Wordpress - Elementor & Fasthosts

[Bryan Allman]

Currently I have a number of websites hosted by various providers; some of which are now dated and need a refresh, others need to be binned altogether.

As part of the refresh process I am about to start building a new website using Wordpress, and as part of the process I have identified Elementor as being the 'Page Builder' I think will give me the most flexibility/ease of use for what I am looking to do.

My newest websites have been hosted by Fasthosts and I have recently bought the domain names I will be using from them.

Does anyone have experience of using this combination and if so, any comments - good or bad? I am particular interested in ensuring (as a non techie) the ease of use element in terms of setting it up, building the site, and ongoing modifications to content. Typically the first question I faced was in regard to One Click Set Up at Fasthosts where it seems I need to change my servers to Linux !?!?!?

All comments gratefully received.

 

[Deleted96908]

As part of the refresh process I am about to start building a new website using Wordpress, and as part of the process I have identified Elementor as being the 'Page Builder' I think will give me the most flexibility/ease of use for what I am looking to do.

No experience with Elementor - we've tended to use Visual Composer, which is ok and possibly the best selling, but really bad for bloating out the page - like most page builders. One good thing going in VC's favour is the large number of add ons available at CodeCanyon. Also, many themes come with VC included in the price see Themeforest, so that may be useful if you are on the fence re Elementor.

Does anyone have experience of using this combination and if so, any comments - good or bad? I am particular interested in ensuring (as a non techie) the ease of use element in terms of setting it up, building the site, and ongoing modifications to content. Typically the first question I faced was in regard to One Click Set Up at Fasthosts where it seems I need to change my servers to Linux !?!?!?

Fasthosts is ok. We've registered several domains there, but we don't host with them, see below. Whether you host with them or not, one thing you might want to do is move your name servers to Cloudflare. Name servers tell browsers where to find websites and where mail progs should send email (amongst other things), and Fasthosts can be a little tardy in reporting these entries, meaning visitors will have to wait a little longer before the page starts to load. It's a bit of a fiddle to set up first time round but thereafter, once you've got the hang of it, it's fine. Cloudflare, even on their free plan (IIRC), allow you to setup name servers and an additional layer of security, plus a few other bits and pieces which enhance your site in one form or other.

Wrt to hosting, Fasthosts is ok, but if your websites are serving business content and you want auto backups and staging servers then I'd recommend WPEngine (around £85 a month for 10 sites). We host all of our clients' sites there plus a very active global health and wellbeing network that I jointly own. WPE has inbuilt CDN support (fast worldwide content delivery from a network of fast servers), plus staging servers, daily backups etc, all managed from a simple to use admin panel. They also have 24/7 support which responds very quickly and will also scan your site daily for leaky (poorly written add ons) and will ask you to remove them, or remove them themselves if they are likely to cause security issues.

Tbh, this is a huge subject. Happy to talk you through options on the phone/Skype if that's helpful.

Hth.

Chris

Ps, one tool to we use is Pingdom tools. It will speed check your site(s) and show up most content issues and is invaluable for showing slow loading files and other setup related issues that impact a site's performance.

 

[Bryan Allman]

Many thanks Patagonian - just what I was looking for. I now have a bit of reading to do before I make any final decisions Much appreciated.