Linux shared web hosting is the go-to web hosting option for a majority of small businesses and beginners. It is cheap, easy to configure, and is suited for websites that do not have heavy traffic.
But as your website expands on the internet, shared hosting servers might not be able to support all of its features. This leaves users to wonder how they might optimize shared hosting or get features like the cheapest PHP hosting.
Scaling your website helps the website cope with an increasing amount of traffic. Hence, in this guide, we will explain the process of using shared hosting while still managing your website optimally to ensure it scales perfectly.
Shared Servers Brief
Shared hosting is a kind of hosting service in which a large number of websites are hosted on a single server with fewer resources. This type of hosting is ideal for small business websites, personal blogs, or startups as it caters to cost-efficiency.
For most beginners and users with tight budgets, shared hosting is the first step in reaching a robust hosting server. At the same time, it is also true that even though shared servers are limited in scalability, with proper optimization, users can accommodate and grow their websites as per their needs.
Essential Steps to Scaling Your Website On Shared Servers
Step 1: Boost the Speed and Performance of Your Website
Slow load times ruin the user experience and damage your website’s SEO. You can follow the below methods for having speed and performance with shared servers:
- Use Image Compression Tools: Optimize the size of images with tools such as TinyPNG or ShortPixel without reducing image quality.
- Make Caching: Caching reduces server load, where frequently used data remains preloaded. This becomes an integral component of every shared hosting plan, including MilesWeb, where WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and more add-ons are used.
- Minimize Code: Work on reducing the size of HTML, CSS, and Javascript files for improved performance.
Loading faster doesn’t just enhance the user experience; it also increases the average number of website visitors on your shared hosting plan.
Step 2: Switching Your Hosting Options on a Higher Scale
Use your control panel to determine how many of the available resources are still available on your existing hosting plan. In case you’re reaching the CPU, RAM, or bandwidth limits, then consider upgrading to a higher-tier shared hosting plan.
Shared hosting with MilesWeb is one of the best service options because the scaling is easy. They also provide free SSL certificates, more resources, and performance features.
Step 3: Employ the Use of a Content Delivery Network
A content delivery network, or CDN, is a collection of geographically dispersed servers that integrate your website’s static materials. Once a user logs onto a website, the CDN dispatches content from the nearest server. This eliminates delays and enhances load speed, even with the most basic of shared hosting websites.
Step 4: Optimize Database Performance
Your online website’s database expands with its growth, most notably with the WordPress CMS. These websites can easily be misconfigured, leading them to slow down and consume too many shared resources.
Consider deleting unused tables, comments, and revisions of your posts through WP-Optimize or phpMyAdmin plugins. To ease the burden on your server resources, consider optimizing your database queries as well.
Step 5: Measure the Usage of Resources
Keeping track of resource usage helps you uncover issues before they arise. Most shared hosting service providers give their customers a control panel for measuring the usage of CPU, RAM, and bandwidth.
Analyze your resource allocation reports as time passes and make changes to the website to accommodate the traffic when needed.
Step 6: Use Themes and Plugins with Light Grams
Depending on how robust a given theme or plugin is, it requires more server resources, which can have adverse effects on the usability of the website.
Pick a theme that is sturdy but quick in nature, such as Astra, GeneratePress, or a performance-optimized theme. Avoid installing all sorts of plugins; rather, make it a point to switch on and off essential ones and remove ones that you do not use or are outdated.
Step 7: Focus on Making Your Website Mobile Friendly
Mobile amenities optimization is a must since most people today browse the internet from their phones. Mobile websites require less time to load and perform better while exerting less pressure on the server.
Try using responsive designs to ensure that you cater to different screen sizes in the best possible manner. Allow for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which assist in making the mobile version of your pages load faster.
When to Move On from Shared Hosting
There are limits to the growth of a website on shared hosting, and when those limits are reached, then there has to be an upgrade to VPS or cloud hosting. Some of those pointers that encapsulate the growth limits include:
- Recurrent resource overages despite optimization efforts.
- Increased loading times, especially during heavy internet traffic.
- Advanced functionalities of the website require advanced hosting.
It is perfectly possible to scale your website while being on shared hosting, especially with a reputable provider like MilesWeb, but it is equally important to remember when to move on to the next hosting platform in order to keep growing.
Final Thoughts
Working through an upgraded plan, improving performance, and applying a special tool like CDNs can easily give your shared hosting plan an extra boost while extending its lifespan and guaranteeing an effective user experience. Therefore, scaling your shared hosting website should not be an impossible feat for you.
MilesWeb, for instance, allows you to select from enhanced feature sets that allow your website to expand with their fully equipped shared model, and MilesWeb is budget-friendly too. This makes their service strong and perfect for helping you scale your website without causing you a loss.
