Creating and launching a website comes with a long list of technology-related decisions you need to make, and an important one is where you will host your site. If you’re not a technical person, you may be seeking guidance on what website hosting entails and what you should be looking for in a hosting partner.
Culture Foundry offers a full array of website hosting and related support services, including site monitoring, security and software updates, and server performance optimization – in short, your total solution. While website hosting is not the type of service you can sign up for and forget, our crew has found a way to make your site hosting-related decisions turnkey, so it’s one less thing you have to actively manage or worry about.
If you’re in the market for a website hosting service, here’s an in-depth look at what Culture Foundry can do for you.
Website Security
Understanding where vulnerabilities lie in your website’s infrastructure is crucial to protecting your site, your brand, and most important, your users. Depending on how your website was developed, components of its functionality could create security problems.
Our approach is to ensure your site is protected at the application level (which is your website) and at the server level. We utilize professional security plugins, which are included in your hosting package, to create a protective “digital wall” around your site to keep out individuals who shouldn’t have access to it, including bots. This safeguards your site and your site users’ information.
We also offer protections, such as CloudFlare and WordPress Engine’s Global Edge Security, which maintain up-to-date databases of IP addresses associated with bad actors. These services block hackers and other troublemakers before they reach your website and automatically protect it from Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks, which seek to overwhelm and cause downtime for your website, web server, or network.
Software Updates
Think of website content management system (CMS) assets, such as core platform code, plugins, modules, and integrations, as doors to your website. The more doors you have, the more important it is to have constant surveillance on those doors – and keep them firmly closed to malefactors.
Opensource plugins and modules like the ones commonly used in the WordPress CMS platform are maintained by the developers who created them. If those developers go out of business – or simply stop updating their software – nothing requires them to update users about the status of their products or their shelf life. That means you may not get an alert to replace a long-abandoned plugin, even when it reaches end of life.
As software changes, the technology that once kept the “doors” to your website secure may degrade and create vulnerabilities. The same can happen if you aren’t keeping still-active plugins and modules updated as new versions are released by their developers.
As part of our website hosting services, Culture Foundry routinely reviews and manages plugin and module updates. We know your time is valuable, and this kind of technical housekeeping can be time-consuming. That’s why we do it for you.
Server Performance
Self-hosting your website is costly if you pay to have a dedicated hosting environment. If you don’t, then you run the risk of sharing server space with digital “neighbors” you may not know (or want).
For example, imagine one of the businesses with a website also hosted on your server runs an online store that sells seasonal decorations, and their site gets lots of extra traffic in the weeks leading up to the holidays. If the server you share with them isn’t scaled to handle the influx of visitors, it could affect your site, creating problems with uptime and performance that could take hours to diagnose. (Meanwhile, your customer service reps are getting hammered with inquiries, and you’re losing business.) To make matters worse, if your server neighbors are negligent in their own website security and software updates, vulnerabilities that affect their site could infect yours.
Culture Foundry’s hosting clients never worry about the scenarios above, due to the protections we build into our system of maintenance that apply to all client sites we host. Those protections include server scalability so your site is ready for big announcements, product launches, registration kickoffs, and major in-person events with virtual aspects. Our DevOps team will help you plan for the moments when your website needs to perform at its best with a versatile infrastructure that scales up and down as you need it to.
Site Monitoring
One of the best ways to know what’s going on with your website around the clock is to monitor it 24/7, and site monitoring at the level you need is baked into our website hosting service. We offer three options: Essential, Professional, and Enterprise.
Our Essential level clients enjoy thorough monitoring during normal business hours. Our dedicated support team uses tools to keep an eye on your site, so we know instantly if it’s experiencing difficulties. This enables us to investigate, diagnose, and resolve issues, often before you realize anything is amiss.
Our Professional level package takes that service commitment up a notch, with 24/7 site monitoring every day of the year, including major holidays. We will alert you within two (2) hours of prolonged website downtime, and keep you updated as we take steps to remedy the issue.
Our Enterprise level package includes the features listed above, plus any special services and support your site needs if you’re operating a larger organization underpinned by a more complex technology stack.
Culture Foundry’s site monitoring services allow you to relax and stay focused on your business as we stay focused on your website. And “we” means our entire crew. Full-time Culture Foundry staffers comprise our on-call support team, which means the person keeping watch over your site all day (and night) is already familiar with it. We never outsource website monitoring duties. You can always trust that our crew is available and ready to respond.
The Solution You Need at a Price That’s Worth It
Skimping on your website hosting solution puts all of the time and resources – human and financial – you’ve invested in your website in jeopardy. The comfort that comes with maintaining your site’s security and sustainability is priceless, and we offer total website hosting solutions to fit any budget.
To connect with a member of our crew about the right hosting solution for your website, complete the form below, and we’ll be in touch to set up a meeting to discuss options.