The guide for users new to hosting
This guide will show you the things you should do after you have set up your new hosting with Crucial.
- Have an offsite backup
Having a locally stored back up is an essential part of hosting. Even though data is backed up on the web host side it is still strongly recommended to have your own backup stored locally. If your data is corrupted or compromised there may not be any other way of restoring it to the 'good' version unless its backed up and separated from the live version.
More information about offsite backups can be found here - Maintain and manage passwords
90% of all online accounts are vulnerable due to weak passwords, but keeping track of lengthy passwords can be a difficult task. It is recommended to have different passwords for each log in that you use and also different usernames. It is also recommended to periodically change your password.
More information about managing passwords can be found here - Research a CDN
A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. The goal of a CDN is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance.
We recommend using CloudFlare and its provided ready to go on our Web Hosting and Reseller accounts, its also free for other users to sign up.
If you are a Web-Hosting customer you can follow the CloudFlare Setup through your cPanel account. Once logged in look out for the Cloudflare icon, fill out your details and it follow the prompts to get it working.
For a VPS customer you sign up with CloudFlare directly. - Check out the Help Center
The Help Center is full of information about our products that can help you get back to doing what you do best, it can also be a great resource for finding out information about products that you are interested in.
Take a browse around our Help Center before raising any tickets for common problems, if not feel free to raise a ticket with our Customer service team. - Keep up to date!
Whatever software you use to access and manage your site, it should always run in its latest version. Software updates all have their purpose and are intended to improve your users’ experience, eliminate potential security loopholes and enable you to add new features. An outdated CMS version may easily cause your website to go down, especially if you try to add new plugins, extensions or modules to it.
To keep your server up to date please consult our Customer Service team on the options available for you. If you dont have time to keep a server up to date and would like to enquire about this, take a look at our Managed VPS here - Consult our Customer service team
Want advice on the correct upgrade for your service? Are you starting a new business and have a custom CRM with specific requirements? Jump on the phone or chat and talk to our Customer Service team who will try help find the right solution for your venture.
Our phone number is 1300 884 839. - Enable caching
Enabling caching on your server enables static content to be displayed directly from the web host without having to pull data each time from the database. Its a very effective way of reducing server load and enabling your site to load faster.
There are a range of plugins that can help you enable caching on your server. If you are running Wordpress you can use a Wordpress plugin like W3 Total-Cache. On a Linux Server you can use Memcached.
Please note that third party software and plugins such as the ones mentioned above, are not supported by Crucial.
