Understanding Domain Names and Emails

Before diving into the process, it’s important to understand what domain names and email addresses are and how they work together. They are the foundation of your online presence and play a critical role in how others interact with your business. By grasping these concepts, you will be better equipped to make informed decisions that align with your business goals and branding strategy.

What Is a Domain Name?

A domain name is the web address where people can find you online. It’s unique to your business and acts as your online identity, akin to a street address for a home. When you register a domain, you’re essentially purchasing the rights to use that particular web address. This becomes your digital storefront, welcoming visitors to explore what you have to offer.

The importance of a domain name extends beyond just being an address. It serves as a key branding tool that can influence how you are perceived in the market. A well-chosen domain name can enhance your search engine optimization (SEO), making it easier for potential customers to find you. Therefore, selecting the right domain name is a critical decision that requires careful thought and consideration.

What Is an Email Domain?

An email domain is part of your email address that comes after the “@” symbol. It typically matches your domain name, helping to reinforce your brand identity. For example, in the email address info@mybusiness.com, “mybusiness.com” is the email domain. This consistency in branding is crucial for establishing a professional image.

Using your own domain for email also provides a level of personalization and control. It allows you to create customized email addresses that can be tailored to different functions within your business, such as support@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com. This not only helps in organizing communication but also ensures that your brand is constantly at the forefront of every interaction.

Why Is a Custom Domain Important for Email?

Using a custom domain for your email address has several advantages that extend beyond mere aesthetics. A custom domain is a powerful branding tool that can significantly impact your business’s perception and operational effectiveness.

• Professionalism: A custom email domain looks more professional than a generic one like Gmail or Yahoo. It signals to clients and partners that you are serious about your business and are willing to invest in your brand. This professionalism can be the deciding factor for potential customers choosing between you and a competitor.
• Branding: It reinforces your brand every time you send an email. Each email becomes a mini advertisement for your business, keeping your brand in the minds of your recipients. This consistency is key to building a strong, recognizable brand identity.
• Trust: Customers are more likely to trust an email that comes from a branded domain. A custom domain reduces the risk of being perceived as spam or fraudulent, as it confirms the legitimacy of your business. This trust is essential for nurturing customer relationships and encouraging repeat business.
• Control: You have more control over email addresses and accounts associated with your domain. This means you can create, delete, or manage accounts as needed, ensuring that your email communication is efficient and secure. It also allows you to implement advanced security measures to protect your sensitive information.

Steps to Register a Domain Name for Email

To set up a professional email address, the first step is to register a domain name. This process involves several steps that require careful consideration to ensure you select the best domain for your business needs.

Step 1: Choose a Domain Name

Selecting the right domain is crucial. It should be:

• Relevant: Reflect your business or personal brand. The domain should be a clear representation of who you are and what you do, providing immediate clarity to anyone who encounters it.
• Memorable: Easy to remember and spell. A complex or difficult-to-spell domain name can lead to confusion and make it harder for customers to find you. Simplicity is key to ensuring that your domain sticks in the minds of your audience.
• Short: Keep it concise to avoid errors. Shorter domain names are not only easier to remember but also reduce the likelihood of typos. This can be particularly important when sharing your domain verbally or in print.
• Unique: Ensure it doesn’t infringe on any existing trademarks. Conduct thorough research to avoid potential legal issues and ensure that your domain stands out in the crowded online landscape.

Step 2: Check Domain Availability

Once you have a domain name in mind, you need to check its availability. You can do this through a domain registrar. If your preferred domain is taken, consider alternative versions or different extensions like .net, .org, or a country-specific extension such as .com.au and the new .au direct for Australia. These alternatives can still effectively represent your brand while ensuring you secure a domain that works for you.

The availability of your chosen domain can affect your branding strategy, so it’s important to be flexible and creative. Consider how different extensions might appeal to your target audience or align with your industry. This exploration can lead to discovering a domain that not only fits your brand but also enhances it. Here is a link to Conetix Domain search page.

Step 3: Register the Domain

After confirming availability, proceed to register the domain. This involves purchasing the rights to use the domain for a specified period, typically a year.
You can register your domain direct with Conetix as we have over 500 different domain extensions from .ac to .zone.

Step 4: Set Up an Email Hosting Service

Once your domain is registered, you need to set up email hosting. This service allows you to send and receive emails using your domain. Conetix offers various email hosting solutions as part of our package, or Conetix can provide the licenses for the following email solutions:

• Google Workspace: Offers a comprehensive suite of productivity tools alongside email hosting.
• Microsoft Office 365: Known for its robust security features and integration with Microsoft Office applications.

Choosing the right email hosting service is critical for ensuring reliable communication. Consider factors such as storage capacity, ease of use, integration capabilities, and customer support when making your decision.

Configuring Your Domain and Email

Once you have your domain and email hosting in place, the next step is to configure your settings to ensure seamless operation. This involves technical steps that are crucial for establishing a reliable email system.

Step 5: Configure DNS Settings

To ensure your email works correctly, you’ll need to configure the DNS settings for your domain. This typically involves setting MX records, which tell email servers where to deliver your emails. Your email hosting provider will provide the specific settings you need to enter. Proper configuration is essential to prevent issues with email delivery and ensure your emails reach their intended recipients.

Additionally, configuring SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records can enhance your email security and deliverability. These settings help protect your domain from being used for phishing or spam and increase the likelihood that your emails will successfully land in your recipients’ inboxes.

Our support team at Conetix will manage this process for you.

Step 6: Create Email Accounts

With everything set up, you can start creating email accounts. Think strategically about the email addresses you’ll need, such as:

• info@yourdomain.com for general inquiries.
• support@yourdomain.com for customer service.
• sales@yourdomain.com for sales-related queries.

These accounts help organize your communication and ensure that emails are directed to the appropriate teams or individuals. Having a structured email system also improves response times and customer satisfaction.

Consider creating role-based email addresses for different departments or functions within your business. This not only aids in organisation but also provides a professional image to clients and partners who interact with your business.

Tips for Maintaining Your Domain and Email

Having set up your domain and email, consider the following practices to ensure smooth operation and maintain the integrity of your communication channels:

• Regularly Update Your DNS Settings: Keep your DNS records for your email updated according to your email hosting provider’s recommendations.
• Renew Your Domain Promptly: To avoid losing your domain, renew it before it expires. Setting up auto-renewal can prevent accidental lapses and ensure uninterrupted access to your domain and email services.
• Monitor Email Security: Use spam filters and antivirus software to protect your email accounts from phishing and malware attacks. Implementing strong security measures safeguards your business from potential threats and enhances trust with your customers.
• Conduct Regular Backups: Regularly back up your emails and important data to prevent data loss. Having a reliable backup solution in place ensures that you can recover your information in the event of a technical failure or cyberattack.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

To ensure success with your domain and email setup, be aware of common pitfalls that can undermine your efforts:

• Neglecting Privacy Protection: When registering a domain, consider purchasing privacy protection to keep your personal information confidential. This prevents your contact details from being publicly accessible, reducing the risk of spam and identity theft.
• Overlooking Backup Solutions: Ensure you have a backup solution in place to prevent data loss. Regular backups protect your business from accidental deletions, server failures, and other unforeseen events that could jeopardize your data.
• Ignoring Scalability: Choose a domain and email service that can grow with your business. As your business expands, your email needs may change, so it’s important to select a service that offers flexibility and scalability to accommodate future growth.

Choosing the right domain for your email can make a significant difference in how your business is perceived.

By registering a domain and setting up a professional email address, you establish credibility, enhance your brand, and gain control over your communication channels.

Follow the steps outlined in this guide to embark on a path to email success. With the right domain and email setup, you’re equipped to make a strong impression on every email you send, building a foundation for lasting customer relationships and business growth.

Other Useful Links

SPF Guide
Optimising Email Delivery

Anyone who’s worked on the backend of systems, worked in IT security, been a developer or been a system administration will tell you about the importance of having logs. WordPress is no exception to this rule and while some errors will be logged and you can increase debug logging for developer issues, WordPress doesn’t have any audit logs built in.

What are Audit Logs?

Audit logs are a collections of events and records which give you the ability to trace through what occurred in chronological order for a system. In the context of WordPress, this includes (but not limited to) events such as:

• Logins
• User modification (creation, password updates, profile updates, addition and deletion)
• Post / Page modification (create / edit / delete)
• Plugin events (installation, disabling, updates and removal)
• Theme events (installation, editing, disabling, updates and removal)
• Core WordPress (updates and similar events)
• Media file changes
• Changes to menus, tags, categories, settings and more

For each of these events, we get the exact time it occurred, the IP address the change was requested by and the user who made the change.

Why are audit logs critical?

Think of audit logs like the “black box” flight recorder in an aircraft. You don’t want to ever have to use them, but when things go wrong you want to know exactly what was going on at the time or previous to that.

For WordPress, these become critical when there’s been a change to your website which you didn’t request or worse, when malicious content has been uploaded. In the case of a malicious change, it can be very difficult to trace the root cause if it’s been properly masked.

As an example case, we recently had a site compromised where all of the themes, core and plugins were up-to-date. There was no existing compromised code within the site and the files were verified as being authentic.

A basic scan of the logs shows that there was a successful login (but no specific user), then a plugin uploaded (but no indication as to which one).

With the audit logs, we were then able to determine:

• Which user logged in
• What plugin was uploaded
• What other changes were made to the site at the same time

Are these built in to WordPress?

Sadly, no. This means you need to use a third party plugin to achieve this. We’d love to see it implemented so that it was there by default but given the complexity of WordPress these sorts of changes probably aren’t going to occur anytime soon.

This means, if you don’t have anything installed and a failure occurs then you’ve got no ability to audit actions taken on your website.

What plugins are available to offer this?

There are a number of third party plugins which do provide this. We recommend you test them to see which suits your needs the best. Some of the plugins are free while others have the basics for free and additional features available to purchase.

WP Activity Log

Cost: Free (with premium features available for a cost)
Website: https://melapress.com/wordpress-activity-log/

Stream

Cost: Free
Website: https://wp-stream.com/

Activity Log

Cost: Free
Webiste: https://wordpress.org/plugins/aryo-activity-log/

As is the case with most WordPress plugins and options, there’s probably a dozen others out there to try as well. We recommend testing these three first and if none suit your requirements then look further.

Is there anything else which should be done?

Of course, a counter point here is someone who has access to your website can also potentially scrub your audit logs and hide their trail. This could also be someone accidentally disabling or deleting your audit plugin and you’ll of course lose a copy of the records of who did this.

The solution here is to push or mirror these records off to an external service or storage point. For our Managed WordPress customers, we do this automatically to ensure we have a full audit history available even if they try to delete anything internal to WordPress.

Keeping systems secure is not only a challenge from a technical perspective, but also one from a user perspective. As a web and email hosting provider, this can be a difficult balancing act. If we put too many security limits in then it will cause extreme inconvenience to users. If we place user convenience and experience over security, we leave systems vulnerable to security breaches.

Finding that middle ground where we keep both sides of the equation happy isn’t easy. Some security restrictions do and will cause issues for customers and something we hate having to do.

With COVID and a rapid shift to Work From Home (WFH), we paused some of the changes to our platform to err on the side of convenience over security (where risks management allowed). With the level of disruption already occurring, we didn’t want to add to this pile unless absolutely necessary.

Large breaches for companies like Optus and Medibank Private recently however have meant we need to change our priority for security issues. While it may mean some disruption for you, this is ultimately to ensure we protect your data and your reputation.

Upcoming Changes at Conetix

Most of the security changes we’re implementing currently won’t affect the overwhelming majority of our customers. Platform level changes are tested and run through specific user scenarios to measure impact (where possible) and to ensure we have our support team trained and ready to handle this.

Where there’s a change which requires customers to take some sort of action (eg, reconfigure a setting in their email), users will be notified about upcoming changes and provided instructions on what’s required to change. Like always, our support team is on-hand to assist with these changes.  

Unencrypted authentication or weak passwords

Key changes include removal of any unencrypted authentication and transfer of information to services such as email and FTP. There are only a low percentage of users accessing the services in this fashion, so the impact here will be minimal.

We’ve also produced our own internal tool in order to analyse password strength and let us know which accounts have insecure passwords. This is based on both industry best practice as well as our own analysis data based on 20 years of hosting.

Policy changes

Some of the changes also reflect policy changes. If we detect malicious activity on a site or a critical vulnerability left unpatched, we may immediately suspend the account to either prevent damage or to prevent further security issues. This also helps limit any reputational damage to your brand and website.

Access to your services via email or call simply isn’t granted to everyone (or even others within your business!) and must be explicitly provided. While this may seem inconvenient at times, we place the emphasis on security first. We have a number of changes to make this process easier for you coming over the next few months as well.

Multi-factor Authentication

Where possible, we try to offer all services with an option for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). This ensures that there’s an additional method beyond just your password to ensure access is granted to the right person. Many systems are starting to mandate the use of MFA, such as Microsoft 365 to reduce the high levels of accounts being compromised due to password reuse and similar.

Security issues in 2023 and beyond

We’d love for web and email hosting to simply be all about helping users, publishing websites and working on positive things. Unfortunately, the world is unpredictable and volatile. Web hosting and email hosting is difficult again because our systems are connected to the world 24/7, 365 days a year. There’s no hiding these systems so they must be protected to a high standard.

Email Misuse

While this has always been a problem, we’re seeing two distinct areas where there’s rising numbers of cases. The first is using legitimate domains where there’s insufficient protection to send out phishing emails from other email systems. Protection measures such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF) in 2022 needs to be set to “hard” fail to ensure remote mail systems drop these illegitimate emails cold rather than continuing to evaluate them or simply deliver them. We have a guide on this available: https://testing.conetix.com.au/support/preventing-email-domain-misuse-and-phishing/

As always, weak passwords remain a critical issue and we’ve started testing password strengths to determine any which are too easy to guess. While our systems have protection against brute force attacks (where someone will just keep guessing a password), these attacks can occur from thousands of IP addresses and run over months to avoid all detection. Passwords sent without encryption is also a potential point of exploit and while this is blocked for the majority of our systems, we left some legacy ones enabled until such time we could minimise disruption to enable.

Website Exploits

This is an issue which won’t ever go away. It’s critical to keep systems such as WordPress secure. This means regular updates, regular backups, auditing users and ensuring you use unique passwords. The most common cause is still out-of-date plugins or known exploits left open for your website in which case it’s just a matter of when, not if it will be exploited.

Password Reuse

If you haven’t yet, make sure you go to haveibeenpwned.com and put in any email accounts you use. Chances are, your email address is probably on 5+ different lists where remote accounts or logins have been exploited. For any of these systems where they’ve been able to recover the password, it now means everyone can get a copy and use it.

Any login where you share the same password is now vulnerable. Instead of having to guess now, they can simply log directly into your website, email and any other system where the same passwords are in place. I highly recommend reading our article on the importance of secure passwords for more information and guidance.

Behind the Scenes

Certification

The team are working towards ISO 27001 certification for aspects of our hosting, so that our internal processes and systems can be verified and audited to an international standard. Most of the work here isn’t changing our processes, but ensuring we have auditable verification of our process and systems. We want to provide you (and your customers) with the proof that our security is more than just talk.

Increased alerting and logging

Our systems already have combined logging and analysis to help us to prevent limit security issues as much as possible, however as the complexity of attacks increase we must also keep increasing our systems to match. It’s no longer possible for a hosting provider to have simple, standalone systems and remain protected.

Increased resiliency

Our systems already have high levels of redundancy and fault tolerance, so that we ensure our platform remains available at all times. This is due to having the right combinations of software and hardware to not only replicate data and systems but detect faults and mitigate wherever possible. As the systems continue to grow in complexity, we’re ensuring we evaluate what we provide and increase or replace systems to continue our rock solid stability.

Conclusion

While we’re doing everything we can to minimise any impact to your services, security must take precedence over convenience. Our record on security remains very strong due to the continuous enhancement approach we take.

It may not be immediately obvious as to the changes we’re making, because the overwhelming majority of them are behind the scenes and don’t cause disruption. We hope that any disruption is offset by the fact that your data remains safe and systems remain operational.

From the 24th of March 2022, auDA will be launching the .au Direct domain names. This allows you to register with a direct .au without the usual .com.au at the end (eg, domain.au).

For all holders of an existing .com.au, .net.au or .org.au, your name has been reserved on a priority basis for 6 months (where eligible). As it launches on the 24th, Conetix will register (on your behalf) all domains which you have requested.

Why the change?

The .au Direct is simply in addition to the existing .au (.com.au, .net.au and .org.au) namespaces and won’t be replacing it. The .au direct means you can have a shorter name and URL.

The other change is to allow anyone with a connection to Australia to be able to register an .au Direct domain (ie, no ABN required).

What’s the cost? 

Conetix will initially offer the .au Direct domains for $15/year.

How many years can I register my .au domain for? 

Initial domain registration is for 1 Year only.
After the first year and your .au domain is not contested you can register your .au domain for up to 5 Years.

How do I reserve my existing domain?

For businesses and other entities who want to ensure their domain is secured, it needed to have been registered prior to February 2018 (when the .au Direct namespace was announced).

To check and reserve, you can do the following:

1. Check your domain is listed via the auDA Priority status tool.
2. If the domain has been reserved, you can register your interest to have Conetix immediately register the domain on the 24th (subject to auDA conditions).

auDA Priority Allocation of .au direct process outline.

Existing registrants with an exact match have the first opportunity to register the name during the six-month Priority Allocation period.
If no one applies for Priority Status during that period, the name can be registered through an accredited
registrar on a first-come first-served basis when the Priority Allocation period ends.

Priority categories:
Category 1
.au domain name licences with a creation date on or before the Priority Status cut-off date of 4 Feb 2018
Category 2
.au domain name licences with a creation date after the Priority Status cut-off date of 4 Feb 2018

The complete Priority Allocation Process is set out in the .au Domain Administration Rules:
.au Direct Priority Implementation

Managing website updates in WordPress is an essential part of managing your SEO. By keeping everything up to date, you can better prevent hacks or downtime that damage your position on the SERPs.

Improve security by managing website updates

You need to update the WordPress core and any plugins you leverage. WordPress usually updates the core a few times a year, and applying these updates is an important factor for securing your website.

All WordPress updates include security patches and information about what has changed. Updating your website will create a secure environment for you and your users. It’s essential to be on the lookout for alerts from the WordPress team about any updates that may affect your site. These updates can introduce new features, but they also fix potential security vulnerabilities. Hackers tend to target outdated websites as they make for vulnerable targets that are easy to exploit. This becomes even more concerning as 73.2% of popular WordPress installations are vulnerable to hacks.

Plugins can become significant vulnerabilities if the developer does not update the plugin in line with a WordPress core update. To stay abreast of changes, you will need to monitor WordPress core updates and ensure your plugins receive an update as well. This kind of activity can become time-consuming, so you might consider engaging a WordPress hosting provider to manage this aspect of your site for you.

Maintain customer trust with SSL

A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is a way to verify the legitimacy and identity of a website that protects sensitive data such as usernames, passwords and credit card information when transmitted from a website to the browser. SSL certificates extend beyond online purchases to include logins, registration forms, and password updates too.

Google has gone on record claiming SSL as a ranking factor when it comes to search engine rankings. As Google is always working to continue making its search engine better, it pushes websites with updated SSL encryption as a higher priority in their results. 

This concentration on security lies in the fact that users’ private information can become vulnerable and easily intercepted online without any encryption. Therefore, customers can visit your website with the confidence that you are taking steps to protect their data before entering their password or credit card details.

Of course, adding an SSL certificate is not a shortcut for improving SEO, but having one and keeping it up to date will help. It essentially comes down to this: your customers like to see the lock in the URL bar.

Secure your reputation on the SERPs

Your WordPress website needs to be kept up-to-date for managing security vulnerabilities, which helps you avoid having a hacked or compromised website. Keeping your website up to date can help you maintain your reputation on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). 

Google might put a line in your website’s snippet warning people to be cautious of your site. To further protect visitors, Google may rank you further down on the search listings and warn those who click on your site that it may not be safe.

Resolving the issue can become a lengthy process. You will need to investigate why the issue occurred and eliminate the security issue that created the alert. Even after that, re-securing your reputation on the SERPs will not happen overnight. Google will not remove the ‘This site may be hacked’ message until your website has undergone a review from their security team.

I recommend working with a WordPress expert that understands the importance of managing website updates for maintaining SEO. Working with experienced professionals is essential to maintaining your online reputation and generating more traffic from search engines, such as Google or Bing.

Increase uptime by managing website updates

Downtime can become a costly problem. You might lose traffic, conversions and sales, all of which can negatively impact your revenue.

Keeping your WordPress website updated can mitigate your risk of being hacked and experiencing downtime. Downtime is another factor that can seriously impact SEO. Even though your site is down, your bounce rate will increase every time someone clicks away from it. Google will also notice that your website is not up and might drop lower in the rankings.

Managed WordPress hosts can monitor theme, plugin or core updates and quickly resolve any issues these may cause for the integrity of your website. Keeping plugins and themes up to date can help you maintain SEO as it lessens the security risks that outdated plugins and themes might cause.

Managed WordPress providers will also help you keep your website up to date so that you can avoid any interruptions in SEO. The provider will be managing your updates for you to ensure a higher level of uptime. As a result, your site will experience less downtime, leading to increased traffic and conversions from those visiting the website.

Conetix can manage updates on your WordPress site

Conetix provides Australian businesses with fast and reliable hosting on an Australian-based cloud network. Our Managed WordPress plans include updates to the core system, plugins and themes, all backed by our friendly and knowledgeable support team.

Conetix provides Australian businesses with fast and reliable hosting on an Australian-based cloud network. Visit our Managed WordPress page for more on our capabilities.

It is crucial to understand the difference between managed WordPress hosting vs shared hosting before putting your website in the hands of a provider. You should research each solution and consider the option best suited to your business as both have their advantages and disadvantages.

What is managed WordPress hosting vs shared hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is a service that offers scalability, security, and high availability for your website. Managed WordPress providers often have a team of WordPress experts to manage core updates, backups, server configurations, support and security monitoring. Managed WordPress hosting is a service for those looking to keep their site running smoothly, even when traffic increases dramatically.

Managed WordPress hosting delivers more control over your WordPress website. Many providers offer dashboards that can help you improve security and manage core, plugin and theme updates. Your provider’s experienced team can also manage your dashboard to ensure automated updates and backups occur as they should.

For example, Conetix offers a dedicated server plan, which includes complete management of your WordPress site, an SSL certificate, the Plesk WordPress Toolkit, and the SEO tools you need to ensure your target audience finds you.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is another type of website hosting service where several businesses share one server for hundreds, if not thousands, of websites. If you need a budget-friendly hosting plan, then shared WordPress hosting might be a better option to consider.

Shared hosting costs less as it hosts multiple websites at once. However, it is less reliable than managed WordPress hosting because you share resources with other users on the server. If one website on the server experiences a traffic spike and slows down, it will cause problems for all the websites in that environment.

Similarities between managed WordPress hosting vs shared hosting

Managed WordPress hosting and shared hosting are not completely opposing products; they essentially provide a server to store your website’s files and content.

For example, a Managed WordPress provider might manage all of the elements of your website but host it on a shared server with other websites they manage. Before selecting a managed WordPress host to work with, you should research whether they host your site on an individual server. 

The case for managed WordPress hosting

Shared hosting providers generally will not offer to manage your site for you. If you are a busy freelance developer, digital agency, or managing your own site, spending money on a service without website maintenance may not make sense when a provider can manage it for you.

A managed WordPress provider can monitor your site 24/7 and quickly fix any issues or restore a backup copy of your site. At Conetix, our golden rule is: ‘Backup, backup, backup!’ WordPress requires constant updates to keep it safe and secure; a managed WordPress provider will monitor your site’s security and uptime.

Automated updates are a great WordPress feature, but they are often the culprits of website issues. The support team behind managed WordPress hosting monitors automatic updates and resolves any problems caused by updates so that you do not have to pinpoint and resolve the issue.

Managed WordPress hosting gives you an optimal environment to run your website, which regular shared hosting services often cannot provide. Managed WordPress hosting ensures that your website will have minimal downtime or server issues, problems that would otherwise take up valuable time that you could utilise for other important tasks.

Why you might consider shared hosting

You may need to prioritise cost-efficiency over the benefits of managed WordPress. In this case, shared hosting might be a good option as it is generally a much cheaper solution. For small businesses with low website traffic or minimal bandwidth requirements, shared hosting can do the job.

Shared hosting services can provide great benefits if you plan to keep website traffic low, allowing you to save money and focus on your site rather than server maintenance. Shared hosting often advertises unlimited users on your site, but better handles a small number of users at one time. If the server needs to handle more requests, your website speed can slow down or your website may fail (500 error).

Businesses might also choose shared hosting because it is easy to maintain. You do not carry the responsibility of maintaining the server; you just manage security updates and patches.

In shared hosting, your website resides on the same server as other websites. If one website experiences a problem, it can potentially affect all of the websites on the server.

Managed WordPress hosting vs shared hosting: How do you choose?

Sometimes, it can be challenging to decide whether or not you should pay for managed WordPress hosting or just go with the cheaper shared hosting service. I recommend you consider the following:

1. Maintenance: If you do not want to be responsible for site maintenance, it is safer to select managed WordPress hosting.
2. Budget: Shared hosting may be the more practical choice if you are on a budget and can maintain your site yourself. 
3. The number of users: Consider your bandwidth and storage space requirements. More users mean higher bandwidth and storage needs.
4. Security: Shared hosting cannot provide a good solution for e-commerce websites due to the lack of security features. If you or your developer are not completing security updates, you are vulnerable unless you are on a managed WordPress plan.
5. Backups: A managed WordPress host will back up your site for you, whereas you will need a backup plugin if you buy shared hosting.

If you are unsure of what each service offers, do some research and compare reviews before deciding. Ensure you have a long-term plan before committing to either managed WordPress hosting or shared hosting.

Managed WordPress hosting with Conetix

Have you become stuck in the managed WordPress hosting vs shared hosting debate? Choosing the right solution for your business often begins with identifying your website’s needs. 

Conetix provides Australian businesses with fast and reliable hosting on an Australian-based cloud network. Our Managed WordPress plans include updates to the core system, plugins and themes, all backed by our friendly and knowledgeable support team.

Visit our Managed WordPress page for more on our capabilities.

How a slow website impacts your earnings

A loading time of 2-4 seconds is optimal for any website, so a delay of 1-2 seconds can negatively impact your earnings.

These impacts can include:

• Loss of website traffic: Visitors that experience a slow-performing website are unlikely to visit the same website. This decreases incoming traffic, which can result in lost revenue for the business. 
• A search engine ranking nosedive: A good search engine ranking can bring high traffic to your website. Most popular search engines, such as Google, give higher rankings to sites with fast page load speed. Fast websites are usually listed on the first page by search engines, which results in more clicks. 
• Poor customer experience: Visitors tend to lose interest in a website in around 8 seconds. Thus, slow loading times may cause the visitors to close the site and never return. Negative reviews could prevent other users from trusting your business.
• High bounce rates: Slow page loading is one of the most common reasons for high bounce rates, whereby visitors leave the website after opening a single page. 

What Should Your Page Speed Be?

The page loading speed should be quick without compromising on customer experience. For instance, if you improve the desktop website speed but your visitors use mobiles, you won’t serve the majority of your audience.

Google Core Web Vitals impact on website speed and SEO

Core Web Vitals is a page experience metric from Google to decide what type of experience your visitors get when they land on your website.

Why are Core Web Vitals important?

These factors determine the page quality experience on Google:

• HTTPS
• Mobile-friendliness
• Safe-browsing
• Non-intrusive popup ads

Core Web Vitals comprise the largest chunk of your page experience score. But, page experience is one factor amongst others to rank sites.

Core Web Vitals Metrics

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP refers to your page loading performance. Thus, LCP is the time from clicking on a link to viewing most of the content on the screen. The majority of other page speed measurements do not represent what the user’s experience of opening a webpage is like.

Here are some things to consider to improve LCP: 

• Remove third-party scripts
• Upgrade your web host
• Remove large elements from pages
• Minimise CSS as they delay page load times

First Input Delay (FID)

FID measures the responsiveness of your webpage. This particular metric measures the time between a user’s interaction with the page and when the browser responds to the interaction. Some examples of interactions include selecting an option from a menu and clicking submit after filling out a form on a website.

These are the primary issues to address to improve FID:

• Minimise JavaScript
• Remove unnecessary third-party scripts
• Use a browser cache to assist in loading pages faster

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS is the visual stability of a page as it loads. For example, you might have to keep scrolling to read a paragraph because videos keep loading. This shows signs of a poor on-page experience. 

Here are some things you can do to minimise CLS:

• Add new UI elements below the fold
• Ensure that elements have reserved space so they don’t push content down while loading
• Use set size attribute dimensions for videos and images

Measuring Website Speed and SEO

GTmetrix is one of the most popular tools for website speed and performance testing. It scans your website to test the performance. Previously, GTmetrix relied on the outdated PageSpeed and YSlow libraries to scan your website. However, it didn’t assess the webpage’s actual performance. 

To address this shortcoming, GTmetrix modified its algorithm to use Google’s Latest Lighthouse Metrics. It utilises field data given by the Chrome User Experience Report. Lighthouse is Google’s open-source tool for analysing a webpage’s performance, SEO, and more. 

GTmetrix’s Legacy Report looks similar to the new GTmetrix reports, but they leverage different testing methods. 

The differences between both the reports include:

• The Legacy report focuses on the structure of the webpage. But, the new GTmetrix report reflects website performance. Thus, with the new GTmetrix report, you can compare the performance score to Lighthouse’s performance score. Additionally, you can also see the structure score, which is GTmetrix’s assessment of how well the web pages adhere to practices.
• The Legacy report displays page details with raw stats, which do not prove what an average visitor experiences while on a website. The new GTmetrix report shows the Core Web Vital matrix. 
• The new GTmetrix report includes tabs for summary, performance, and structure. 
• It also provides a speed visualisation overview that gives users more context on the metrics regarding the visitor’s experience. 

Optimising Website Speed and SEO

There are a few different tools to check the load time on your website. In my experience, Google Lighthouse and GTmetrix are very comprehensive tools to get you started.

How to improve the page load time

I recommend that you take a look at the following steps to improve the page load time for your website:

• Optimise images for load time: Images have a huge influence on page load time. Therefore, the LazyLoad plugin can be used to ensure that only images on the screen are loaded initially.
• Optimise images for size: Upload images that are no bigger than they need to be, as images with smaller pixel density load faster. 
• Optimise images for format: Users can convert some of the larger images to see an improvement. 
• Optimise content: By utilising internal linking and breadcrumbs, the user experience may improve. This helps your website to rank higher in search engines.
• Reduce redirects: Every time your webpage redirects to another page, it adds time to the page load speed. 
• Improve hosting: Consider upgrading to a more robust hosting solution as low-quality web hosts greatly impact slow page load speed.
• Install plugins: Install an efficient speed optimisation plugin such as W3 Total Cache.

Improve website speed and SEO with Conetix

Website speed and SEO are crucial for any business. You could have the most attractive-looking website in the world, but if it loads slowly on any device, it can negatively impact your earnings. 

Conetix provides Australian businesses with fast and reliable hosting on an Australian-based cloud network. Visit our Managed WordPress Hosting page to learn more about the benefits Conetix can offer you.

For Australian developers and digital agencies that manage client websites within Australia, data sovereignty is an essential point to consider when choosing the right WordPress hosting provider. It is not enough to work with an Australian provider; you need the reassurance that their data centres reside on Australian soil, protected by Australian laws.

What is data sovereignty?

Data sovereignty refers to the governance and accessibility of how data is collected, processed, and stored within a specific jurisdiction. Under data sovereignty, you cannot transfer data or provide access to any other jurisdiction. Data sovereignty is a country-specific concern and data privacy laws around it vary from country to country.

However, there is a rule of thumb across all borders regarding data sovereignty. Data sovereignty stipulates that data collected and processed within a country’s borders must remain within those borders, including backups created by a service provider and support staff locations.

Two main agendas led to the rise of data sovereignty:

1. It prevents infringement on personal data by foreign and unauthorised entities. The right to privacy features prominently in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
2. It prevents data within a country’s jurisdiction from being subpoenaed by foreign governments.

Here in Australia, we have the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) from the Privacy Act of 1988 to uphold data sovereignty. The APP features thirteen principles that govern integrity in collecting, using, and disclosing personal information.

Organisations located within Australia but with foreign operations must disclose each time they share data with foreign entities. They must also ensure that foreign contacts and owners do not breach the APPs. Data sovereignty has more to do with legal matters than technical elements in the digital data industry. It is simply a matter of compliance.

Why Australian businesses may prioritise data sovereignty

Failing to comply with data sovereignty can lead to compromised staff and customer data, and even costly compliance breaches. You might also be risking the integrity of trade secrets, strategic plans, and financial reports. In Australia, the consequences also include a hefty fine for violating the APPs.

Many savvy Australian-based businesses are now proactive about compliance with data sovereignty policies.

An easy step Australian businesses can take to ensure compliance with data sovereignty laws is staff training. Businesses based on Australian soil are designing seminars and workshops to help staff adhere to data compliance laws.

Data governance systems is another way Australian businesses can ensure compliance with data sovereignty laws. Internal data governance processes that align with data sovereignty laws make compliance easier. They feature data handling steps that protect sensitive personal data.

Australian businesses are also leveraging data security systems designed to ensure compliance with APPs. The main advantage of such security systems is that they leave little room for human error. Security systems built for data sovereignty even utilise encryption to protect data.

As an Australian-based business, you should discuss data sovereignty compliance options with your service provider.

Data sovereignty vs data residency

Data sovereignty is just one element of data privacy protection. The other element worth exploring is data residency. Data residency refers to when businesses choose to host their data in a specific physical location or jurisdiction.

Businesses may prefer to store their data in specific geographical locations and jurisdictions due to favourable privacy policies. They may also do so because of good business environments and tax systems.

Data sovereignty, on the other hand, is not a matter of choice. Businesses are obligated to comply with privacy laws and governance in their jurisdiction.

Data sovereignty is a welcome move for consumers in countries and states that have adopted data sovereignty laws. However, some businesses do not share this sentiment because compliance requires extra effort and even resources.

Here in Australia, businesses grapple with data sovereignty compliance when looking for WordPress hosting because it can be difficult to establish data storage locations.

A business located in Australia will have to choose a hosting provider that is also based locally. Second, the business also has to ensure that the service provider adheres to the APPs.

How data sovereignty impacts Australian businesses

With data residency, a service provider can choose Australia as one of its data storage facilities. This, however, does not guarantee that the data would not be routed to foreign facilities or accessed by foreigners.

Many global web hosting companies utilise the “follow the sun” model of operation. In this model, data is stored in one jurisdiction while customer support services operate in another. Foreign jurisdictions, therefore, have access to customers’ data.

Countries may have data sovereignty policies that allow them access to all data in their jurisdiction regardless of origin. Such countries blatantly disregard the data sovereignty policies of data residency jurisdictions.

Many Australians are exhausted from insecurities arising from the potential exploitation of personal data by big tech companies. The 1.67 billion-dollar cyber strategy launched by the government was a welcome move that benefits customers and home-grown Australian tech companies.

Local businesses often benefit from partnering with local web hosting providers. That is because local providers are adept with APP compliance. This means reduced risk of fines or bad PR for the business seeking hosting. Dealing with a service provider familiar with data sovereignty compliance rules also beats holding a foreign service provider to account.

Sovereign, Managed WordPress Hosting with Conetix

We have experience in web hosting since 1999, including hosting for government clients. Our Australian Data Centre is Federal Government approved, with 24/7 monitoring and N+1 redundancy. You can be sure that your client’s sensitive information is kept and protected on Australian soil.

Visit our Managed WordPress page to learn more about our hosting services.

This of course means less bandwidth to load a website and therefore faster websites, which is one of the key goals Google wants all web developers to deliver. Anyone who’s trying to ensure they have the best SEO optimisation for their site should therefore be looking at WebP as a high priority!

Incorporating both lossy (JPEG and similar) and lossless (PNG and similar) formats, WebP is a universal format and has differing compression algorithms to optimise for both styles of images.

Official Site: A new image format for the Web | WebP

What’s the compression like?

To show a “real world” example, I’ve used an image by Erik McLean on Unsplash. This image is a JPEG image, which looks like the following:

The original image was 3.6MB. Now of course many of these images aren’t in a web friendly resolution to start with (it’s 5472 x 3648 pixels) but it’ll at least form the baseline for our comparison.

To first show what it can compress down to as a JPEG still but without any quality loss, I’ve used my favourite tool JPEGmini. For anyone who takes a lot of photos, this is a must have when it comes to reducing the size of your originals but retaining all of the quality. Using JPEGmini, we’ve reduced the size to 2.7MB or roughly a 25% saving. This is pretty good, and on higher resolution images I’ve found the results are as high as 50%.

Now to webP. I’ve used an online conversion tool (convertio.co) as the conversion tool as it’s just for a once-off image conversion. This has reduced the image size now down to 1.5MB or a nearly 60% reduction!

Not all images will have such a dramatic decrease in size, however Google are stating that on average they see a 25-35% reduction which is still a considerable improvement.

Is there quality loss?

There are two types of image compression schemes, lossless (meaning no loss in quality) and lossy. Images like JPEG are already lossy formats, meaning that they reduce the size of the file by trying to “combine” pixels of similar colours rather than storing them individually. 

This is a large oversimplification of the way it works, but essentially the greater the compression then the greater the quality loss. 

I cropped a section of the images to compare where there was a reasonable amount of detail and combined before saving in a lossless (PNG) format.

It was very difficult to find any difference between the three personally, which is a good thing! 

Which browsers support it?

Of course, for the images to be displayed, web browsers firstly need to support the image format. The good news is that all major browsers except one support WebP:

Sadly, Apple has been very late to the party in providing WebP support while Google Chrome added support back in 2012. This means that while Apple drags their feet for political reasons (it’s not a technical limitation), you’ll need to provide backwards compatibility for Apple users.

Update: Apple finally added support in late 2020 for Safari on iOS and macOS with Safari 14, however this requires your macOS and iOS versions to be updated for it to work.

How can I provide backwards compatibility?

While Apple and some old corporate and/or government departments who are forced to use IE 11 will be the only ones affected by using WebP, thankfully the HTML img tag allows you to add backwards compatibility. Let’s take a look at the following example code:

<img alt=”This is a webP image” src=”/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/testimage.webp” />

The src attribute tells the browser where to find the file, with the alt attribute simply to provide a non-visual descriptor of the image. In order to provide backwards compatibility, we can change this to a <picture> tag, which would look similar to the following:

<picture>
    <source srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/testimage.webp" type="image/webp">
    <source srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/testimage.jpg" type="image/jpeg">
    <img alt=”This is a webP image” src=”/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/testimage.jpg” />
</picture>

The <picture> tag allows for multiple <source> tags to be added, allowing the browser to detect what it supports and fallback to a standard JPEG or PNG file as required.

Of course, this adds significant complexities if you’re hand coding your site but also why using a plugin for your site will be the quickest route (with suggestions below!).

How can I test the difference?

To determine how much space you’ll save on your site, you can use Google Pagespeed Insights to test and measure the difference. For instance, I’ve used the SBS website (simply chosen as it was recently opened) as a test and you simply need to observe the Serve images in next-gen formats section:

You can click to expand to see what difference this makes to individual images on your site:

Google also gives an estimation in time based on the reduced download size, but this time will vary of course depending on the overall Internet connection.

Will I see it as an option in my photo editing software?

While the format and size improvements are great, it’s still very much a “new” technology when it comes to traditional photo editing systems. Plugins like WebPShop provide the ability to export images from Photoshop but for now most photo editors have poor to no support.

At some point in the future, we hope to see more systems using WebP out of the box so that more than just websites can take advantage of the space saving. For now, we suggest keeping originals in JPEG or PNG format and using WebP for your website only. 

Ok, so how do I use it on my website?

In the latest Plesk Obsidian 18.0.27 release, all PHP versions now use the latest GD image library so that all of the Conetix Web Hosting systems (and others of course) now provide support to generate these images.  

For websites running WordPress, this means plugins like WebP Converter for Media and WebP Express and many others can generate these images directly from your website and automatically optimise your site. 

Of course, we very highly recommend that you take a backup first before proceeding, but all good plugins create a new WebP image while leaving the original image untouched. Here’s one quick example of the optimisations for a test site using WebP Express: 

We’d then recommend testing your site both with your own browser to ensure there’s no anomalies but also using Google Pagespeed Insights so that you have a before and after comparison.

What if my hosting doesn’t support WebP yet?

First of all, ask your hosting provider if they do support it and if not, when they will. If they’re a Plesk based hosting provider then they’ll either have it on their plans to roll out soon or if you can be moved to a server which already supports it. At Conetix, we’ve already rolled out support to all of our web hosting plans and progressively rolling the update out to managed servers as well.

If there’s no support then you still have two options. The first option is to use an external platform to optimise the images. Some plugins provide this as a free option for a limited number of images whereas others it’s a small monthly fee to access their cloud based optimisation. There’s also third party services such as Cloudflare, which can automatically optimise the images for you on their paid plans.

The second option is of course to move providers. While this is a drastic option for many, you may find a better provider who offers things like the latest PHP versions a better fit for your business if you’re chasing better customer experiences. What’s more, the better hosting providers also provide free migration so that there’s no additional cost and no downtime involved.

Conclusion

With all browsers except one and with a fallback option, now is the time to convert your website to use WebP. By having the image libraries on your web server directly support WebP means you can run the conversions for free as well.

This fallback works well enough that you probably didn’t notice nearly all images on the Conetix site are WebP based and therefore worked without issue.

Even with a modest 30% reduction in image size (you may see 60% or more!), this can represent a significant gain for users on less than optimal connections such as mobile users.

By providing a SSL certificate for your website you can now force all traffic for your website to use https:// – HyperText Transport Protocol Secure rather than standard https://.

With this change and focus on securing websites, browser developers like Google (Chrome) and Firefox started displaying secure and insecure site lock natively in their browser. Their goal is to provide a more secure Internet and provide trust from your website to the end user. 

So what is OCSP Stapling?

Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) stapling is the standard for checking the revocation status of a digital certificate that is assigned to a website or web service, in simple terms;  is your website’s SSL certificate valid. 

To understand a little more about OCSP stapling we need to cover two parts; OCSP itself and the extension stapling.

OCSP itself is an independent protocol that allows the web browser to verify the SSL certificate.

Validity. The browser checks the website’s certificate in real time against the Certified Authority (CA) and responds with a good, revoked or unknown. With this verification process each request  or query has to be processed in real time and incurs a resource cost. 

This cost is not only a bandwidth cost, backend server resource cost but also an end user browser cost in terms of slower performance. The busier the website is the more resource cost and in turn the slower the website becomes.

To overcome this resource cost limitation stapling was introduced and as the term suggests, the additional protocol is stapled or added to OCSP to improve this cost and speed up the process between the end users browser and the website. A time-stamped OCSP response is stapled to the request which eliminates the need for the end user browser to contact the CA directly.

Why would you use OCSP stapling?

This simple addition to your website’s SSL certificate improves both security and performance. This in turn provides trust in your website and end user confidence in using your site. Once again it also provides a ranking signal for Google which improves ever so slightly your overall ranking of your domain and website itself.

Increases Trust
Speeds up your website
Improves Google SEO Ranking

How can you take advantage of OCSP Stapling?

The good news is that OCSP stapling has been implemented by all the major web server providers like NGINX,Apache, LiteSpeed and Microsoft Windows Server.

With the major web server providers implementing this protocol, many server management panel providers such as Plesk, have taken advantage of this and have created a simple way to implement and manage quickly without any technical expertise.

How can I check if my website is using OCSP stapling?

The simplest way to check is to use online tools like SSL Labs SSL test. 
Simply go to https://ssllabs.com/ssltest and type in your domain name. 

It should show the following on the first page of your report if you are using OCSP Stapling.

If you are hosting your website with Conetix or have your own Plesk Virtual Private Server with Conetix, you can add OCSP stapling to your website or sites now. 

If you don’t have this option with your current provider we would love to talk to you and see where we can assist.

More Technical Resources.

If you want to know more about OCSP stapling and how it all works the following are some great articles that you may find useful.

Cloudflare – High-reliability OCSP stapling and why it matters

CA Security Council – The Importance of checking for Certificate Revocation