Shared Hosting has remained, for decades, the favoured choice among new website owners for their hosting needs. The low price of Shared Hosting plans due to the cost being shared by multiple websites has been a lucrative factor, especially for new bloggers. However, Shared Hosting has its own set of limitations. One major issue is that it is less reliable compared to other alternatives in the market, such as Cloud or VPS Hosting. Keeping your website live 24*7 is an important deliverable for a hosting platform. However, Shared Hosting may suffer from frequent downtimes. The good news, however, is that there are many ways by which you can optimize your uptime score on the Shared Hosting platform.
What is uptime?
Uptime is the measurement of the time period for which a server works uninterrupted, without going down. It gives an idea about the reliability of the hosting. It is measured in percentage, and as a thumb rule, an uptime score of 99.9% is considered good for your website. Although many hosting providers promise to provide more than 99% of uptime score, it is important to monitor your actual score by the help of multiple monitoring tools available in the market.
Ways to improve uptime in Shared Hosting
First of all, if you are on a Shared Hosting plan, the operating system you use also has a role to play in determining the security of the server. It is generally accepted that Shared Linux Hosting provides better security and consequently better uptime for your website. However, there are a number of ways by which you can optimize your Shared Hosting for keeping your website online 24*7.
- Image Compression: Optimizing the website on the front-end has a major role to play in improving the uptime duration by putting less stress on the back-end of the server. Various data indicated that the majority of the website’s weight is due to images. Therefore, it is important to reduce the size of the images by compressing them without compromising on their quality. Newer image formats like JPegXR or WebP have the potential to reduce the image without putting a severe strain on the server.
- Compress your entire website: Compressing images may not be enough. Instead, it is vital to reduce the page size of the entire website by compressing them. Reduced size would not only consume less bandwidth but also improve the website’s loading time. This has a positive impact on improving user experience. Tools like GZIP compression can reduce the overall size of the website to a few KBs.
- Make use of Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN works by creating static images of your website and producing them when a user revisits your website. This can be beneficial even if your website is down for a few seconds. It improves website speed and also beefs up the security of the server.
- Guard against DDoS attack: You can ask your hosting provider to increase security on your Shared Hosting plan. A potential DDoS attack can disrupt the server leading to downtime.
Conclusion
It is important to have a steady uptime for your website, or it would fail the very purpose of its existence. The above-mentioned methods can help you optimize your Shared Linux Hosting to keep your website live 24*7 and 365 days.