Having read this tutorial, you will have a better understanding of the different plans offered by Hostking, and how to order them.

In the previous article we explained how to order a domain name with Hostking. Now we will discuss how to order a web hosting plan for the domain name.

Note it is always better to order both at the same time by ordering the hosting plan which would request you to purchase or transfer a domain name aswell in the same process.

What is Web Hosting

Web Hosting is probably the most important part of it all if you want to start having a website online or use email accounts.

Each of our Web Hosting Plans come preinstalled with the following features:

1. Litespeed Web Server
2. Cloudlinux + CageFS Protection
3. SSD Diskspace
4. Bitninja Server Protection
5. SitePad Sitebuilder
6. Spam Filtering and AV Scanning
7. PHP Selector Tools
8. NodeJS Support
9. Python Support
10. Free SSL Certificates
11. Acronis Server Backups

We strive to only use the best tools available in the market.

So how do you get started

First go over to our website and click the “Start Free” button. Alternatively head over to the menu bar and select the Web Hosting Menu option.

Once you have done you will be redirected to the web hosting plan page. Here you can select anything from the basic free plan which has limited features and does not include Litespeed, Bitninja Protection or Backups. Some of these are critical if you will be hosting a business website for performance and security.

Choose Free hosting if you cannot afford to pay just yet or just testing our services before you make that definite decision to choose us to host your website. Choose any of the other plans if you require premium plan that comes with all the requirements most businesses will require when getting started.

Note with free hosting be sure to perform backups regularly.

Lets move on to the ordering process

Now that we have decided on the plan of our choice lets head on to ordering the package.

Click the Order Now button on the page to begin the process.

The Next page should request if you will be.

1. Registering a new domain name with us
2. Transferring a existing domain with a different provider over to us
3. Update an existing domain at your current provider to point to us

Third option is a bit technical so if you are unsure feel free to message our support team for assistance by clicking the chat button in the bottom right corner.

Now click the add to cart button

Once done you should see a continue button.

On the next page you will see the billing cycle. Monthly recieves no discount whereas Annually,Biannually or the next page you can click continue aswell.

The Review and Checkout Page is where you check your order and register your account details with us. You also choose the payment gateway of your choice in this page.

Once completed filling the information in. Click the Continue button to be redirected to payment and email verification page. Thereafter you will be in the Client Area page.

Here you can click the Manage Button or click the Services then the Manage button to manage your Web Hosting Plan.

To buy a domain name from hostking, you need to visit the domain registration page or order a web hosting plan, find the domain you want to purchase, and follow the instructions to buy it.

Remember that buying a domain name is one of the most important steps of starting a blog, personal site, or online business. Without a domain name, users would not be able to easily access your website on the internet.

The process to register a domain name is quite simple – even beginners can complete it in a few minutes.

How to Buy a Domain Name

Before we go any further, it’s worth remembering that its only possible to register a existing domain name with a valid domain extension that other people or businesses don’t already own.

Lets go through each step, from where to get a domain name to finally getting into the website registration process.

Here are a few steps to buying domain names:

Run a Domain Name Search

Now that you have found a web hosting provider through which to register your domain, the next step is to perform a search on the domain.

When choosing your domain name, make sure to pick the right domain extension as well – it’s the suffix at the end of a web address. Domain name extensions are also referred to as top-level domains or TLDs.

There are different types of domain extensions, namely:

• Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). This kind of domain extension represents a specific country.
• Sponsored Top-Level Domain (sTLD). It’s a type of TLD restricted to a few types of groups and organizations. Some examples include .gov, and .edu.
• Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD). It’s the most common type of TLD – it can be used for general purposes. A few examples of gTLDs include .com, .org, and .net. This category also includes new extensions, such as .xyz, .club, and .online.

When deciding on the domain extension that is suitable for your domain name, look for a TLD that represents the purpose or goal of your website.

For example, a .com or .store domain might be best for an eCommerce business. On the other hand, if you plan to create a blog, using a .me or .online domain can be an great choice. If you are still unsure about the right domain extension, we suggest using a .xyz or a ccTLD like co.za, etc. These generic TLDs are not associated with any specific niche or website type.

Once you know what domain and domain extension to use, use our domain checker to find your chosen domain name. Enter the name into the search bar and the tool will present you with a list of available domains. It will also display more extension and title suggestions, showing a wide range of domain ideas.

If your chosen domain is taken, another way to acquire your chosen website name is to check its availability with alternative top-level domains. For instance, if you are running a technology-related business but .com or .io TLDs are already taken, try .tech domain extension. If you need a domain name for an online portfolio, opt for .space.

Also, don’t be afraid to choose between different TLD types.

Pick Your Domain Name

After finding the best domain name for your task, it’s time to proceed with the checkout ordering process..

We do require you to typically pay for a minimum period of one year.

To purchase a domain name at Hostking, continue the process from the domain checker page and press the Add to cart button next to the domain. Then, click Continue.

From the shopping cart window, the Period is displayed and at times depending on domain extension it may request extra features like ID protection ,etc. These are optional. The Name Servers section is if you are buying domains from us but will be hosting the website files (web hosting plan) with a different hosting provider. Click Continue to proceed.

The next step is to log in or create an account with us to complete the payment process.

With that done, continue the checkout process and choose a payment processor.

Provide your billing information and check your order. Then, finish the domain name purchase.

Complete the Domain Registration

As soon as you have completed the payment, you’ll be redirected to an email verification page and then to the Client Area. From here you can view your domain names and manage any other services you may have with us.

You can modify the domain ownership details using the domain management section within the control panel, note some domain extension updates can take up to 7 days to process and may need some confirmation via email.

Improve WordPress Performance with the LiteSpeed Caching Plugin

Performance optimization should be a top priority for every website owner as it directly impacts your ranking in search engines. The higher your website loads the worse it can be for your viewers causing them not to stay too long and close the website.

This can prevent your business from growing and have a huge impact on traffic to your site.

There is a plugin however called Litespeed Caching Plugin that if configured well can optimize your website’s performance so that it ranks better and the the performance and loading time of your website increases drastically.

We have tested this plugin on multiple sites and on every site we tested on it does better than other caching plugins , free or premium that we have used to compare it against. Note however for this plugin to work at its best a hosting provider must have a Litespeed optimized server like we do at Hostking. Litespeed Servers make websites load much faster than Apache optimized servers.

Before we start lets discuss with Litespeed Server is and what the Litespeed Caching plugin does.

What Is LiteSpeed?

LiteSpeed is web server software designed to improve website’s performance. It uses event-driven architecture, a LiteSpeed web server can handle more traffic with fewer processes in shorter time, reducing the amount of resources required and inturn improve website page speed.

The LiteSpeed server also has a built-in Apache replacement with .htaccess support, hence those websites hosted on Apache platform can easily use Litespeed with no fuss at all. We offer Directadmin and cPanel control panels however it works with many other platforms aswell.

Now lets discuss what Litespeed Caching Plugin does and is?

LiteSpeed Cache is a product of LiteSpeedTech.com that improves dynamic content loading on web pages. It comes with its own advanced caching functionality and optimization features. LiteSpeed Cache is also available as a plugin on Prestashop, Joomla and WordPress.

More plugin lists can be found here: https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/cache-plugins

LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP) works by storing a copy of website in your website root folder which makes loading of your site much faster.

The LiteSpeed Caching plugin has other features aswell:

• Integration with Memcache or Redis Object Caching
• CDN integration
• Page Optimization
• Image Optimization
• Minification options for CSS and JS
• plus much more

Lets take a look at what our webpage had when using no caching plugin:

Mobile Scores on Pagespeed.web.dev

Desktop Scores on Pagespeed.web.dev

Now our scores are not that bad but keep in mind we already optimized the following on our site:

1. Defered Javascript
2. Optimized Images with Imagify
3. Always use as less plugins as we possibly can.

Hence performance is always on our mind when we review our website each month.

However for normal customers or business owners this is something you do not want to review that often.

Now let me show you how our website scores went up just using LiteSpeed Caching Plugin:

Mobile Score:

Desktop Score:

So as you can see we achieved a wopping 100% on Desktop scores and just short of 1 percent for our Mobile Score at 99

This was an awesome feeling for the team. The day we did this we purchased many premium plugins all not providing us the same performance as the LiteSpeed Caching Plugin.

We tried the following plugins from highest performance to lowest:

1. WP-Rocket ( Was good but still didnt give us what we wanted)
2. FlyingPress (Easy to use, good performance but no where close)
3. WP Total Cache
4. WP Super Cache
5. WP Fastest Cache
6. Few others dont really want to mention.

So lets get to it and install and configure the LiteSpeed Caching plugin with the same settings we have so you can achieve a faster and more responsive website.

First ensure its installed.

Most of our customers would have the plugin installed automatically but if not you can find it under the following sections:

If you see a grey icon where it says Active. That means the plugin is already installed as per below. If it shows Install go ahead and Install the Activate.

You will the find the plugin on the left menu bar.

Click Dashboard and lets configure the plugin.

On the Dashboard page you will find an overview of what caching is enabled and how much it is using. Don’t worry too much of this page at this moment.

The next page called the General is quite important so lets head to that page.

On this page there is a few things to do.

1. Ensure Automatically Upgrade is on.
2. If not already click the Request Key option and follow the steps to create a free account if necessary.
3. Turn Guest Mode and Guest Optimization On.
4. Ensure you fill in the IP address of your website or let it auto-detect which is will usually do after a few minutes. This is step is optional.

Head over to the Caching Page and set everything as per the image below:

The TTL, Purge, Excludes and ESI options are optional but you may customize those sections if you feel the need to.

The object tab is quite important and can make a huge difference especially if you using Directadmin panel with Redis Caching. At Hostking we provide this feature on all our Hosting plans for free using the Directadmin panel. For cPanel you could use memcached though we found that Redis on Directadmin provided us with better performance overall.

Object Caching is a technology where the most common Database queries get cached. This ensures that the more viewers you have on your website doing the same thing the faster it loads for them.

To get this setup firstly we need to enable the feature within the Directadmin Panel itself.

So login to your directadmin panel via the client area.

Then click on the Redis Icon and enable the Redis Caching option.

Now head back to Litespeed Caching plugin and go to the same page as Object under Caching tab and enable Redis Caching as per image below:

Note: If you are setting up Litespeed caching with Redis caching in one Directadmin Hosting account with multiple domains ensure you increment the Redis Database ID by one each time for each WordPress website you enable it on.

Lets move on to browser caching tab.

Here you can set whatever amount of hours you would like. However we recommend anything higher than 4 hours should be good. 8 hours is usually normal. But really depends on how long you want caching to be on. The longer the better but it really depends on how much changes you regularly on your website.

The next tab called the Advanced tab is optional but not really required.

Thats it for the litespeed caching plugin. Now to do a test on Pagespeed.web.dev and see your amazing results.

Extra Tip: Lastly to add a little extra performance on websites using live chat or some javascript banners etc. Trying using a plugin called: Flying Scripts by WP Speed Matters which can be installed via plugins section aswell. Just install and activate it and test your website.

We hope this helps. Feel free to contact our support if you need further assistance by clicking the bottom right corner chat bubble.

WordPress Start to Finish

In this WordPress tutorial, you will find all tips and tricks you will need in order to create a stunning and fast website with WordPress. We discuss how to install, design and even optimize your WordPress website.

Be sure to check out the list of our newest posts on WordPress at the bottom of this page.

WordPress was first released on May 27, 2003.

WordPress is a CMS and has many uses as in creating a blog, business or personal website, online shopping website, wikis and even much more other uses. It was designed and created using PHP and MySQL. Most people refer WordPress to be a content management system (CMS).

Its currently the most popular CMS in the world hosting millions of websites.

Why You Should Choose WordPress for Your Website?

After finding out that millions of websites around the world use it for their own websites, there must be a very good reason this is so. Lets this a few points as to why we think it is a good choice for your website.

WordPress is Free and opensource.

WordPress has tons of free plugins and themes that help customize it.

WordPress is based on PHP making it easier to troubleshoot.

WordPress is so easy to install.

WordPress is fast and updated frequently.

Installing WordPress

Let’s start explaining how to install WordPress easily,  Softaculous Auto-Installer.

The steps below show how to install WordPress on our control panels:

Access your web hosting control panel.

Locate the option called Softaculous Auto Installer and open it.

Click WordPress and click on its icon.

Now fill in website details:

URL – The URL where WordPress should be installed. If you want to install it on root domain name (example.com) for eg.

Admin Username – Your WordPress admin username.
Admin Password – Your WordPress admin password.
Admin Email – Enter your email address.
Site Name – The title of your WordPress website.
Site Description – A short sentence explaining what your website is about.

Press Install button and watch it install easily.

Installing WordPress Manually

To install WordPress manually is actually quite easy.

The first thing to do is go to WordPress website (wordpress.org) and download the latest version of wordpress.zip file and place it on your desktop.

Then login to your web hosting control panel and create an FTP account unless you have your FTP login details already.

Note you can also use the File Manager of cPanel, Directadmin or Plesk aswell to perform this step.

Upload the file using your FTP program to the public_html folder or whichever folder will be hosting your website. Most commonly its the public_html or httpdocs folder.

Extract the file in that folder and ensure all the files are directly displayed in that folder

Once done login to your control panel and search for the database section for MySQL. Create a database choosing a good strong name. Usually the db would have a username_ already added there so just add to it something like wpblog5123, etc.

The Database name will then look like username_wpblog5123 in this example but yours may differ.

Create a strong username and password aswell and ensure you assign the db user to the db name if required as some control panels do not auto assign the database user to the database itself.

Now you may go to https://yourdomain.

If all went well it should load the WordPress installer.

Select the language, fill in the title , description and then database details as it requires. Once done it should be fully installed and redirect you to the website.

Great job.

Using in WordPress Dashboard

Once the installation is complete, the first thing you would want is to login to the WordPress Admin Dashboard.

Go to https://yourdomain/wp-admin

Once logged in you will now be displayed with the WordPress features you can use to design your website.

Here you will find sections like:

Posts – Where you can add blog posts for example.

Pages – Where you can create seperate pages for your website.

Appearance – Where you can customize the look and feel for example themes or menus.

Settings – Where all the common settings are stored.

Plugins – Where you can add extra features for your website, like social plugins, caching plugins, security addons, woocomerce (convert site to shopping site), etc.

Publishing your first page or post

WordPress all starts when you first create a page or post. This is the main part and building blocks of a WordPress website.

WordPress posts can be categorized, tagged, archived. WordPress posts are used to publish things like blog posts or content that needs to be updated regularly.

Pages are more for things like Website pages or pages that dont change to often and that are static in otherwords.

Creating Your first Post

Create a new WordPress by opening up the Add New section under Posts or choose New -> Post option from the top menu toolbar.

An Editing screen should be displayed with many posting features. The first thing to do here is to enter a title for your post.

Thereafter enter the content of your post in the field below it. Here you can change the font style,etc. while doing so.

On the right menu section you will find things that help search engines know what the content is about so ensure you go through the Meta boxes and fill them in or correct them. An example to is check the permalink section to ensure the url is displayed the way you want it. Dont make it too long.

At the top right you will find a Save Draft, Update and publish button. You could may the post private, password protected or public. Private means no one can view it on the web, password protected indicates you will have to insert a username or password to get the post displayed and Publish is the main option is to make it live on the website.

You can delete the post aswell on this page.

We recommend always adding a Featured Image. Try and create a theme with all the images you use in your posts so you have some consistency and the look and feel stays professional on the website.

Creating Your First Page

To Create a new WordPress page, open the Add New section under Pages menu or click New -> Page button at the top menu toolbar.

The page is created in much the same way you did it when creating a post above.

Here you can set what page is your primary page or order the pages in the order you like.

Installing a few WordPress Plugins

Plugins can be your best friend or a nightmare. So be sure to choose the best plugins and only those you require.

The main reason I used the word “few” is that the more WordPress plugins you add the more “bloated” the site becomes and the possiblity of WordPress feeling slower. The same way that the more people in a household there is the more food or electricity usage occurs  So with WordPress the more plugins you have the more “memory” and “cpu time” it will require for the website to load better.

Hence try to stick the most common, most updated, and most essential plugins that you actually require.

Note some plugins are not updated often so keep a look for those and use alternatives where a larger community or updates occur. This ensures your site stays stable and fast.

Let me discuss on the most common or best plugins we prefer when designing websites.

LiteSpeed Caching Plugin

If you want your website fast and cached well this is the best plugin to use on our servers as it performs server caching and browser caching aswell as something called object caching which not many plugins offer to ensure a smooth and fast website loading experience for your customers/viewers.

Loginizer

Secure your website from brute force attacks by using this plugin to ensure its protected. Note if using Contact Form plugin for pages like Contact Us ensure you install a Recaptcha plugin or some protection to ensure spammers do not use it to spam email accounts on the web.

reSmushIt

This allows good image compression to your images. Does not help having a good caching plugin but your images are of large sizes. Image compression plugins try to decrease quality a little thus making the file sizes of the images smaller and making the site load faster. Note there are better paid plugins for image compression like Imagify which we have also personally used and recommend.

Yoast SEO or All-in-one SEO plugins

These plugins help get your website rank better. They display how to use words and your keyword density used and if your titles are well written, etc. Plus many other features.

Wordfence

I would not recommend leaving this plugin installed but if you want to scan your website to ensure it is clean and no malware or hacked files exist this is a great tool which is free and that can auto-clean your site well. Be sure to uninstall it once done as it does slow your site down a bit as its a security plugin. We have server level security installed hence this is not really required to be a permanent solution.

WordPress Themes

The look and feel of your site is important but not at the cost of performance of the site.

Hence we recommend a few good options when designing your WordPress website.

The fastest theme we found which is free is the GeneratePress theme. We will list a few other onces below and note you can easily install these using the Appearance -> Themes section and clicking Add New option. If you have purchased a theme on the web you can use the “upload theme” option to do so.

1. GeneratePress
2. Neve
3. Astra
4. Schema
5. Blocksy

Alternatively you could use any of the built in themes which are quite fast and optimized well aswell.

Other WordPress Caching Plugins

If you do not want to use the LiteSpeed Caching plugin or already purchased another here are some tips on a few we have tried.

Note however with LiteSpeed Caching Plugin we were able to get our Hostking website rank on https://pagespeed.web.dev/ from 92% to 100% for desktop loading and from 88% to 97% on mobile. This is a massive improvement where we used a plugin called WP-Rocket before.

Here is the list and our comments and opinion on each.

WP-Rocket Caching plugin

An exceptional plugin making it easy to install and manage. Allows linking to a CDN or even cloudflare to increase performance with great recommendations. For us this is number 2 on our list.

WP-Super Cache

Just as easy but completely free to use. Great caching features

WP Fastest Cache

Very easy to use and setup however in our opinion not the fastest.

Optimize your WordPress Images

Image optimization is a very important task to never forget about if you would like your website to rank fast.

The 2 main issues that make websites load slowly when it comes to images is.

1. The size of the image itself and quality displayed. Websites do not need very high quality images like photographs do so making it web optimized is important. Hence using image compression tools to help can assist in speeding up your website alot.
2. The dimensions of the image. Why have an image that is larger that your monitor? not necessary right. So ensure images are scaled down to the size of the required size on the website itself rather than having it auto-scale it which still leaves the file size quite large and creates a tiem consuming task for the browser which could affect performance.

Deferring JavaScript

Alot of new websites using scripts like Live Chat plugins or discount banners, plus much more others.

When doing this its best to defer those javascript files until “user interaction”. To do so ensure that you use plugins like “Flying Scripts by WP Speed Matters” which you can install via plugins section as explained above.

This can help increase your page speed drastically and improve your scored on websites like GTMetrix or Google’s Pagespeed thus possibly assisting in increasing your Google Ranking.

Using a CDN

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. These services which are usually paid except for Cloudflare Free where the service has many POPs (Points of presence) in many countries of the world. This ensures that some content of your website like, images, css or js are stored on the pops where it was copied to so that your viewer for example in India will get those files for your website from a server closest to them thus improving the performance for the viewer drastically.

Note implemeting a CDN may be technical and is usually not required in most instances. But its probably once the last things you could consider if you want to push out even more performance.

Lazy Loading for Images

Lazy loading of images is a feature where you website loads image on a browser when in “sight” or “view” and not when loading exactly. It basically takes it time to load images only when “required”.

This improves the feel of the site and all images dont need to load “exactly” when the viewer loads your website.

This is also a good option to use. Be sure however to exclude the main files on lazy loading which should be seen on first view of your website. For eg. The logo or first banner image of your website.

Note this feature is available within Litespeed Caching Plugin aswell.

Keep WordPress Updated

Once of the most overlooked but most important things is to keep your site updated. Luckily in the latest versions of WordPress you can set your plugins and themes to auto -update from within the panel itself. We recommend you do this which increases the security of your WordPress site and keep it more secure.