Essential tips for a new website owner for managing a shared hosting

You may be looking for or you may have already purchased a shared hosting plan from a trusted shared hosting provider. At this point, you must also be contemplating whether managing web hosting on your own is easy or not. Allow us to assure you that as a new website owner, managing shared hosting is not a tough task at all. In fact, it is easy and manageable. 

Firstly, you need to understand what is important to manage and how it can be done. Once you know and understand these aspects, you are set. With this article, we will help you understand essential tips a new website owner should know to manage shared hosting. So without further delay, here goes- 

1. Get acquainted with cPanel

cPanel is your whole and sole go-to dashboard if you want to manage your shared hosting. Right from adding more resources if need be, to installing scripts, etc. you will need to get acquainted with whatever it has to offer. 

cPanel makes it easy to manage a hosting account so that websites can be set up by those who have no technical skills. The cPanel dashboard also gives you updates, access, and management of additional domains, FTP, enabling security measures, backing up your files, and more. Hence, the suggestion is to first get acquainted with it (which is a piece of cake)  so that the journey ahead gets even easier. 

2. Check the performance of your server

It is very important to make sure that your server has enough space for the proper functioning of your site resources. In addition, checking server performance from time to time can help you analyze whether your host also needs upgrades.

Click on server information in cPanel to view CPU memory, file and disk usage, resource management, and more.

For example, since you are currently using a shared host, you may find that most of the space is occupied by other users, especially since it is a shared space. Or in another scenario, your site grows and your server space runs out. In this case, the most visible solution is to upgrade your hosting plan to other hosts like cloud hosting to accommodate the increased website traffic. As a site owner, this transition is possible because you control server performance. This ultimately leads to happier customers as you improve your site’s performance.

3. Ensure that your PHP version is updated

The PHP version of your site has an impact when loaded in your visitor’s browser. If your version of PHP is not compatible with the PHP version of the visitor, this may be a problem, for example, performance issues, security issues, and so on. Therefore, it is important to keep your PHP up to date. The current version of PHP 7.4 is said to be the best because it significantly improves the web loading speed. If you are confused about how to update your PHP version of cPanel, don’t worry, it is a simple process. All you have to do is follow the guide given by your hosting provider.

4. Leverage the power of analytics 

There are many analytics tools on the market today, such as Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, CrazyEgg, etc. and while that’s good, not everyone wants to give analytics from scratch. However, implementing analytics is a good choice and you can start with a built-in analytics system. AWStats (Advanced Web Stats) is an open-source analysis tool with cPanel that provides data on traffic sources, amount and even type of traffic, visitor’s operating system, browser information, HTTP codes, and more. So, if you leverage that you will know how to manage the additional resources that you may need if there is an unforeseen spike in traffic. 

Conclusion

Here is hoping that you have learned and understood how as a new website owner you can manage the shared hosting you have purchased on your own. If you feel that you need to know more, put your comments in the section below.