How many visitors can my account handle?!?!?

Long Exposure of Vehicles Traveling at Night

Quite often our clients and potential clients ask us a question that on its face seems simple: How many visitors can my account handle? This question is not as simple as it seems.

As with any deceptively simple question there is more to it than a simple number. We wish we could simply give a number as a response but to do so would be disingenuous and deceptive from our perspective. We know that there is far more to the question and the answer than a simple number.

If all sites were created equal and all sites used the same amount of resources per visit, transmitted the same amount of data, performed the same SQL queries, etc – the answer would be simple. In the real world every website is different. We have some clients that are handling more than 100,000 visitors per month on our cheapest and least-powerful plans and then we have other clients on our most powerful and most expensive plans that are struggling with only a few thousand.

We don’t want to make what seems like a promise – that you can hit a particular number of monthly visitors – when it’s not something we can guarantee as we do not control your content or applications.

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WordPress Security – Plugins & Themes – If you’re not using it, remove it!

wordpress-logo-notext-rgbOver the last few years I have seen more accounts compromised due to outdated default themes like  “Twenty Twelve”, “Twenty Thirteen”, “Twenty Fourteen”, etc.  When a user installs a new copy of WordPress more often than not they proceed to install a new theme that they prefer over the default offerings.  The big issue is the result of two missing steps that all webmasters should perform.

First and foremost is keeping everything up-to-date which can prevent the vast majority of account compromises we have seen over the years.  We keep the servers themselves secure from intrusion and we even work to protect your usernames, passwords, email accounts, etc. but there is a limit to how much we can shelter you.  If, for example, you have an outdated theme or plugin installed even if you aren’t using it – it can be used against you and your site.

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Configuring W3 Total Cache, W3TC, for Optimum Performance with Disk Cache for Shared Hosting – Optimizing WordPress

WordPress LogoIn this article I will be explaining how to configure W3 Total Cache, hereafter referred to as ‘W3TC’, to cache your site and to serve that cache statically via mod_rewrite for maximum performance.

You will need to install W3TC via your “wp-admin” -> “Plugins” -> “Add New” if it is not already installed.  One the installation is complete you will want to activate the plugin.  Once activated you can click on “Performance” in the left navigation of your “wp-admin”.  This will drop you at a dashboard where W3TC is trying to sell all kinds of upgrades.  I will not be discussing those upgrades in this article.

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Configuring WP Super Cache for Optimum Performance – Optimizing WordPress

WordPress LogoIn this article I will explain how to optimize your WordPress Super Cache to use mod_rewrite to serve your cache files fast and efficiently.  The installation defaults are not ideal and will only help with the most resource-intensive sites.  When optimized properly WP Super Cache can greatly increase visitor concurrency as well as reduce your bounce rate.

We have users running WordPress on shared hosting and getting anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 unique visitors per day without issues while we have other customers that seem to struggle to handle more than a few concurrent users at once – both on the same type of plan!  The difference between the two comes down to optimization.

One of the most important things you can do to increase the performance and reduce the resource usage of WordPress is to install and properly configure a caching plugin.  The plugins we see most often are WP Super Cache ans W3 Total Cache.  In this article I’m going to be discussing WP Super Cache.

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