SiteGround, with over 13 years in the business, provides managed WordPress hosting that does not miss a thing! Their servers, available in 4 different data centers across the world, are optimised for ultimate WordPress speed and security. Meet them in our little sponsor interview!
WordCamps make the WordPress community bigger and stronger
WordCamp Europe: You have sponsored WordCamps all over. What is your main motivation for sponsoring them?
Siteground: By sponsoring a WordCamp we receive a valuable opportunity to meet in person potential customers and tell them about our service. However, what we believe is even more important, is that WordCamps really make the WordPress community bigger and stronger and WordPress itself better and more widely used. Being involved in such events as sponsors, volunteers, speakers and organizers for us is a way to contribute back to the software that is extremely important for the whole web hosting industry.
WordCamp Europe in Paris is going to be the biggest one yet with over 3000 attendees. What are your expectations this time around?
We expect a great crowd of WordPress enthusiasts, ready to share knowledge, to contribute back to the community and to have fun together as always.
Europe – with so many different languages and cultural differences – how important is WordCamp Europe for community growth?
On local WordCamps we usually see more people that are just starting their WordPress experience. WordCamp Europe usually gathers more experienced people like the organizers of the local user groups and WordCamps, representatives of bigger agencies, etc. This event is a great opportunity for such people to exchange knowledge with peers from the whole region and to bring it back to their local communities.
We want to make WordPress on our servers easier, safer and faster
In what way do you think you can best contribute to the future of WordPress?
Being involved with the WordCamps is just one way we can contribute. Sponsoring different people to contribute with coding or other work for the software and community is also a meaningful option. However, as a web host, our best way to contribute is to make using WordPress on our servers easier, safer and faster and thus help more people choose this software for their website.
You offer managed WordPress hosting, what sets it apart from other WordPress hosting on the market?
We put a different meaning behind the word managed. Most competitors basically give you a WordPress installation and a limited admin account for it. That’s it, no email, no other scripts available plus a black list of plugins you can’t use. So in order to have the comfort of faster, safer and supposedly better supported WordPress, you need to sacrifice quite a big amount of your freedom.
SiteGround’s managed product gives you everything you will expect from a WordPress managed service: autoupdates, caching system, staging, expert support with the software. However, all our plans also include SSH access to your account, all the freedom to manage your email, install a different script – forum for example in a subfolder – it’s up to you. So basically what set us apart is the much better balance between freedom and all the benefits of the managed services.
Unique account isolation, autoupdates, backups, custom firewall rules…
You also do a lot in the way of offering WordPress tutorials and helping customers set up with WordPress. What is the one thing people struggle with the most when trying to sort out their WordPress hosting?
We have done a lot of things based on the customers’ struggles we have witnessed over the years. The worst struggle ever is with hacked sites, so to minimize their numbers we have implemented unique account isolation, autoupdates, backups, custom firewall rules and so on. The creation of the SuperCacher was a direct response to users aiming for faster sites and less resource usage. But if I have to point out one recent thing, I would choose the HTTPS setup of a WordPress site.
The topic is becoming more and more important (HTTPS is a prerequisite for HTTP2 protocol, official Google ranking factor and will become prerequisite for some future WordPress features too) and it is not that easy to make a WordPress site use an SSL properly.
It required several steps like: installing an SSL on your hosting account, adding lines to your .htaccess file to force the SSL usage and then identifying and fixing possible mixed content issues. To address this we have automated the SSL issuance and have created a one-click HTTPS switch as part of our WordPress plugin SG Optimizer, and this flow has been so far loved by the users!
Thank you Siteground for sponsoring WordCamp Europe 2017 (and don’t forget to stop by their booth)
Say hello to #WCEU sponsors
Sponsors are one of the most important parts of WordCamp Europe. With their help we keep the ticket price low, and the conference open to everyone. While in Paris, visit their booths, say hello to them, and talk with them about their products and services. Wondering who these companies are? Visit the sponsors page.
Thank you sponsors for being an important part of WordCamp Europe <3