This content explains how freelance web developers can leverage managed hosting, specifically SiteGround, to handle client web hosting needs, offering a streamlined and professional service beyond just website development.
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[Music]
all right picture this you've landed
your first client as a freelance web
developer to build a website for a local
small business you feel confident about
how to code the actual website but how
do you handle the web hosting part of
the equation this is a question that a
lot of online tutorials often Overlook
myself included but in the real world
you do need to think about web hosting
especially if you want to make money as
a freelance developer or even run a
small webd agency there is a lot of work
that goes into man in a server but if
you don't have the experience yourself
managed hosting can take care of a lot
of that work for you and that's exactly
what we're going to be covering with the
help of site ground site ground is the
sponsor of this video but I genuinely
like and recommend them and I've
actually used them to host my own
website for the past 7 years and
counting all right let's get into [Music]
[Music]
it so if you're curious about getting
into handling client web hosting what
are your options well there's basically
two kinds of Hosting managed and
unmanaged managed hosting means that the
hosting company sets up and maintains
the server handles security backups and
can install CMS software like WordPress
it will generally be more expensive
since the hosting company is handling
more of these responsibilities unmanaged
hosting means that you purchase server
space from the hosting company but you
have to handle the setup maintenance
security backups and software
installation yourself it will be cheaper
than managed hosting since you're going
to be doing most of the work but if you
don't have experience in server
management it is a pretty steep learning
curve and it can be a lot of Hassle and
annoyance if you're not really that into
it so if I was getting back into doing
freelance work for small businesses what
I personally would do is go the managed
hosting route this is just me but I
would prefer to be doing just the web
development side of things and I
wouldn't feel super comfortable handling
all the server security and upgrades
myself so if you do want to get into
freelancing as a side or full-time
business what you charge your clients
and how easy would it be for you to make
your money back from the cost of
purchasing hosting from site ground now
I do want to preface this with saying
that these are numbers that I found but
your own situation is most likely going
to depend on where you yourself are
located your own skills and experience
and where your clients are located all
right so here is a list of Wordpress
maintenance services from the blog WP
beginner and if you scroll down this
page you can see this table with a list
of different maintenance companies just
to give you an idea of what you could
charge for WordPress maintenance so most
of these services are between $40 to
$100 so just to pick a mid-tier number
for our purposes here let's say you
charge $75 a month for hosting and
maintenance then if you get the sight
ground gogeek tier of hosting the
regular price is going to be $44.99 per
month so with just one client on your
plan you've already made your money back
per month and you can host more than one
client website on this tier now I do
want to emphasize that going this root
of building hosting and maintaining
clients websites is definitely not a
getrich quick scheme it is hard work
with a pretty steep learning curve and
if you're running your own business
there is just a whole lot that you need
to do in terms of following local
guidelines for taxes and business
requirements client communication which
is a whole thing in and of itself as
well as learning how to Market yourself
as a business and all these areas are
outside the scope of this video and you
are going to have to do your own
research but I just wanted to share this
because this is you know a genuinely
viable source of income if you want to
work as a web
developer so if you're curious about
learning more about freelancing and you
just want to know what it's all about I
did find this pretty interesting article
from a Reddit user who shared a very
detailed writeup about how he manages
his own website business called code
Stitch it's an interesting read on what
goes into the business side of things
like charging for clients and
maintaining their websites so I'm going
to share this link down below as well
just to like give you an idea of what
goes into running a business kind of
like this next up I'm going to show you
how you can set up multiple WordPress
websites on site ground I am going to be
using Wordpress simply because like it
or hate it if you're doing freelance or
agency work there is a very high
likelihood that you're going to have to
work with WordPress because it's what so
many small businesses use all right so
we're here on site ground's website and
if you look at their pricing for web
hosting they have three different tiers
now the main difference between these
three tiers is the number of websites
that you are allowed the amount of web
space you can have and also the number
of visits per month so the first tier
the startup tier this is the lowest tier
and this is really if you're just
building one website for yourself
because you can only have one website
allowed um with this tier then on the
middle grow big tier you can have
unlimited websites and then you also
have more space and more visit per month
and then the top Go Geek tier this also
has unlimited websites and then you have
double the space again from the middle
tier and more visits and if you keep
comparing the features between these
different tiers you can kind of see that
most of the other essential and managed
WordPress features are the same however
you can see that the top GOI tier does
have some exclusive features that you
most likely want if you're going to be
managing a multiple clients with site
ground and I'll I'll show you what those
are in a little bit it also has the
highest tier of resources which means
that it'll be a faster server compared
to the other two tiers which is
important for your site speed now I am
going to be using the top gogeek tier so
that I can show you all these extra
client features and one note on pricing
so pretty much every web host for
WordPress hosting gives you a really big
discount the first year and then it goes
up to the regular price after that site
ground is what I would consider a
premium host so they may may be a bit
more expensive than other hosts but I
personally think it's worth it because I
found their customer support to be quite
good if you start a support chat you are
talking to an actual human not an AI bot
which I think is pretty important these
days and in terms of website up time I
haven't had any issues with uptime since
I've been with them also they're running
a Black Friday sale through December 2nd
so if you're looking for web hosting you
can get a discount at the time of this
recording where the prices for these
tiers are going to be $19 99 $3.99 and
$5.99 per month for the first year and
I've linked that below if you want to
check it out all right so I'm going to
select the gogeek plan and click get
plan and in this next step you can get
one year of a free domain name or you
can add an existing domain if you have
one already I'm not going to use a real
domain name so I'm going to select
existing domain and then you can type in
you know a nonsense
domain.com and then select continue
and then select I'll register
later so after this you want to fill in
your account information client
information payment info and then once
you finish all that you can click to pay
and then it'll create your account and
this might take like a minute or two all
right so once you've gotten your account
set up and you've logged in you should
see this as a homepage on your dashboard
so to create a new site we want to go up
here to the websites tab
and you can see that I already have
three websites running here already but
let's make a new website so I'm going to
click new website in the top right
here and one thing that's kind of cool
is that you can actually select
different data centers for the different
websites on your account they don't
always have to be the same so you know
if you have visitors that are located in
a certain part of the world you can
select a data center that would be
closer to them so that it'll help with
the website load time all right so here
you can choose what domain name to use
and I'm not going to register a new
domain and I don't have an existing
domain name so for now I'm just going to
select temporary domain and this means
that you're going to use a temporary SG
host.com from site ground and you can
always add your real domain name later
once you register that all right so
let's click
continue and this is part of their
installation wizard um if you're not
sure what to select I'm just going to
create skip this and then create a new
blank site because we can add everything
that we need once it is
created and here's more add-on stuff if
you need any of these site ground does
give you automatic daily backups but if
your website is going to have a ton of
changes throughout the course of a day
then you might also want um hourly
backups with this premium backup option
but for most regular sites you probably
don't need these so I'm not going to add
them so let's click finish and then it
will take a little while for the site to
get up so you might just have to wait a
little bit all right so the website is
now all set so let's check out the site tools
tools
first so this is site ground's own
version of the C panel control panel
that web hosts usually have and I do
think that this is pretty cool and I
think it has slightly better UI also if
you have multiple websites it's going to
be easier to manage with this because
each website has its own individual site
tools panel instead of having all of
your websites under a single C panel
keeping these things separated is also
going to be better for security as well
as performance for your
sites now the first thing is up at the
top is the domain of the site that
you're currently on and since I have
multiple sites if I click this change
button this is a switcher where I can
select whatever website I want to work
on and for each site if you scroll down
a little bit you can see site
information where it tells you you know
your server's IP address and also the
name servers and there's also some
analytics which you know there's nothing
here yet so those are blank and up at
the top they have some pinned tools but
all the tools that you need are going to
be in this left sidebar here so at the
top under site you have a file manager
tool and here you can look at the files
that you have on your server so you have
this explor tab and here it lets you see
the files and folders but you can also
create or upload new files or
folders and you can also edit existing
files so for example if I double click
this default HTML
file it's going to go to editor mode and
you can actually see the whole file and
you can make changes right
here and I do also like that they have
syntax highlighting for the file so it's
not just like a plain text file so in
addition to the file manager they have
you know FTP if you need to create that
although you should probably be using
SSH and then you can also create and
manage MySQL or postgres
databases then next let's check out the security
security
tools so like I mentioned earlier you
automatically get daily backups of your
website so if a site breaks or it gets
hacked you can quickly restore a
previous version also these backup
centers are Geo distributed meaning that
they are kept in a different region or
even country than the data center that
your actual website is on so this can
really help if there's some kind of
disaster that happens that affects the
local area like a power outage or even
some kind of natural
disaster and you have the SSL manager to
add and manage your SSL Sears for your
website um another option that you have
here if you go to the website is you can
enforce https to you know force your
website and resources to all load
securely you can also protect URLs so
that you only allow certain users to be
able to access specific URLs on your
website and you can also block traffic
from certain IP addresses or even entire
countries which is helpful if you're
getting a ton of spam or bot traffic and
then with the site scanner you have some
premium add-ons if you want to scan your
server files every week or even every
day and this would be additional
security so even without these premium
add-ons you automatically have regular
security measures like a web application
firewall and an antibot system so next
up in the speed section you have caching
so you have three different types of
server level caching to help speed up
your website's load time and also the
time to First
Bite then they have a CDN and this is so
you can cach your content in different
Geographic places which will help speed
up the load time for visitors no matter
where they are in the world so you get
basic CDN for free which is honestly
pretty awesome because then you don't
have to mess with your DNS settings if
you are trying to set up like Cloud
Flare's CDN which I had to do and it was
a little bit of a hassle all right so
next up is the WordPress section and we
do want to install WordPress because
there's some WordPress plugins that site
ground has that I find pretty useful so
I wanted to mention those and you can
install WordPress using this UI so if I
select it here we need to fill out the
admin info which is how you log into
WordPress and they do have this
WordPress starter plugin which could be
helpful if you know you're new to
Wordpress and you need some extra help
finding a theme or knowing what plugins
you might want to install I don't really
need this so I'm just going to leave
this unchecked and then once you have
install and the installation process
will take a little bit of time it might
take several seconds to emit it and once
it's done let's go to the WordPress
admin panel now there are a couple of
sight ground specific plugins that come
with your WordPress install so if you go
to plugins
you can see them here so they are
security Optimizer and then speed
Optimizer so speed Optimizer gives you
settings to speed up your website as you
might imagine so if we go here on the
left sidebar to the plugin and they have
three different types of caching and you
can also set these in the site tools
dashboard um but you can turn them off
or on at least for the first two um
right from WordPress if you want to use
the third type meme cached or mem cached
I should say you do need to turn it on
first in site
tools so in your site tools you want to
go to speed caching go to mem cached and
here and then after you turn it on in
site tools you should be able to turn it
on in
WordPress and another feature that I
found pretty helpful is that under
caching settings you can Purge the cache
manually and I find this really helpful
to do after makinging can changes to the
website files all right and then if we
environment these are some settings that
you can use to enforce https in your
WordPress site you can also rewrite
requests for insecure assets to use
https and you can also optimize
WordPress to not use as much CPU when
you're logged in which I found pretty
helpful and you can also clean up your
database every week all right next in
the front-end section these settings let
you Minify and combine your website
files to reduce the number of server
requests that they create if you haven't
you know done that yourself in your
files all right then in the media
section um these settings let you
compress images and it'll also convert
your images to webp images which is a
smaller format than regular jpegs or pgs
and you also have some lazy loading
settings and then in sight performance
this will let you test your website with
Google page speed although this kind of
gives you like the numbers which is nice
to have but if you want more details
then you may need to go directly to
Google's page speed site or use the
lighthouse tool in Chrome all right so
let's check out the security Optimizer
now so in security Optimizer we have
some settings for site security and
these basically lock your files and
folders from editing or execution that
you don't want to happen and you can
also disable some WordPress features
that are often leveraged by hackers then
if we go to login security you can
customize the login URL to be different
from the default WP admin page you can
also limit logins to certain IP
addresses which I think is really
helpful and you can set up two- Factor
authentication for users and do some
other things to make the admin site of
your WordPress site more secure so they
also have the logs of activity to the
website and they have post hack actions
that you can take if you have been
hacked so these optimization and
security tools just do a lot of work for
you without you having to set all this
up yourself which I think are pretty
time-saving services and again you can
charge your clients for these because
you're getting them from site ground you
know there are other plugins that can
handle security caching and image
optimization for you but then instead of
having to install and manage multiple
individual plugins I do think it's
pretty nice that you have these two site
ground plugins that do so many things
and they've been designed to work with
the site ground server all right so if
we go back to our site ground site tools
in the WordPress section there are some
more tools that'll help you with the
process of development and deployment
all right so in staging you can create a
copy of your site to be a staging site
which will have a different subdomain
name and this means that you can test
out changes and get client approval
before they get pushed to the live site
and to help keep the staging site
private you can put the URLs behind a
password or limit them to specific users
of the site ground site then once you
get approval for you know changes or the
new features from the client you can
then deploy those changes to the
production site and Sr also has a
migrator tool that you can use to
migrate a WordPress website from another
hosting provider to site ground they
also can handle auto updates of the
WordPress core software and optionally
you can have them update your plugin as
well in addition to these updates side
ground will also automatically update
the PHP version for you which I found
immensely helpful as someone who had to
do all these kinds of updates myself and
if anything goes wrong with updates you
can easily revert your site to a backup
version using the site tools and if you
ever run into an issue or break your
website you do have access to 247
support from the site ground staff who
have been trained in WordPress specific
support all right so you've gotten a
look at the tools that you can use to
set up and maintain a site ground
website so that it runs fast and secure
but there are a few other tools that I
wanted to mention that can help you
manage your clients as well as employees
who are going to be working on the
websites so from your main sight ground
dashboard if you click on your profile
pick in the top right and then go to
manage users you can create new users
who will get access to the site tools of
the website that you want now there are
two types of users that you canate
create you can create a collaborator
user and that would be someone like a
developer that you want to have access
to your site Tools in order for them to
manage the website or make a code change
so here's what the collaborator sight
ground dashboard will look like it is
pretty much the same as yours it's going
to load on the sr.com domain and they
are going to have access to the whole
site ground menu options up top as well
as site tools for the website that
you've added them to so you can go to
websites go to collaborations and these
are the sites that have been added as a
collaborator website so if you click on
site tools for either of those sites
then you'll go to the site tools
dashboard for that specific site so the
main difference between the collaborator
options and site tools and yours as the
owner is that they just won't have
access to the same email settings as you
are since you're the one in charge of
the email settings now the other type of
user is a client user and this would be
if you're working as a web hosting
reseller meaning that you are purchasing
a large hosting package from site ground
and then selling smaller parts of that
package to your own clients for their
websites and then they might want to
manage the websites themselves so this
is what a client user is going to see so
they're not going to have that main
sight ground dashboard with all the
different menu options at the top the
only thing you're going to have access
to is the site tools for the website
they that they have gotten from you and
you might notice that this dashboard is
white labeled so it's not loading on a
site ground domain but it's loading from
a mysite area.com domain and there's no
site ground logo it just says site tools
in the top left here and then it has a
name of the website that they are added
to on the top but other than that they
have all of the other main site tool
tools that you have so that they are
able to manage this website themselves
another tool that you can utilize from
site ground that will help you work with
clients is getting some security and
performance reports so you can see those
by going to the top right clicking your
profile picture and going to
notification preferences and if you
scroll down you can see that you can get
monthly security reports and monthly performance
performance
reports and you can pass the info in
those reports onto your clients to show
them how their website is doing each
month also site ground has a really
convenient tool for client handoffs once
You' finished building the website so
let's say you've built the website you
have a staging version up and you got
client approval for the site to go live
now if the client wants to retain
ownership of the website you can
actually transfer ownership to the
client the way you can do this is if you
go to websites and let's say we want to
transfer this website here to the client
you can click the three dots button
that's on the right side and then go to transfer
ownership and then you can recommend a
site ground pricing tier as well as some
other add-on services and you can
optionally add yourself as a
collaborator on this website when it's
transferred over to the client as the
new owner so all these site ground tools
that I've been mentioning here are
things that you would have to do
yourself if you were using self-managed
hosting obviously if you do have the
skills the time and the desire to do
server management then you could do that
and save on hosting costs but sometimes
it's just easier to pay for managed
hosting especially if you can pass on
those costs to your clients all right so
thanks for watching I really hope that
you find this video helpful and we'll
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