Hosting's often the hardest thing about WordPress; here's how to make it go smoothly.
There are plenty of reasons why WordPress is the most popular CMS around; it's straightforward to use, it's incredibly versatile and thanks to its enormous user base it's easy to get solutions if you run into difficulties with it.
In fact, the only time it's likely to give you a headache is when it comes to finding the right hosting; there's no point having a beautiful WordPress site if it's slow to load or falls over when it encounters an unexpected traffic spike.
That's why Shifter could be just the thing you need for pain-free WordPress hosting that won't let you down when you need it. Shifter is a hosting solution that brings static site generation and serverless architecture to WordPress, giving you a site that's fast, reliable and secure, and maintenance-free.
How it works
Shifter converts your WordPress site into a super-fast static version
Shifter gives you an instant speed boost by combining WordPress hosting with a static site generator. It converts your site into a completely static version that it delivers using free and automated HTTPS, making it super-streamlined and safe from unwanted intrusions. To your visitors, though, your site will look and behave exactly the same way.
Alongside the significantly faster static pages, you'll also find that your site's a lot more reliable thanks to Shifter's integrated CDN; it'll deliver content anywhere in the world with low latency, and it won't fail or slow down if you get a sudden increase in traffic. And should someone try to take your site down with a distributed denial-of-service attack, Shifter has you covered; it uses CloudFront with AWS Shield Standard, delivering DDoS protection by default.
And as well as getting a speed and reliability boost, you'll also need to spend a lot less time on maintaining your site. Your static pages are always on, with unlimited scalability, while Shifter runs WordPress in a fully-managed container environment that only can you can access for updating, editing and creating new content, and which is only on when you need it, so you can do all the site management you want without having to worry about attackers finding a way in.
JAMstack meets WordPress
Shifter converts your WordPress work to a static site using the JAMstack approach. JAMstack stands for JavaScript, APIs and Markup and is a modern web development method for building highly secure, scalable sites that perform much better than the equivalent running on a server-side CMS.
Build your own way
You can sign up for a free trial and discover how Shifter fits with your existing workflow
If you're worried that you might have to change your site to fit Shifter's static site generator, don't be. Shifter prides itself on supporting all the tools you're likely to need; page builder plugins such as Divi or Visual Composer not only work well on Shifter, they run faster too as there's no need for database calls to lay out the page. And whatever themes and plugins you've built your site with, it's likely you'll still be able to use them on Shifter; if you have any questions, simply get in touch with the Shifter team and they'll be able to help you out.
Upgrade your site today
To see for yourself how much Shifter can boost your WordPress site's performance, simply sign up for a free trial today and create your own demo site. And when you want to take things further and migrate your site to Shifter, you'll find that there are plans for everyone from freelancers up to full-scale agencies. Find out everything you need to know over at Shifter's pricing page.
Thank you for reading 5 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access
Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.
