Introduction

Welcome to my guide: How to Set Up Your Web Hosting With SiteGround.

So you need to get a web hosting account but you’re not sure where to go or how to set it up?

Well, you’ve come to the right place and I can help you!

First of all, thank you for clicking through to this guide. I hope that you find it useful.

In order for you to get set up with your own web hosting, I recommend that you use SiteGround. SiteGround is the company that I use for my web hosting and I find them to be excellent. Below, I take you through the reasons why I recommend that you use them too.

But before I do that, I would like to fully disclose that the link to SiteGround (below) is my affiliate link. This means that if you sign up through my link, I will get a small commission for having recommended you to them.

However, the price you pay remains the same whether you sign up through my link or go directly to them. If you choose to sign up through my link, that will be greatly appreciated by me!

Why do you need web hosting?

It may be that you have commissioned me to build your new website. If so, one of the things that I need you to do before I can make the site live (once I have built it) is to set up your own web hosting account. It will be within your hosting account that your website will live.

Alternatively, you maybe undertaking your own web project and need a web hosting account. If so, this guide should help you too.

Why

I have been building websites for a number of years and was recommended SiteGround by a couple of my trusted mentors within the web development field. They spoke highly of it and so I decided to use it as well. I attach a lot of importance to recommendations from those I trust, particularly when it involves the use of a highly technical service such as web hosting.

My 4 Favourite things about SiteGround

• SiteGround is a high speed, web hosting platform with lots of useful tools that I can deploy to make sure that my websites are going to operate quickly and efficiently for my visitors.
• Security. There is 24/7 security including daily back ups, that protects my site against threats from the internet.
• User interface. The user interface is simple to use and easy to understand.
• Support. There is fast, friendly and efficient support, including instant self help and 24/7 live help.

Let’s take a look at these in more detail….

Best Available Technologies

The SiteGround web hosting service is built using the best available technologies, combined with their unique solutions, created in house. This hands on approach makes our sites safer, faster and easier to manage.

High-speed Cutting-edge Platform

SiteGround uses Google Cloud as a base for its highly customisable hosting infrastructure. This allows access to its ultra-fast network and SSD persistent storage. There is also a 100% match of the energy used with renewable energy.

Optimised for speed

SiteGround’s software stack is run on an implementation of Linux Containers with Apache as a web server. Nginx is used as a reverse proxy. They provide a custom PHP handling setup which is further optimised with OPCache extension. The SiteGround platform is built to provide an incredibly fast hosting service.

Latest speed technologies

SiteGround is consistently one of the first companies to provide their users with access to the latest speed technologies. As SiteGround customers, we’re able to take advantage of the newest versions of PHO and the most innovative protocols such as HTTP/2, TLS 1.3, OCSP Stapling and QUIC

More speed boosting solutions

SiteGround’s SuperCacher is their own in house caching solution which is based on the Nginx reverse proxy and Memcached. We are also able to take advantage of free Cloudflare CDN with Railgun with whichever plan we choose. As WordPress users, we can boost the speed of our sites even further by using SiteGround’s unique SG Optimizer Plugin.

SiteGround SuperCacher on all hosting plans

SiteGround’s unique caching tool, SuperCacher, is now available on whichever hosting plan you choose. In addition to this, the dynamic cache is already enabled for all sites by default which significantly increases the performance of all websites hosted with SiteGround.

A Security-First Approach

At SiteGround they have a highly specialized team to address web security threats. There is a devops team which creates custom security solutions as well as a system administration team who watches over the platform 24/7.

Real-time server health checks

SiteGround’s unique monitoring system checks the status of their servers every 0.5 seconds. This not only detects ongoing issues, providing automatic fixes but it also allows the prevention of potential problems.

Smart WAF to protect us from exploits

The SiteGround security is continually watching for emerging threats and vulnerabilities to software. As necessary, this surveillance allows them to write smart new firewall rules to protect their servers and therefore our sites from hacking and breaches.

AI anti-bot against malicious traffic

SiteGround’s smart AI system blocks between 500,000 and 2,000,000 brute-force attempts per day and stops malicious traffic before it reaches our sites.

24/7 system administration team

There is a team of highly experienced administrators who watch over the SiteGround platform, 24hours per day, 7 days per week. They are ready to take immediate action if any issues are detected.

Powerful, Easy-to-use Interface

When we use SiteGround, we are able to take advantage of their powerful yet easy-to-use interfaces and tools to manage our hosting and websites. The SiteGround interface was designed in house to guarantee an outstanding user experience and make our operations efficient when using their platform.

Powerful Software Built For Us

When we use SiteGround, we are able to take advantage of their powerful yet easy-to-use interfaces and tools to manage our hosting and websites. The SiteGround interface was designed in house to guarantee an outstanding user experience and make our operations efficient when using their platform.

Backup and Restore Tools

With SiteGround, they automatically backup our sites each day. This is an absolutely vital part of keeping our sites secure. There is a user friendly backup tool that allows us to restore a site with a single click. As well as the daily automatic backups, we can create backup copies of our sites as and when we need them.

Let’s Encrypt Integration

As SiteGround users we can get a free SSL Certificate for each website we create. We are able to add this from our control panels when we are ready for it.

Collaboration Tools

The SiteGround interface has powerful access controls which allows us to add collaborators to your projects. We can ship sites to clients and give white label access to their sites.

Smart WordPress Staging

With SiteGround, we can use their staging to create a copy of our sites. This allows us to make changes to our sites and test them in a staging environment before making them live.

WordPress Starter Plugin

The WordPress Starter Plugin helps us create a fully functioning site quickly. It does this by recommending professional looking themes and solid plugins. Once you have made your choices, the plugin automates the installation of the ones you choose.

WordPress Migrator Plugin

The WordPress Migrator Plugin automatically copies and migrates your WordPress installations while your sites remain fully functional. This is useful if you want to move your existing site from another host to SiteGround. This plugin works for as many migrations as you wish.

Outstanding Support

One of the things I like best about SiteGround is the support. The importance of excellent support when using a highly technical service cannot be understated.

Capable & well-prepared people

SiteGround make sure their staff undergo intensive training to make sure they are really well prepared for helping their customers. The training they undergo involves a long mentorship period, frequent feedback and evaluations of their work to make sure they are working at their best.

Friendly & helpful attitude

At SiteGround, they believe that a friendly and positive attitude is the best foundation for a solid long-term relationship with their clients.

Empowering the client

The SiteGround support reps write Knowledge Base articles and take the time to educate us, their clients on how to become capable webmasters and resolve some of the issues that we may face from time to time.

Fast and Efficient Problem Resolution

Auto channel recommendation

The SiteGround support system recommends the fastest and most relevant channel for your specific query.

Fast response times

Enquiries directed to the SiteGround phone or chat support are quickly answered and tickets receive a first reply within 15mins on average.

90% resolution at first contact

The SiteGround team are well versed with what they need to do and aim to solve our issues quickly and efficiently without lots of back-and-forths.

Multiple Help Channels

SiteGround offers multiple way for fast problem solving and live assistance.

Instant Self-help

We can get our issues resolved without waiting.

Pinned help on every page

We can get access to immediate help on every page of the SiteGround interface. There is easy access to the most common user enquiries with relevant support articles pinned under Help.

Smart AI chat bot

There is an AI bot that can solve some specific issues in the fastest way possible which eliminates the need to wait for an operator’s response.

Automated solutions

After we’ve submitted our support enquiries, if a similar problem has already been solved, SiteGround can immediately a ready solution that we can try for speedy resolution.

24/7 Live help

Help over the best channel to suit our issue.

Live chat

The live chat service is really fast and efficient. Friendly chat representatives successfully resolve 90+% of the enquiries they get.

Phone support

For issues best resolved over the phone, there is an option to call an experienced operator.

Helpdesk tickets

For troubleshooting of our most complex issues, we will be directed to contact the most advanced technicians over the SiteGround ticketing system. Their replies are on average within 15mins and in the majority of cases, the issues get resolved with a single reply.

Ready to get your own SiteGround account?

This button takes you through to SiteGround’s sign up process and it opens in another tab. However, to help you know what to expect in the sign up process, I guide you through the process below:

Sign up process

Step 1: Choosing a Hosting Plan

SiteGround has three plans and everyone can sign for any of them. Here is my guidance on which plan might be right for you:

• The StartUp plan is perfect for those people with one website who are starting now.
• The GrowBig plan is a great value for money offer, including the option for multiple websites and the Ultrafast PHP that greatly improves website speed.
• The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites, or more geeky development needs like more server resources and GIT integration.

Step 2: Choose a Domain Name

Clients can choose to buy a new domain, or sign up with an existing domain. SiteGround offer a wide range of domain extensions at awesome prices.

Step 3: Review and Complete the Order

Unlike many other hosting providers, the SiteGround advertised discount applies to any of the initial periods chosen during the sign up process. Being able to get the low price for the one year period makes signing up with SiteGround a great deal.

Ready to get your own SiteGround account?

This button takes you through to SiteGround’s sign up process and it opens in another tab. This means that our guide will stay on this tab for you to refer back to.