YOU CAN SPEED UP YOUR SITE

I’m sure most of my regular readers have noticed that I changed the design of my blog. I like to do this every few years or so to keep it fresh. And, you may have also noticed that my blog or website now downloads much faster then it use to, yes? For years I had been quite frustrated by how slow and sluggish my site was, and how incredibly long it took to downland. I ran a test to check the download speeds and it scored a whopping D minus. This didn’t surprise me of course, and the test also gave me the specifics—it would take anywhere from fourteen to seventeen seconds for my site to fully load.

I wanted to switch hosts but had heard horror stories of how difficult it would be to do this, and how the process would often break a users site or bring it down all together. Needless to say I had much trepidation and thusly put it off for years. But the situation continued to get worse, to the point where I knew I had to do something. So I dove back in to research mode and over a period of a few months I finally found a host I was willing to try. Like many other bloggers I had my site hosted with Blue Host. It had been recommended by Word Press as well as IFB so I thought I was good, and for a few years I was. But over time my site just got slow and slower.

the reason why all the hosts were getting the same bad reviews is that they are all owned by the same company—EIG

Well as many of you know I was not the only one having this problem. Blue Host’s service it seems was tanking. But when I researched other hosts they all seemed to get the same bad reviews. I even tried to switch about a year and half ago to another provider called In Motion, but the transition was going so badly and the customer service was so inefficient and even hostile, that I pulled out before it was completed and stayed with Blue Host. I continued to do my research however, as like I stated, the speed of my site was abominable.

Well do diligence pays off. The first thing I discovered from my in-depth research was that the reason why all the hosts were getting the same bad reviews is that they are all owned by the same company—EIG. EIG were on a mission buying up all the hosting companies. That is why Blue Host service went down hill and why almost every other well-known hosting company’s ratings were also in the toilet. And with everything that is in the news today regarding Facebook, Amazon and Google which are all monolithic monopolies, it was quite dismaying to find the same situation with hosting companies.

I was fully preparing myself for days of frustration and having to babysit the entire process—ugh

Luckily I found a company that is not owned by EIG, they are called Name Hero. The transition was quite easy, I was surprised at how seamless it was, I was fully preparing myself for days of frustration and having to babysit the entire process. But the customer service was remarkably good and personable and knowledgeable. This was the best decision I had made for my blog in years. I did some work before the switch to make it easier, and I went in and deleted about four hundred old posts. That alone made my site download faster, even before the switch.

I also noticed that when I changed themes my site got a bit faster. My old theme used the Ruby On The Rails platform, while the new one uses the Genesis platform and I believe this helped to increase the speed of my site as well. So if your site is slow and you are looking to improve this, you may want to consider switching hosts. But before you do, a good idea would be to clean house and to go in and delete any old posts that you feel you no longer need. Like I said, I would recommend Name Hero and I would also consider using the Genesis platform if you can.

I hope you found this helpful and good luck! And lets hope Name Hero does not get bought up by EIG, fingers crossed.

XOXO