your tables will import with a name like ‘wrp-’ Go to your file manager and open the wp-config file in your public_html folder.
13. Right click on wp-config, select “Code Edit”, and then select “Edit.”
14. Scroll down until you find the line “Stable Prefix” line. Edit it to read ‘wp_’.
15. Now that you have your database and site files, it’s time to put everything on your temporary URL. This is how you move your site without any downtime.* First, in your phpMyAdmin site, select wp-options from the menu on the left of the screen. Then, select “Edit” on the “site url” line. (This will typically be line 1.) Paste in the temporary URL provided to you when you created your Bluehost account and click “Go.” (Tip: if you’re not sure what it is, it can be found in your Bluehost welcome e-mail.) *Note: all of these previous steps can help anyone move their WordPress site. The following steps are for those are want to move their WordPress site without any downtime. 
    
16.  Repeat step 11 for your “Home” line in wp-options. (This is typically line 36.)
17. Now it’s time to see if your work has paid off. Enter the temporary URL into your internet browser and check to see if your site is there. If so, you’re nearly done!
18. Log into your WordPress admin site to save your Permalinks. Go to “Permalinks” under the “Settings” tab of the dashboard and click “Save Changes.”
19. Before you can move from the temporary URL to your permanent one, you must change the nameservers associated with your domain to point to Bluehost. This can be done in the domain manager of your domain registrar, whether it be with Bluehost, or another registrar. Use the following: NS1.BLUEHOST.COM and NS2.BLUEHOST.COM. (This indicates that your site is hosted at Bluehost.com. The DNS change can take anywhere from a few hours to several days to propagate. Once it is finished you will be able to use your domain on your new site.)
20. Once the DNS change in complete, log into your WordPress admin site and go to “General” under the “Settings” tab. Then, enter your domain into the “WordPress Address” and “Site Address” fields, and click “Save Changes.”
21. The last step is to enter your domain URL into your internet browser to check to see if your site is live. If so, then congratulations! You have successfully moved your WordPress site to Bluehost.

We know this is a lot of steps, but if you follow these instructions you should be good to go. And of course, if you need help at any point in this process, you can always contact our support team for help by calling us 24/7 at 888.401.4678 or through 24/7 live chat.

While we can’t imagine every possible system out there, the actual steps are almost always the same. (You can also visit our Transfer Help Page for specific instructions on many of the most common domain registrars.) Transfer any .com, .net, .org, .info, .us, or .biz domain to Bluehost by following these simple instructions.

How do I transfer my domain name?

First, you’ll need to access the domain registrar where the domain is currently registered. From here you will prepare the domain name for transfer. Every registrar is a little different, but you should be able to follow these general steps:

1. Login and access the domain manager tools of your current registrar.
2. Update your contact info (particularly your e-mail address) so that Bluehost can reach you with important information both during and after the transfer process.
3. Ensure privacy options are disabled for the transfer process. Don’t worry, you can re-enable them when your domain is successfully transferred to Bluehost.
4. Update the nameservers to point to Bluehost. Use the following: NS1.BLUEHOST.COM and NS2.BLUEHOST.COM. (This indicates that your site is hosted at Bluehost.com. The DNS change can take anywhere from a few hours to several days to propagate. Once it is finished you will be able to complete the transfer process.)
5. Unlock your domain name.
6. Acquire your “transfer EPP code,” or authorization code. This should be provided to you. Copy this code down and login to your new registrar (Bluehost) to initiate the transfer.

Once you’ve prepared your domain for transfer, all that’s left is to initiate the transfer from the new registrar (Bluehost).

1. Visit the Domain Manager tab in your Bluehost control panel.
2. Select “Transfer a new domain to your account” from the Shortcuts menu on the top left-hand side.
3. Type in the domain you wish to transfer and click continue.
4. Enter the EPP code you received from your previous registrar and click continue.
5. Bluehost will e-mail a second verification code to the administrator e-mail associated with the domain. (Which is why it’s important to update your contact information before you start the transfer process.) Enter this verification code and click continue.

And that’s it! There’s a lot of behind the scenes work that goes on to make the transfer actually happen. It typically takes between 5 to 10 days to complete.

If you need extra help with a domain transfer, contact our support team at any time, 24/7 by calling us at 888.401.4678 or talking to us via live chat. Stay tuned for our next post to learn how to move your WordPress website to Bluehost with almost zero downtime!

Primary Domain
This is the domain name assigned as your account’s “main” domain. It’s the domain you use to log into your account, as well as to identify your account to Bluehost representatives. There can only be one Primary domain name at a time on a given hosting account.

Parked Domain
Any domain set as a “parked” domain serves to point to the same content and website as your primary domain. This is helpful if you have one website but wish to have multiple domains point to it. For example, mycookiestore.com might be your primary domain, but you might also wish to register mycookiestore.net, mycookiestore.org, mycookiestore.biz, etc… and point them all to the same website.

Add-On Domain
This is any domain hosted and managed from your main hosting account, but that is linked to a separate website than your primary domain. Content and files for a separate website are stored in a unique folder within your public_html folder. Use domains as “add-ons” when you wish to create a completely separate website on your account with its own domain name, apart from the primary domain name.

Sub-domain
Subdomains are based on prefixes added before a given domain name. They are a great way to organize your site or create sub-websites that while different, still make sense to include under the same domain. For example, we’ve set our bluehost blog to be accessible via blog.bluehost.com. We also set our webmail to be accessible via mail.buehost.com. You can create as many sub-domains as you wish for any of your domain names.

As you can see, there are a lot of different ways to use your domain names with Bluehost. All of your domains on your account can always be managed from your domain manager. We work hard to make our domain manager super simple to use and completely full-featured. From there you can not only purchase or renew domains, but you can change how they are assigned to your account.

And if you’ve ever been curious how to transfer a domain, stay tuned. Our next post will go through this in detail!

Click on the image to view the full infographic and visit us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to let us know what you think. Stay tuned to find out exactly when you can expect VPS and dedicated hosting by Bluehost!

How can I speed up my site?

It might help to imagine a website as if it were a car. To maximize a car’s performance, one must tune, clean, test, service, upgrade, and maintain it over time. The same goes for a website. Bluehost may maintain the best hardware in the industry, but the software underlying each and every website requires just as much attention and long-term care to ensure peak performance.

Here are some tips to keep your website lean and mean:

1. Disable and remove unnecessary or unused software. This can include superfluous plugins, old themes, wasted add-ons, and other extra features that are just sitting there, unused. Often these elements clog your software in ways you can’t see and slow things down. The basic rule of thumb: if you’re not using it, get rid of it!
2. Upload images in a size appropriate for the WEB. Images are one of the largest drains on website load times. Try to limit the amount of images you have on your website. When you do use imagery, make sure it is exported to the exact dimensions for the space it occupies and no larger. Also, compress images as much as possible without sacrificing image quality. There are countless free utilities online that do this.
3. Install a caching plugin.  Caching is a process in which static HTML files of your website are created and given to visitors behind the scenes. Then when visitors come again to your site, any dynamic content (e.g. images) loads faster because the static material is already there, ready and waiting. If your site is a WordPress site, we recommend a plugin like WP Super Cache. You can also check out our Bluehost Help Center article about WordPress caching plugins for detailed instructions.
4. Activate CloudFlare. CloudFlare is a fantastic caching tool for all websites – especially those that for one reason or another cannot utilize a caching plugin. CloudFlare maintains a cache of particular files from your website, typically those that are traditionally problematic or require longer load times. It then stores this information on various servers all over the world. This effectively places your website closer visitors, making it load faster. With your Bluehost account, you can enable CloudFlare on your site for free! Check out our Bluehost Help Center article for further details.

These are just a few ways to quickly and easily speed up your site. You can further examine how your website is performing by using a site like GTmetrix. Services like these sometimes even offer insight as to what particular website elements need to be optimized!

When your website is tuned and running well, more of your server resources can be devoted to serving actual traffic and visitors, instead of doing heavy lifting with slow, heavy, sluggish website software. Make sure to keep your website lean and mean and you’ll be guaranteed to have more success!

If you need help with any of these steps, you can always contact our Bluehost Help Center by calling us 24/7 at 888.401.4678 or through 24/7 live chat. Don’t miss our next post that will explain the difference between various types of domain settings.

How do I backup my website?

One of the most important things you can do is make sure all of your data and content is regularly backed up. Websites take a lot of time, energy, and even money to develop, so you want to make sure your investment is protected. Most Bluehost customers seem to understand this, as they frequently call in asking how to best ensure a proper backup of their websites.

First, some good news: At Bluehost, we perform complimentary backups of your entire account data on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis! So you can rest assured your data is protected against loss. Should you ever need or want a prior version of your files, here’s how to access and restore these automated backups.

Access system backups with these simple steps:

1. Log into your Bluehost control panel.
2. Go to the “Files” section and select “Site Backup and Restore.”
3. Select from the list which aspect of your website you wish to backup or restore.
4. Choose which system backup or restore option you prefer, either a daily, weekly, or monthly version.
5. From the download window, select a format in which to save your backup and click “Start Archiving”.

These automated backups can serve as a great safety net against loss. But to truly protect your data, you should perform regular manual backups, particularly after any significant work has been done on your account. Fortunately creating a manual backup is simple. Here’s how to do it:

Create your own backup with these simple steps:

First, if you are using a CMS, blog, or eCommerce platform, make sure you create a backup of your database.

1. Log into your Bluehost control panel and open the phpMyAdmin tool.
2. Identify the relevant database on the left-hand side.
3. Select the “Export” tab.
4. Make sure the format is “SQL”
5. Click “Go.”
6. Once the download is complete, save your exported files in a safe place, such as an external hard drive or cloud storage solution.

Once you’ve backed up any important databases, the final step involves backing up any website content.

1. Create an FTP account from your Bluehost control panel if you don’t already have one.
2. Open your preferred FTP program (e.g. Filezilla or Cyberduck) and connect to your account with your FTP information.
3. Download all your website files.
4. Save your files in a safe place, perhaps along with your saved database files.

Backing up files is one of the most important aspects to building and maintaining a successful website. Unfortunately, not many people take a proactive role in this process. Because Bluehost makes automated backups regularly, this helps spare a lot of customers who didn’t know better a lot of grief. But just the same, now that you know how to create your own backups, make sure you do so!

And if you ever need help backing up your site, visit the Bluehost Help Center for detailed instructions, or just give our support team a call 24/7 at 888.401.4678. Stay tuned for our next post about how to speed up a slow website!

This shift in the consumer psyche is partially due to the increase in available information and guidance, and partially a result of a difficult economy. Consumers are driven to attempt new feats that they’d never otherwise consider, all in the hope of saving a few bucks.  In the realm of web hosting in particular, the DIY mentality shows no signs of slowing down. There’s no question that as these new webmasters become more capable and aware of the possibilities that come with building their own website, they will also become more dependent on their web hosting companies.  And this dependence is – perhaps surprisingly – not a bad thing.

Here are some reasons why:

1. The more people attempt to build their own websites, the more web hosts will develop their services to meet the growing needs of their customers.  There’s no question that as individuals become consumers of the web hosting industry and don’t leave these decisions to professionals, there will be a shift in the desires of web hosting consumers. Top web hosts will continue to show expanded features and services to meet these evolving needs.
2. Those building websites for the first time depend on their web hosts to make the endeavor as simple as possible. The continued growth of this trend will prompt web hosts to simplify their web hosting services in new and innovative ways. This will be a significant advantage for consumers at all skill levels.  Though many web hosts entice consumers by offering the latest technologies such as PHP 5 and PostgreSQL databases, novice website builders are looking for the simplest technologies. The more new website builders rely on their web hosts, the more hosts will simplify and adapt their platforms accordingly.
3. Web hosting is evolving from a strictly technical field to one that comprises a lot of design elements, and consumers at all levels depend on their hosts to provide these services.  Whether via a drag-and-drop website builder or a wide array of website templates, web hosts have begun to help their clients build not only reliable websites, but beautiful sites – and this is a trend that is certain to extend into the future.

One More Thing to Consider

It’s also important to consider that while DIY endeavors are becoming more popular, we are also living in an age where people are overstimulated and over-scheduled. They can only make time for things that are truly critical.  Some web hosting providers have already begun to offer mobile platforms through which webmasters can update their sites on-the-go. All of the top web hosts provide automatic site backups to protect their clients’ information, without placing this burden on the webmaster.

Moving forward, webmasters will likely find it even more difficult to balance the burden of building and maintaining their websites while tending to their family, business or other obligations.  In turn, they will rely on their web hosts even more to provide support services, reliable uptime and easy access – things which can always be improved.  Though this situation may seem paradoxical, it is certainly one that will have long term benefits for webmasters worldwide.

Jessica Stewart is a researcher at Consumer-Rankings.com and specializes in covering the progress of the hosting industry.

Here at Bluehost, we have big plans for 2013. We’re hitting the ground running and want to help you do the same! One of our big, ongoing projects is to bring our website to the next level. To help you do so as well, we’ve put together a few ideas that can serve as great New Year’s resolutions for your website.

If you already have a website, consider these tips on how to improve it for the new year. Remember, technology changes fast, so staying on top of these resolutions will help you have a more successful site!

1. Regularly ensure your website is optimized for search engines. This will make your site easier for people to find and increase  your overall traffic because it will be more likely to appear in search engines results. There’s a range of things to do with search engine optimization. A good first step is to watch our instructional videos on what SEO is and how it works, and how to grow your business with SEO.

2. Look into updating your website design to make it “responsive.” Responsive websites collapse, expand, and re-arrange to optimally fit the window/screen its in. This makes your site look great and be easy to use no matter where it’s viewed.Learn more by watching the Bluehost video about about responsive designs. Remember, more and more people are accessing the web from tablets, phones, and other mobile devices. Ensure your website is presented well in these formats.

3. Consider simplifying and cleaning up the overall design of your site.  Visitors should always be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Several design elements that used to be common have since been found to distract visitors from finding what they need. Avoid using mixed fonts and instead use a readable, clean font throughout your website. Nix any flashing or moving gifs. Remove heavy drop shadows and gradients and instead consider cleaner, flat colors and objects. Overall, try to examine your website with a critical eye and make any change that enhances both its appearance and functionality.

4. Make your website is as secure and protected as possible. One effective way to do this is to verify that your scripts are always up-to-date. Outdated scripts make a site vulnerable to hackers who exploit vulnerabilities inherent in old software. If you have a Bluehost account, you will see notifications in your cPanel alerting you when core updates are available. Also examine any plugins or themes and ensure they are updated as well. We made a fun video about website security. Feel free to check it out for more tips.

If you don’t have a website, make one in 2013.

Pretty much everyone needs a website these days, whether for a business, to promote your personal brand, to blog, for a family headquarters, etc… If you still don’t have one, here’s s a quick to-do list to help you get started:

1. Set up a hosting account and choose a domain name for your website. Bluehost accounts include a free domain name and it’s easy to get started. And one of the best perks of Bluehost is that you can chat with a real life expert and ask all the questions you need, even before you sign up. Just give them a call at 888.401.4678 or visit bluehost.com to chat with them online. They’re there to help, so make sure to use them!

2. Visit the Bluehost YouTube Channel and watch our instructional videos. We’ve been working hard to build up these resources to help you and have big plans to expand these in 2013. We already have series on how to use WordPress and how to use Weebly. Both show you click-by-click, step-by-step, exactly how to build your very own website.

3. Try it out! Once you’ve watched some videos and done some research, dive in and start building your website. And if you need some help along the way, call us or live chat with us; our 24/7 support team will be there to answer any questions you may have.

These are a just a few things you can do to start the year off right with the help of Bluehost. Click here to learn more about Bluehost’s plans for 2013.