• People need lower entry barriers to set up and run websites, especially if they are not web professionals. The process is long and expensive, and that needs to change.
• Hosters must provide quick, simplified, ready-to-use solutions to compete against Facebook and other instant platforms. 
• Instant builders often come with several templates, creating an off-the-rack look. WordPress offers so much flexibility but is harder to handle —or is it?
• Many new solutions are, well, new and have yet to prove their robustness and quality. WP Squared is based on the well-established WP Toolkit, which is stable, secure, and high-quality. WP Squared is designed to remove as many steps as possible and can be set up within one afternoon. It has zero-barrier integration and flexible customization. 
• Security is the biggest concern for most businesses. They need safe, resilient websites and secure plugins because breaches and downtimes can have massive consequences. Virtual patching and WP Guard are the perfect lines of defense.

So what were the web hosting trends for 2022? Are we continuing to see unprecedented growth in ecommerce? Or are consumers once again heading out to brick and mortar stores for their purchases. 

What can providers do to help SMBs get back into the swing of in-person commerce, and how can they stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing online landscape? We look at everything from usage trends, to working remotely, to environmental impact. 

Key Takeaways

• The hosting industry continued to see growth in 2022, but it has slowed down. This makes sense as the market begins to saturate a little.
• That said, things are not going back to the way they were before. More people have gotten used to using eCommerce from a convenience and comfort standpoint, and we can’t take that away from them now.
• Growth is still happening because there are still businesses realizing the customers aren’t coming back and they need to act.
• The truth is even if you don’t provide curb-side pickup anymore, You still need some kind of web presence to survive in today’s market.
• As ARM processors become more prevalent, servers will use less energy and should become more affordable for services providers and users alike. 
• As a result of ARM processors becoming more popular, Intel is working hard to make their chips more energy efficient.
• This will accelerate another growing trend with availability. Soon, we’ll be as close to 100% up time as humanly possible with all servers being managed remotely and having fallbacks. 
• Speaking of remote work, most services provides are doing all of their work remotely now. This was another trend that accelerated during the pandemic and is here to stay.
• How is WebPros keeping up with all of this? They continue to improve their infrastructure, but they also added a lot to their product offering for 24/7 monitoring and logging, as well as full site checks, SEO, and much more. 

Carrie’s path to WordPress was an interesting one. She started in web development doing ASP.net, before quitting that and going to work at a Starbucks. She went there because she had aspirations of opening her own coffee shop, and thought on the job learning was the best way to do it. 

While she was there, her managed introduced her to WordPress. She started freelancing, and was easily able to replace her Starbucks income with freelance income. 

From there, she dove into Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) courses to learn WordPress, and eventually started teaching there herself. Her approach to teaching develop is fantastic – definitely worth having a listen just for that! 

Key Takeaways

• One of the most rewarding things about being a freelancer is helping different companies work through a solution. By mixing up your client base and not just taking the easy jobs, you get to solve different problems. 
• When it comes to teaching WordPress (or anything), start with an assumption about the learner. What do they know? What do they need to know? What’s the primary outcome for the course? 
• Learn something like you’re going to teach it. Don’t just know how to do it – understand the “why” behind the “how.” Even if you don’t make courses or do talks, this skill will help you with coworkers and clients. 
• There’s a lot of knowledge to share! Don’t keep things to yourself for “job security.” 
• Use the tools that work best for you. For Carrie, VS Code, GitHub, and WP-CLI are invaluable. 
• Don’t just use tools because they’re shiny and new. Determine if you need them and what you need them for.  

The Official Plesk Podcast: Next Level Ops Featuring

Joe Casabona

Joe is a college-accredited course developer and podcast coach. You can find him at Casabona.org.

Carrie Dils

Carrie Dils is a Frontend Developer and LinkedIn Learning Instructor

Tracy got into websites in the mid-90s, when everyone had a “home page.” In college she was really into engineering…but she was also really into art. Because of that, her teachers wrote her off for not being focused enough. 

That trend seemed to continue through her agency work. She enjoyed the work, but wanted variety. And the thing that gave her that variety was WordPress. Learning, and committing, to WordPress allowed her to combine all of her skills into what she does today: a mix of UX Design and Frontend Development to deliver really killer results for her clients. 

Key Takeaways

• Know your worth. Don’t be cheap just because people think you should be. 
• As Tracy says, “I know I’m not cheap, because I don’t do cheap work.”
• WordPress is a great networking tool. Use it to meet new people, agencies, and potential clients. 
• As you’re developing a solution, answer this question: “Does this solve the problem for your user?”
• Working for yourself has its challenges. One could be distractions. Tracy turns off all of her notifications…a benefit of working for yourself.
• If you want to level up, learn the “Soft skills” of working with people. Learning body language, negotiating – they are soft.  They are really crucial to working with clients.
• A great book on learning negotiation is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

• Hyperscalers are cloud-based infrastructure that can easily and quickly scale-up in response to heavy traffic.
• Digital Ocean offers infrastructure as a service, meaning that SMBs don’t need to keep and maintain their own servers, or understand hyperscalers at all.
• When we talk about scaling up, we’re talking about computability. The example used in the episode is if a group of students on a college campus all decide to start mining Bitcoin. A hyperscaler can respond to that much more quickly than staff can.
• For devs and sysadmins, the better your tools, the more time you have to focus on what you need to focus on.
• Management consoles like Plesk fit in really well with hyperscalers. They are a tools that sits on top so you don’t need to understand Linux commands to do basic things (like install WordPress!)
• Where big providers focus on feature expansion to appease their huge enterprise customers, Digital Ocean takes a different approach: simplicity.
• SMBs are also concerned with scaling rapidly, but may not have the staff or resources to fully understand a solution from the big providers. Digital Ocean’s focus on simplicity means they don’t have to.

Links

• Darian Wilkin
• Digital Ocean

1. What node.js is
2. How it compares to PHP and Ruby on Rails
3. How to Install it using Plesk Obsidian
4. Working with Dependencies
5. Debugging
6. Installing it on Windows

Show Notes

1. How to Host Node.js Applications on Plesk Obsidian
2. PHP vs Node.js: Which is better?
3. Node.js vs Ruby on Rails: Which to Choose
4. Phusion Passenger
5. iisnode
6.  

• Anne McCarthy
• How to Test Full SIte Editing
• Museum of Block Art

Key Takeaways

• Anne started out as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, which gives her a unique look at problems users were having and how people were using WordPress.
• At the root level, web development has gotten harder. There’s a bigger learning curve to getting started. BUT theme development, and creating without code, has gotten a lot easier as a result. 
• Part of Anne’s approach to testing Full Site Editing is thinking of “all the people I can’t see” and how it’s going to affect them. This keeps her grounded and driven to make sure the software is as good as possible before it gets merged into Core.
• Keeping an open mind definitely helps with this. Don’t get too attached to the work, and don’t take criticism personally. 
• As for testing with a wider audience, people in the WordPress space are going out into their communities and doing group testing. This gets people who may not be checking the WordPress Slack (and might not even know it exists!)
• Engaging and listening to users is SO important. “We need to listen to the core audience, the biggest supporters if we want the edge users to believe we’re listening,” says Anne. In other words: why would lesser-known users want to help when they think the biggest voices in the space are being ignored?
• As for how you can test better: work with Designers. They think about users and interactions different and can provide a different perspective. 
• Break things into smaller chunks, and as you see patterns, document them!
• Having several ways to test at varying degrees helps. 
• When it comes to getting feedback, have a structure to get good feedback, but don’t create too much friction. Having a way to get “bad” feedback makes way for a fruitful conversation. 
• You want people to feel heard, but guiding them towards the right channels is something you should actively pursue. 

So much effort often goes into building a website or project, creating content, keeping the site secure, backing it up and all of the other tasks it takes to keep a site running smoothly. Thus we tend to overlook the best way to mitigate a site going down or slowing down: monitoring. 

Vincent Van Megen, Head of Monitoring for Webpros, is here to tell us what site and server monitoring are, why they are important, how they work and the best way to set up monitoring for your site. 

We also dig into 360 Monitoring, a new offering from Plesk/ Webpros that really lives up to its name. On top of site and server monitoring, it also offers log monitoring and blacklist monitoring. 

Plus: what you need to do when you get a dreaded downtime notification.

Key Takeaways

• You want to be aware at all times what’s going on. At the website level, there are so many things that can go wrong, from expired SSL certificates to an outage at Cloudflare.
• Downtime means additional expense. Some estimate that a website being down can cost a company $5,000/hr. 
• When it comes to server monitoring, you want to be sure your website is performing properly. Server monitoring will check things like memory, speed, MySQL queries and other metrics that could affect performance.
• So how does it work? The monitor sends a request to the site every few minutes. It gets the HTTP response and measures a whole bunch of metrics, like time to first bite, to make sure everything is loading properly and quickly. 
• You also want to check at locations around the world.
• If something is determined to be down, you will get a notification (email, Slack or even webhook) to let you know. Then you can mitigate from there.
• Mitigating quickly is super important for two reasons: 100% uptime is a myth, so you need to be ready. It’s also much easier to lose trust than to gain it again. So showing visitors you’re reliable will help gain and keep trust.
• 360 Monitoring by Plesk is designed to make monitoring as easy as possible for the user. It even includes log and blacklist monitoring. 
• Blacklist (email/ spam) monitoring is super important because it can be super hard to detect. People won’t necessarily know if they don’t get an email from you. 360 Monitoring keeps track of hundreds of MX blacklists.
• 360 Monitoring isn’t only for Plesk customers either. You can get 1 site monitored for free and you can install everything with a single installation command from your server.

The Official Plesk Podcast: Next Level Ops Featuring

Joe Casabona

Joe is a college-accredited course developer and podcast coach. You can find him at Casabona.org.

Vincent Van Megen

Vincent is the Head of Monitoring at WebPros.

Now she’s COO of GoWP – a business that transitioned from agency to servicing agencies. She runs (as her title implies) the operations, which includes vetting developers for their dedicated developer program. This program helps pair agencies with long-term, qualified contractors to help with development work. 

Emily tells us what to look for when hiring a developer, as well as what developers can do to make their lives easier!

• Subscribe
• Patchstack
• WordPress Toolkit

Top Takeaways

• Bug Bounty Programs are a way to get developers paid for finding and patching bugs. They are especially important for big, open-source projects like WordPress. 
• Patchstack runs a global bug bounty program where they guide and pay developers to find and patch bugs.
• Patchstack also maintains a patch and vulnerability database, which they use to notify site owners of patches to keep their sites safe. And now, Plesk’s WordPress Toolkit integrates directly with Patchstack – meaning customers will automatically get these notifications. 
• Site security is a team effort. It’s easy to assume it’s “someone else’s” problem, but the truth is everything from a poor server environment to a weak password can put a site at risk. 
• 2-Factor Authentication is an easy way to improve security, even if weak passwords do exist. 
• It’s important to patch vulnerabilities as soon as one is available. If there is no patch, it’s important to do risk analysis. If there’s some other protection (passwords or firewalls), you probably have some time. If not, you may need to change products. 
• A lot has changed over the last 20 years in site security, and the current environment favors site owners. However, things can always change. 
• More utilities give site owners the power to make moves and keep their sites secure. 
• In the future, Web3 and blockchain tech could be used to help secure sites because they are basically public ledgers. The experimentation now will make way for more practical applications.

We covered a whole host of topics this year, from omni-channel — the idea of selling your products directly on your own store, plus platforms like Facebook and Instagram — to performance, security, and effectively selling. 

We’ve extolled the virtues of being where your customers already are…which is the point of omni-channel: bring your products to the people. Before 2021, this was a difficult take and most store owners weren’t equipped to deliver such features. But that has gotten a lot easier with WooCommerce plugins and Plesk’s eCommerce Toolkit. 

Brian talked about (and Joe agreed) how omni-channel definitely works well for people who sell physical products. As both of them sell online courses and memberships, omni-channel makes less sense, as customers will need to create an account on their site anyway…so they need to get people to their store.

When you do get people to your store, you need to make sure it’s fast, and secure. Tools like Google’s Core Web Vitals can help with the speed part. They’ll run your store through a number of tests and recommend optimizations. 

From a security standpoint, you should at the very least have SSL and a payment gateway, which Chris Tietzel told us all about. We even got a deep dive on Payment Gateways from EVO Payments. 

When speaking about this, Brian and Joe discussed the benefit of using software vs. writing software. Since they’re both developers, they can get things launched pretty quickly. But they both submitted that a payment gateway is one thing they don’t want to touch! 

As Brian and Joe have well-established online stores, they both implemented some of what Jason Coleman taught in the Black Friday / Cyber Monday episode, to great success. The lessons here were the same that Jason talked about: don’t be afraid to email, devalue, or otherwise place your product on sale. Brian referenced another post from Justin Ferriman of LearnDash: ignore Black Friday at your own peril.

When it comes to 2022, Brian mentioned that we’ll continue to see many trillions of dollars get spent in online stores. But he also talked about the idea of “headless” commerce: the ability to place a buy button anywhere, with inline checkout. 

Imagine emailing customers a custom checkout link that they can click on and pay for right there. Or sending one via text…sharing on Twitter, or embedding on a website wholly different from your store’s website. 

We’re already seeing this trend happen with Apple and Google Pay, as well as Stripe, Paypal, and Shopify’s own unified checkout buttons. If you sell online in 2022, this is definitely something to look out for.

Top Takeaways

• You need to tell people who want what you’re selling, what you’re selling. And you need to do it a lot. Don’t be afraid to send emails. Most people don’t check their inbox as much as those who run their own business.
• Omni-channel is a great strategy because you want to be where your customers already are. But it definitely makes sense for some types of business more than others. 
• Until recently, omni-channel was hard for small store owners. But that is changing thanks to tools like the Plesk eCommerce Toolkit. SMBs are getting things that have traditionally only been available to giant businesses.
• A quick win for the performance of your website is optimizing for images. Make sure to resize and use a proper number, where it makes sense. If your products need high quality photos (as Maddy Osman mentioned in Episode 7), definitely use them. But you don’t necessarily need 25 huge images when 4-5 will do.
• Reiterating what Patrick Rauland talked about in Episode 6, Brian and Joe talked about how hosted solutions are great for proving a concept. But they also talked about how we’re all likely to use some hosted solution. A great example is payment gateways, which do a lot of technical heavy lifting, and take liability out of SMBs hands.
• Lots of people in the software space especially are hesitant about doing a Black Friday sale. But you definitely should! People are primed to buy that weekend, and might have even been waiting to see if you’ll do one. 
• You likely won’t send enough emails, let a lot too many. Both Brian and Joe sent 4 on the last day of their sales. Each email lead to at least one purchase. And every email they sent in that week made money. 
• Many trillions of dollars will be spent online in 2022 (just like 2021, 2020, etc). Being on top of trends could help you make even more! 
• One trend that is becoming more mainstream is headless commerce: the idea that you can place a buy button anywhere online (email, text, social media) and have an inline checkout experience. Widespread use of Apple Pay and Google Pay have brought use one step closer to that. 
• Simple shops will be presenting like well established brands because the tools are getting better for us. Be sure to implement things like personalization, targeted marketing, and other techniques that will make buying from you easier, and more enjoyable. 
• Finally, commerce will happen in more places than previously expected. Hybrid live/online events are changing the landscape, and things that were originally thought to only be possible in real life are happening online. Think house showings, trade show booth presentations, and more.

The Official Plesk Podcast: Next Level Ops Featuring

Joe Casabona

Joe is a college-accredited course developer and podcast coach. You can find him at Casabona.org.

Brian Richards

Brian is the founder of WPSessions and organizer of WooSesh, the only WooCommerce-focused event. Brian has developed eCommerce sites, and has been teaching WordPress for nearly 10 years.

• Some people worry about devaluing the product and hurting the brand, but people expect sales around BFCM, so there won’t be much devaluing around this time.
• Similarly, some worry about existing customers seeing the sale, but most people understand that they bought something when they needed it. It’s not as big a problem as most think.
• When setting a price, sell at a discount, but still a profit so it’s worth the extra customers. A 90% sale does devalue the product, and likely isn’t worth gaining that new customer. 
• Jason has found that 33% sales and 50% sales do well, so aim for one of those. 
• The sweet spot for a sale is less than a week. Make sure to create urgency, but don’t fake it. People will catch on if you’re always having a sale.
• Segment your list so your targeting warm, or warmed up, leads. They will be the most likely to buy. 
• Don’t worry about unsubscribes. The people unsubscribing from your lists are unlikely to buy from you anyway. 
• Don’t overthink the emails. Long, story-like emails work, but so do short, to the point emails. 
• Social Proof is key, and Testimonials are a great way to prep ahead of time. Make sure to get those early...don’t ask the week of Thanksgiving.
• Other good times to run sales are bumping slow months and natural occurrences in business. If you’re changing your offer or discontinuing a product, put it on sale one more time.
• Even if it’s late and feels last minute, run the sale and treat it as a test. Don’t expect to make a ton of money, but try to learn something!
• And remember: Sometimes business owners can be more sensitive to “tactics” than consumers. So running your sales or adding opt-ins are tried and true - that’s why they’re so common!

• Payment gateways bring cashless payments to a store, whether that’s in person or online. They are even more important for eCommerce stores, as this is generally the only form of accepted payment. 
• Cashless payments are most often thought of to be credit cards, but it could also be account-based payments like ACH / direct deposit, or Wallets, like Apple Pay and Google Pay. 
• Payment Gateways offer a secure environment for eCommerce stores to accept payments. Payment and customer information are set to this secure area to process the orders and the payment. 
• This prevents things like a “Man in the Middle” attack, where someone tried to steal credit card information as it’s being transfer. 
• These gateways follow strict guidelines (called PCI Compliance) to ensure data security and integrity. They endure audits, not only of their technical implementation, but of their actual premises to ensure only verified people physically access the servers. This comes at great expense to them. 
• You also need to have an SSL certificate installed on your site. While payment gateways securely process payment methods, the rest of your data needs to be protected too.
• There are several different types of payment players or systems that Dirk breaks down in the episode. They are Payment Service Providers (PSPs), Payment Methods, Acquirers, and Wallets. 
• PSPs are the companies at the top. They assume the risk and work with payment methods. Payment methods generally work with an Acquirer, which is often a bank that works with the credit card companies. Wallets are a special form of payment that hold funds (unlike credit cards, which are, well, credit). 
• It’s good to give customers some options, but too many will overwhelm them. In general, a credit card form and a wallet are a good start.
• When it comes to choosing a PSP, you need to determine what payment methods you need. This could be affected by what country your in, and a whole host of other factors. 
• For example, if you need in-store payment, going with a PSP that only offers online services won’t work. If you serve a country where PayPal isn’t allowed, you shouldn’t offer that as a payment method. 
• EVO Payments is a global company offering in several countries, and offers a wide range of methods. They also seamlessly integrate with Plesk eCommerce Toolkit to give Plesk customers the fastest way to accept payments no matter where they are. 
• A BIG benefit of EVO Payments on Plesk is they are much cheaper than some gateways, like PayPal, and even more affordable because Plesk customers don’t need to pay the monthly fee to use it.

• There are three pillars to SEO: Content, off-page SEO, and website technical structure
• Content should include solid product descriptions, lots of photos, and clear terms. Remember; buying online doesn’t provide the same experience as buying in-store, so you need to fill the gaps. Content will helps us do that.
• By the same token, don’t unintentionally create duplicate content! If you have similar versions of the same product (different colors, sizes, shapes, etc), create variations. Some search engines can lower your ranking if you have a lot of duplicate content, and variations prevent that.
• When it comes to blogging, consistency is more important than quantity. Blogging once a month is the minimum to show people (and search engines) that you’re consistent.
  • Ideally, releasing one piece of content per week would be ideal. But it doesn’t just have to be on your own site! Consider being a guest blogger and spreading the word about your brand and surrounding topics through other sites.
• When it comes to off-page SEO, on top of guest posts, you can have affiliate programs and link exchanges. Since Google and other search engines consider backlinks (links back to your website or content) when ranking, getting your website linked on other websites, where relevant, can really help.
  • Tools like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog can help you figure out whom to ask for a backlink.
  • Reciprocity can sweeten the pot, but link-trading is also frowned upon by Google, so get creative!
• Influencers can also play a big part of getting people to your site. Social proof is the lynchpin of selling online, so testimonials are great. But showing other people actually using and promoting your products is even better.
  • When people look for social proof, we can apply the acronym EAT: Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Find influencers with relevant audiences who understand and can honestly recommend your product.
• Finally, when it comes to technical structure, again tools like Ahrefs can help figure out where the holes in your website are. Remember to get rid of or redirect 404 errors, obtain an SSL certificate, and make improvements over time to your content and website speed. Our Alberto Medina episode on Core Web Vitals should be a huge help on this!

Show Notes

• Maddy Osman
• The Blogsmith
• The Keys to Success on the Web with Alberto Medina
• Understanding Security and its Importance in eCommerce
• ahrefs
• Printful

• Hosted vs. self-hosted is a lot like renting vs. buying. On the one hand, you can have 80% of your problems taken care of - you just need to worry about running your store and your business. But on the other, are the last 20% crucial to running your store or your business?
• The common self-hosted solutions are Shopify, Volusion, and Big Commerce. There is also Etsy, and the Amazon Marketplace, which are a lot closer to hosted than self-hosted solutions.
• The oldest self-hosted solution is Magento, but WooCommerce has gained considerable popularity in the last few years.
• To get a better understand of what you need, it’s a good idea to start on a hosted solution. It lets you get up and running (and making money) as quickly as possible. Then as you outgrow the hosted solution, you can seek a self-hosted solution, like WooCommerce.
• WooCommerce is currently the number 1 self-hosted solution. There are lots of add-ons and resources, making it flexible enough to support just about any type of store you need (with the right amount of work).
• Another option Patrick mentions is a a hybrid approach. You have a self-hosted solution and you offload certain functions to SaaS products. Big Commerce does this with their WordPress plugin. Metorik does this with WooCommerce analytics.
• There are also self-hosted partners that offer managed eCommerce solutions - like Plesk’s eCommerce Toolkit.
• One problem Patrick sees a lot is people wondering why their WooCommerce site is slow. We covered site speed and performance in a previous episode, but Patrick’s advice: don’t cheap out on hosting. Find some good hosting with a company that will make sure your site is up and running, and working well.

• Simplicity is the name of the game. You probably only need ⅓ of the features you want.
• You don’t need complex faceting and search. Customers aren’t going to use those.
• Hosting doesn’t matter most of the time when it comes to performance. Yes - shared hosting is less secure, but throwing hardware at a performance problem is a band-aid, not a solution.
• Good hosting still can’t account for slow internet connections, and bloated sites will always load slowly there.
• Stop relying on a caching plugin. It doesn’t make your site faster - it makes it look faster. You can’t just cache everything, especially on an ecommerce site.
• Check performance with Query Monitor. It’s a great, free plugin for WordPress. Look for colors. Red is bad, Green is good! Look for numbers and make them lower.
• Database hits are usually the culprit when it comes to ecommerce performance. Optimize your database calls (or hire someone to).
• Post Meta is another thing that’s really detrimental to WordPress sites — there are a lot of database hits and complex queries associated with them.
• As you evaluate features, try to cut away as much as possible. Ask yourself:
  • How does this feature/plugin/add-on make me money?
  • Are website visitors actually using this feature/plugin/add-on?

Links

• Mindsize
• Query Monitor
• Patrick Garman

• Digital strategy has gone from being the last thing people think about to the most important aspect of selling online.
• eCommerce grew more from March-May 2020 than it did in the previous 10 years. 
• Over 150 Million people purchased online for the first time in 2020.
• Speed, stability, and security are non-negotiable if you want to grow your website. Peak conversion is no more than 2.7 seconds. Every 100 millisecond delay over that can reduce conversion by up to 7%. 
• People are shopping in-store, on websites, and on social channels. This is called omnichannel marketing. 
• You should make it as easy as possible for people to give you money. Simplicity is key to get people to act, so make sure you offer multiple payment methods, and can serve your products wherever your buyers are in the world.
• Site security means protection against hackers, PCI compliance, DDoS mitigation when necessary, and site-wide HTTPS.
• The Plesk eCommerce Toolkit allows you to have a fast, stable, secure website that is easy to maintain, with everything you need…including omnichannel marketing.

Links

• Plesk eCommerce Toolkit
• The Importance of Digital Presence with Jens Meggers
• Understanding Security and its Importance in eCommerce
• EVO Payments Gateway

• SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, and it allows you to send secure data over the internet. As Chris puts it, “[SSL] allows 2 parties to connect and talk over a secure pipeline,” which establishes, “trust in an untrusted environment.
• SSL certificates protects from “Man in the Middle” attacks - basically a bad actor attempts to intercept data as it’s sent from a computer to your website.
• Let’s Encrypt is quickly becoming the go to for many people to implement SSL on their site. It’s free and offered by most hosting companies, meaning no website has an excuse not to use it.
• Using managed hosting for your WordPress or WooCommerce site also helps keep your site secure. This allows you to focus on what you do best, because that’s where you’ll make money.
• Anyone accepting credit cards needs to be PCI Compliant. This is a global standard set by the major Credit Card companies to ensure data security when processing credit card transactions. Luckily today, we have Stripe and Square, who accept the compliance and liability that goes with it.

• Web.Dev
• AMP
• Site Kit

Performance and Metrics Tools

• Lighthouse
• WebPageTest
• TestMySite
• PSI
• Lighthouse
• Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX)
• First Contentful Paint (FCP),
• First Input Delay (FID),
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP),
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
• Speed Scorecard
• Impact Calculator
• Chrome Developer Tools
•  Page Experience.

We saw industries digitize over the last 10 years. Video meetings, retail stores, digital price tags, and much more. This got accelerated with pandemic. Hyper demand, and it’s not just major companies driving digitization - bakeries, craft shops, and smaller businesses need to get online too. 

Customers thought, “Get me to the results faster.” It’s not just website, it’s workflow. And during the pandemic it needed to be good, fast, and cheap.

2. Do you see a future where this goes back to how it was before? Or is this the ‘new normal’ for online behavior?

We have set the standard on digitization and business digitization, and it’s here to stay - Standing in line for hours to get groceries will be unacceptable!

But it really comes down to this: we have more advanced digital experiences

3. How has e-commerce changed since March 2020? (beginning of Covid 19 pandemic)

It’s incredible. We saw big growth rates everywhere; not just the likes of Amazon, but  for someone who’s never been in a digital business making money online. A lot of people are moving to transact and make money online. It is the highest priority for a lot of people

4. How does WebPros support its customers in such times?

By supplying the technology that creates digital experiences (not just a shopping cart or web page). They're seeing more demand that ever before because they provide server automation, publish websites, and offer e-commerce, with least amount of effort possible. 

Their vision is to create a digital presence for anyone. Anything you can do in physical world they want to do online, and they have the tools to do it.

4. Why is now the best time to start a business or to shift it towards online it?

"It’s always a good time to start a business if you have a good idea." 

5. What is the future of e-commerce for small and medium businesses and how WebPros can support them in this relation

It's really important for these businesses - it’s how they’ll make their money. Some will transact online and exchange in real world, but many will start to do everything in the digital world. 

It's a huge commodity and everything is getting easier.

• Code editor: VSCode
• General
  • Code Sniffers to make sure your code is clean and proper.
  • Github:
    • Testing tools
    • Deploying
    • Peer Review
• Local Development environment:
  • Laravel Valet
  • Local by Flywheel
  • Lando
• Know and Love the Command Line:
  • iTerm 2
  • Zshell 
  • Homebrew
• New library: waiting at least two years before adopting.
  • If you’re picking up a code library, follow the coding standards set forth by the library.

Choosing Your Learning Battles

• Use as little stuff as possible.
• Using purpose-built tools can improve things greatly.
• How do you know what tools to get and try?
  • Follow people who are smarter than you on Social
  • @rzen’s list
  • Codepen.io
  • Css-tricks.com
  • Frontendmasters.com
• Books
  • A Book Apart
  • Clean Code
• Find Brian:
  • @rzen
  • WPSessions.com
  • Wordsesh.com
  • Woosesh.com

• It's probably going to be a  central part of infrastructure, so keep that in mind. You'll use it for a long time.
• Features you need. Maybe you need to share your calendar, for example.
• Interoperability and vendor lock-in. You can move on if you want to.

2. What are the benefits of self-hosting over using a service like Gmail?

• One word: Control. You maintain control over your solution.
• If you self-host, you have more control over the product.

3. As a hosting provider, what are some of the pitfalls of hosting email?

• Reputation management. Other services that receive email have to fight a lot of spam.
• Track the reputation of domains and IP addresses.
• Properly configure domains for MX records.

4. Are there any common ways email hosting is misconfigured?

• Set up SPF, DKIM, DMARK.
  • SPF makes sure email is coming from a verifies recipient (DNS).
  • DKIM: Domain Keys Identified Mail. Essentially a signature (Mail Server).
  • DMARK: Ties SPF and DKIM together by publishing policy and protocol. (DNS Record).
• What features in Plesk help with email hosting?
  • SPF, DMARK, DKIM are built-in.
  • Other UIs for important measures like rate and message size limits.
  • Email Security extension with anti-spam.

What are the most common problems for hosting providers?

• Performance
  • Customers expect good performance no matter what level they pay for.
  • Many will install multiple plugins to help.
• Updates
  • People don’t update.
  • Core is easy. But plugins and themes are not necessarily.
  • Hosting providers need to make sure plugins and themes are updated.
• Security
  • Non-updated plugins/themes lead to security issues.

What are some ways they can prevent or quickly fix those problems?

• WordPress Toolkit - checks for updates for themes, plugins, and core.
• Smart updates - staging, updates, then checks for issues.
• Security checker - rights/permissions.

How much can does WordPress mitigate these problems? 

• In the past few releases, we’ve seen updates to security. Strong passwords, admin email check.
• Site health checker.

• What do the users try to achieve?
  • A fast website
  • Avoid downtime
• DR / Downtime checklist
  • Backup Solutions
  • Never code on a live site
    • Have a staging site to test on

How to make sure, once your site isn’t going down, that it’s fast?

• Website performance matters
• Don’t take smallest server / poor hardware
  • If you’re always about 80% of the limit, you need to upgrade.
• Monitor Speed / Performance
  • Often it is not the server that causes the problem.
  • Majority of issues with performance are with the website itself.
• Caching
  • Everything that helps you reduce database calls is important
• CDN
  • Global solution of servers
  • Serves website in areas closest to your customers

• Defined as globally available, global scale. 
• Scale, product breadth

Why should an organization consider cloud services?

• Today, many cloud providers are fully privacy compliant
• Allows to to access much more - especially location-wise

What is a hyperscale cloud provider?

• Many hosts are available in 1, maybe 2 countries
• Hyperscale providers are available everywhere. They make infrastructure a commodity

How can hosting companies compete in a hyperscale cloud environment?

• Go from generalist to specialist
• Many hosting providers don’t know what’s running on their servers - they need to figure that out and realize what niches are using them
• 4 Pillars:
  • Guide the end customers based on what you can offer
  • Control the value chain a little more. Offer services and help you customers by offering better/more affordable services
  • Choose the partners that help you. 

Why are hyperscale cloud providers not a competitor to me as a hosting provider?

• You can partner with an Amazon, DO, Linode, that run these data centers, and use them as an extension
• You can use these services to grow with your customers

How can I differentiate by using hyperscale cloud? How can I benefit from technologies that hyperscale cloud providers provide me?

• Sites like Squarespace, Wix are using these services
• They might give you marketing funding because as you grow, they grow.
• Develop more custom solutions based on the HSCPs. Things like backups/other IP/software.

• Having a knowledgeable staff - it needs to come from that.
• Hoster takes care of the infrastructure
  • Handles updates.
  • Security, etc.
  • Things get tricky here.
  • Some hosters will not help you with specific applications.

What are some resources that should be included in Managed WordPress Hosting?

• Look at how many visitors you will have.
• Software:
  • There is a big tech stack running on the hardware.
  • Web, MySQL, PHP, Cache, security.
• Security:
  • Security is in a weird place right now between totally locked down and unusable, and more free flowing and open.
  • One bad plugin can compromise a site, and then potentially others.
  • Question of your knowledge, flexibility, and control.

What are the most common WordPress problems for hosting providers? How can Managed WordPress Hosting mitigate these problems?

• Outdated plugins are a common security issue.
• Performance /Site Optimization:
  • With Managed WP Hosting, you’ll probably be in a better position with this.
  • Hosters will care more about performance than shared hosters.
  • Many hosters will make sure to save resources and make sure your site has room to grow.
  • Some plugins are poorly written and request too many resources.

Should all hosts have Managed WordPress Hosting?

• If you look at how WordPress grows, it’s pretty clear that you need to have WordPress support.
• You  might not need to focus solely on it, but you should offer some services.
• If you don’t do anything for support you will probably be left behind.

• General Recommendations
  • Threat monitoring
  • Realize your security risks and attend to them in the design phase
    • Think a little more. Start thinking about security threats

Threat Modeling

Think through all of the threats and attack vectors for your software and server.

• Make attempts to teach or talk with customers
• Customer Requests
  • Report vulnerabilities in Plesk
  • Hacked Servers
    • Investigate hacks to see if there were issues
  • Outdated Software is a common attack vector
  • Make sure everything is up to date

Principle of Least Privileges

• Don’t use root if you don’t have to
• Define roles for users
• Opening only necessary ports for it to work

Tools on Plesk

• WordPress Toolkit
• Firewall Extension
  • Allows you to manage your connections and ports
  • Control the network configuration

Above all, be informed about the software you use. 

• Plesk offers over 130 Extensions.
• Lighthouse Extensions are their most popular and useful tools.
• They're used to give website developers clear recommendations.
• Every website should have a backup solution.

What are some Lighthouse Extensions?

• Acronis Backup.
• Smart Updates.
• ImunifyAV.
• Plesk Premium Email.
• Plesk Email Security.
• Speed Kit.
• SEO Toolkit.
• Backup to Cloud Pro.

Speed Kit

• As soon as you start selling something on your website, performance matters.
• If a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, many leave.
• “It has to load [fast] in the customer's browser.”
• Understands WordPress, and your website.
• Personalized in-browser caching.
• Most performance tools don’t enjoy Speed Kit/in-browser caching.
• 1-click solution!

SEO Toolkit

• Supports all major search engines: Google, Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, and so on.
• This gives you stats, analytics.
• SEO is like running a marathon.
• Gives you a clear plan with a task list.
• Lifetime performance stats.
• “The first two positions matter the most.”

How would they use it on their site?

• Some are pre-installed when you spin up a new server.
• Extensions Catalog - most popular / most recommended.
• Advisor Tool - helps you become more productive, more secure.
• Guides you along the value chain.
• Gives you tools to enable, then it rates you.

Small and Medium business can come direct partners of Plesk. This includes a discount,  and high level support

Who should consider it? 

Someone who is in need of more than 5 licenses with Plesk

What benefits does it offer to partners?

• Premium support
• A discount 
• Dedicated program manager for all of your needs
• Someone who’s paying attention to you
• GoTo Market Strategies 
• Access to the Marketing team

What if I’m a casual Plesk user? How do I level up to become a partner?

You need a business to become a Plesk partner

Lots of Success Stories:

• Many started a solo business owner and have grown so much. Now they are part of the strategic team
• WordPress Ambassadors are now partners, thanks to the WordPress Toolkit.

WP Toolkit - they can attract attention a little bit differently. 

How do Plesk Partners help general users?

• Give people an easy and intuitive tool to integrate into their workflow and systems. 
• Support in 7 different languages
• Needs of different cultures
• Trickle down effect! 
• Fast support

• Much more complicated - there was a lot of command line stuff!
• Static website hosting and very few dynamic websites
• A lot of free hosts: Geocities, Tripod, Angel Fire
• A lot less compliance

What have the biggest changes been? 

• Dynamic applications and the rise of WordPress
• Rise of Node.js and Ruby
• Amazon Web Services - the cloud has really changed a lot. 

Have there been considerable performance changes?

• Used to be just simple caching
• Today, complexity is higher.
  • Performance is also an important ranking parameter.
• CDNs are common
• It’s never black and white

The Future

• Where is web hosting going? Possibly, There is no web hosting at all. Nobody thinks about it. 
  • “The Platform” - Shopify, Wix, etc. - will be more important

What do you think hosting will look like in 2040?

• Technology cycles are getting shorter, disruptions is faster. 
• Look at blockchain. Decentralized computer servers. 
• DNS - super annoying! This will hopefully get better. Switching should be easy. 
• Every hosting provider needs to analyze their niche. 

As a web developer, how do you keep up to do right by your clients? As a web host, how do you ensure you’re offering the right tools for your customers...without overwhelming your staff? 

Next Level Ops, a new podcast by Plesk, aims to help you answer those questions and more with our panel of experts, both inside and outside the company. 

We’ll cover areas like security, performance, WordPress, and the various tools Plesk has to offer - all aimed to help you become more efficient, no matter what you do on the web. 

So be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcast. The show launches soon. 

Thanks for listening, and get ready to take it to the next level.