0:00 [Music]
0:02 all right picture this you've landed
0:04 your first client as a freelance web
0:06 developer to build a website for a local
0:09 small business you feel confident about
0:11 how to code the actual website but how
0:13 do you handle the web hosting part of
0:15 the equation this is a question that a
0:17 lot of online tutorials often Overlook
0:20 myself included but in the real world
0:22 you do need to think about web hosting
0:24 especially if you want to make money as
0:26 a freelance developer or even run a
0:29 small webd agency there is a lot of work
0:31 that goes into man in a server but if
0:32 you don't have the experience yourself
0:34 managed hosting can take care of a lot
0:36 of that work for you and that's exactly
0:38 what we're going to be covering with the
0:40 help of site ground site ground is the
0:42 sponsor of this video but I genuinely
0:44 like and recommend them and I've
0:45 actually used them to host my own
0:47 website for the past 7 years and
0:50 counting all right let's get into [Music]
0:51 [Music]
0:54 it so if you're curious about getting
0:56 into handling client web hosting what
0:58 are your options well there's basically
1:01 two kinds of Hosting managed and
1:03 unmanaged managed hosting means that the
1:05 hosting company sets up and maintains
1:08 the server handles security backups and
1:11 can install CMS software like WordPress
1:13 it will generally be more expensive
1:15 since the hosting company is handling
1:17 more of these responsibilities unmanaged
1:19 hosting means that you purchase server
1:21 space from the hosting company but you
1:23 have to handle the setup maintenance
1:25 security backups and software
1:28 installation yourself it will be cheaper
1:29 than managed hosting since you're going
1:31 to be doing most of the work but if you
1:32 don't have experience in server
1:34 management it is a pretty steep learning
1:36 curve and it can be a lot of Hassle and
1:38 annoyance if you're not really that into
1:40 it so if I was getting back into doing
1:42 freelance work for small businesses what
1:44 I personally would do is go the managed
1:46 hosting route this is just me but I
1:48 would prefer to be doing just the web
1:50 development side of things and I
1:52 wouldn't feel super comfortable handling
1:54 all the server security and upgrades
1:56 myself so if you do want to get into
1:58 freelancing as a side or full-time
2:01 business what you charge your clients
2:03 and how easy would it be for you to make
2:04 your money back from the cost of
2:07 purchasing hosting from site ground now
2:08 I do want to preface this with saying
2:10 that these are numbers that I found but
2:12 your own situation is most likely going
2:15 to depend on where you yourself are
2:17 located your own skills and experience
2:20 and where your clients are located all
2:22 right so here is a list of Wordpress
2:24 maintenance services from the blog WP
2:27 beginner and if you scroll down this
2:29 page you can see this table with a list
2:30 of different maintenance companies just
2:32 to give you an idea of what you could
2:35 charge for WordPress maintenance so most
2:37 of these services are between $40 to
2:40 $100 so just to pick a mid-tier number
2:42 for our purposes here let's say you
2:45 charge $75 a month for hosting and
2:47 maintenance then if you get the sight
2:49 ground gogeek tier of hosting the
2:51 regular price is going to be $44.99 per
2:54 month so with just one client on your
2:56 plan you've already made your money back
2:59 per month and you can host more than one
3:01 client website on this tier now I do
3:03 want to emphasize that going this root
3:05 of building hosting and maintaining
3:07 clients websites is definitely not a
3:10 getrich quick scheme it is hard work
3:12 with a pretty steep learning curve and
3:14 if you're running your own business
3:15 there is just a whole lot that you need
3:17 to do in terms of following local
3:19 guidelines for taxes and business
3:21 requirements client communication which
3:24 is a whole thing in and of itself as
3:25 well as learning how to Market yourself
3:28 as a business and all these areas are
3:30 outside the scope of this video and you
3:31 are going to have to do your own
3:33 research but I just wanted to share this
3:35 because this is you know a genuinely
3:37 viable source of income if you want to
3:39 work as a web
3:41 developer so if you're curious about
3:42 learning more about freelancing and you
3:44 just want to know what it's all about I
3:46 did find this pretty interesting article
3:48 from a Reddit user who shared a very
3:51 detailed writeup about how he manages
3:53 his own website business called code
3:55 Stitch it's an interesting read on what
3:57 goes into the business side of things
3:58 like charging for clients and
4:01 maintaining their websites so I'm going
4:03 to share this link down below as well
4:05 just to like give you an idea of what
4:06 goes into running a business kind of
4:09 like this next up I'm going to show you
4:10 how you can set up multiple WordPress
4:13 websites on site ground I am going to be
4:15 using Wordpress simply because like it
4:17 or hate it if you're doing freelance or
4:19 agency work there is a very high
4:21 likelihood that you're going to have to
4:22 work with WordPress because it's what so
4:25 many small businesses use all right so
4:27 we're here on site ground's website and
4:29 if you look at their pricing for web
4:32 hosting they have three different tiers
4:33 now the main difference between these
4:36 three tiers is the number of websites
4:38 that you are allowed the amount of web
4:40 space you can have and also the number
4:42 of visits per month so the first tier
4:45 the startup tier this is the lowest tier
4:46 and this is really if you're just
4:48 building one website for yourself
4:50 because you can only have one website
4:53 allowed um with this tier then on the
4:56 middle grow big tier you can have
4:57 unlimited websites and then you also
5:00 have more space and more visit per month
5:03 and then the top Go Geek tier this also
5:05 has unlimited websites and then you have
5:07 double the space again from the middle
5:10 tier and more visits and if you keep
5:12 comparing the features between these
5:14 different tiers you can kind of see that
5:18 most of the other essential and managed
5:20 WordPress features are the same however
5:23 you can see that the top GOI tier does
5:25 have some exclusive features that you
5:26 most likely want if you're going to be
5:28 managing a multiple clients with site
5:30 ground and I'll I'll show you what those
5:32 are in a little bit it also has the
5:34 highest tier of resources which means
5:36 that it'll be a faster server compared
5:38 to the other two tiers which is
5:41 important for your site speed now I am
5:43 going to be using the top gogeek tier so
5:44 that I can show you all these extra
5:47 client features and one note on pricing
5:49 so pretty much every web host for
5:52 WordPress hosting gives you a really big
5:53 discount the first year and then it goes
5:56 up to the regular price after that site
5:58 ground is what I would consider a
6:00 premium host so they may may be a bit
6:02 more expensive than other hosts but I
6:04 personally think it's worth it because I
6:06 found their customer support to be quite
6:08 good if you start a support chat you are
6:11 talking to an actual human not an AI bot
6:13 which I think is pretty important these
6:16 days and in terms of website up time I
6:18 haven't had any issues with uptime since
6:19 I've been with them also they're running
6:22 a Black Friday sale through December 2nd
6:24 so if you're looking for web hosting you
6:26 can get a discount at the time of this
6:28 recording where the prices for these
6:31 tiers are going to be $19 99 $3.99 and
6:33 $5.99 per month for the first year and
6:35 I've linked that below if you want to
6:37 check it out all right so I'm going to
6:40 select the gogeek plan and click get
6:43 plan and in this next step you can get
6:45 one year of a free domain name or you
6:47 can add an existing domain if you have
6:49 one already I'm not going to use a real
6:52 domain name so I'm going to select
6:55 existing domain and then you can type in
6:57 you know a nonsense
7:00 domain.com and then select continue
7:02 and then select I'll register
7:04 later so after this you want to fill in
7:07 your account information client
7:11 information payment info and then once
7:14 you finish all that you can click to pay
7:16 and then it'll create your account and
7:18 this might take like a minute or two all
7:19 right so once you've gotten your account
7:21 set up and you've logged in you should
7:24 see this as a homepage on your dashboard
7:27 so to create a new site we want to go up
7:30 here to the websites tab
7:31 and you can see that I already have
7:33 three websites running here already but
7:36 let's make a new website so I'm going to
7:40 click new website in the top right
7:42 here and one thing that's kind of cool
7:44 is that you can actually select
7:46 different data centers for the different
7:48 websites on your account they don't
7:50 always have to be the same so you know
7:52 if you have visitors that are located in
7:54 a certain part of the world you can
7:55 select a data center that would be
7:57 closer to them so that it'll help with
7:59 the website load time all right so here
8:02 you can choose what domain name to use
8:03 and I'm not going to register a new
8:05 domain and I don't have an existing
8:07 domain name so for now I'm just going to
8:09 select temporary domain and this means
8:13 that you're going to use a temporary SG
8:16 host.com from site ground and you can
8:19 always add your real domain name later
8:21 once you register that all right so
8:22 let's click
8:24 continue and this is part of their
8:26 installation wizard um if you're not
8:29 sure what to select I'm just going to
8:31 create skip this and then create a new
8:33 blank site because we can add everything
8:35 that we need once it is
8:38 created and here's more add-on stuff if
8:40 you need any of these site ground does
8:42 give you automatic daily backups but if
8:44 your website is going to have a ton of
8:46 changes throughout the course of a day
8:48 then you might also want um hourly
8:51 backups with this premium backup option
8:53 but for most regular sites you probably
8:55 don't need these so I'm not going to add
8:58 them so let's click finish and then it
9:00 will take a little while for the site to
9:02 get up so you might just have to wait a
9:05 little bit all right so the website is
9:07 now all set so let's check out the site tools
9:08 tools
9:11 first so this is site ground's own
9:13 version of the C panel control panel
9:14 that web hosts usually have and I do
9:16 think that this is pretty cool and I
9:19 think it has slightly better UI also if
9:20 you have multiple websites it's going to
9:22 be easier to manage with this because
9:25 each website has its own individual site
9:27 tools panel instead of having all of
9:30 your websites under a single C panel
9:31 keeping these things separated is also
9:33 going to be better for security as well
9:35 as performance for your
9:37 sites now the first thing is up at the
9:40 top is the domain of the site that
9:43 you're currently on and since I have
9:45 multiple sites if I click this change
9:47 button this is a switcher where I can
9:49 select whatever website I want to work
9:51 on and for each site if you scroll down
9:53 a little bit you can see site
9:55 information where it tells you you know
9:57 your server's IP address and also the
10:00 name servers and there's also some
10:02 analytics which you know there's nothing
10:05 here yet so those are blank and up at
10:07 the top they have some pinned tools but
10:08 all the tools that you need are going to
10:11 be in this left sidebar here so at the
10:14 top under site you have a file manager
10:16 tool and here you can look at the files
10:18 that you have on your server so you have
10:21 this explor tab and here it lets you see
10:24 the files and folders but you can also
10:27 create or upload new files or
10:30 folders and you can also edit existing
10:32 files so for example if I double click
10:34 this default HTML
10:37 file it's going to go to editor mode and
10:40 you can actually see the whole file and
10:43 you can make changes right
10:45 here and I do also like that they have
10:47 syntax highlighting for the file so it's
10:50 not just like a plain text file so in
10:52 addition to the file manager they have
10:54 you know FTP if you need to create that
10:56 although you should probably be using
10:58 SSH and then you can also create and
11:01 manage MySQL or postgres
11:04 databases then next let's check out the security
11:05 security
11:07 tools so like I mentioned earlier you
11:10 automatically get daily backups of your
11:12 website so if a site breaks or it gets
11:13 hacked you can quickly restore a
11:16 previous version also these backup
11:18 centers are Geo distributed meaning that
11:20 they are kept in a different region or
11:21 even country than the data center that
11:24 your actual website is on so this can
11:26 really help if there's some kind of
11:28 disaster that happens that affects the
11:30 local area like a power outage or even
11:32 some kind of natural
11:35 disaster and you have the SSL manager to
11:37 add and manage your SSL Sears for your
11:40 website um another option that you have
11:43 here if you go to the website is you can
11:45 enforce https to you know force your
11:48 website and resources to all load
11:51 securely you can also protect URLs so
11:53 that you only allow certain users to be
11:56 able to access specific URLs on your
11:58 website and you can also block traffic
12:01 from certain IP addresses or even entire
12:03 countries which is helpful if you're
12:06 getting a ton of spam or bot traffic and
12:07 then with the site scanner you have some
12:10 premium add-ons if you want to scan your
12:12 server files every week or even every
12:14 day and this would be additional
12:17 security so even without these premium
12:20 add-ons you automatically have regular
12:22 security measures like a web application
12:25 firewall and an antibot system so next
12:28 up in the speed section you have caching
12:30 so you have three different types of
12:32 server level caching to help speed up
12:34 your website's load time and also the
12:36 time to First
12:39 Bite then they have a CDN and this is so
12:41 you can cach your content in different
12:44 Geographic places which will help speed
12:46 up the load time for visitors no matter
12:48 where they are in the world so you get
12:51 basic CDN for free which is honestly
12:52 pretty awesome because then you don't
12:54 have to mess with your DNS settings if
12:56 you are trying to set up like Cloud
12:58 Flare's CDN which I had to do and it was
13:01 a little bit of a hassle all right so
13:04 next up is the WordPress section and we
13:07 do want to install WordPress because
13:09 there's some WordPress plugins that site
13:11 ground has that I find pretty useful so
13:13 I wanted to mention those and you can
13:16 install WordPress using this UI so if I
13:19 select it here we need to fill out the
13:21 admin info which is how you log into
13:23 WordPress and they do have this
13:26 WordPress starter plugin which could be
13:27 helpful if you know you're new to
13:29 Wordpress and you need some extra help
13:31 finding a theme or knowing what plugins
13:33 you might want to install I don't really
13:34 need this so I'm just going to leave
13:36 this unchecked and then once you have
13:43 install and the installation process
13:44 will take a little bit of time it might
13:47 take several seconds to emit it and once
13:49 it's done let's go to the WordPress
13:52 admin panel now there are a couple of
13:54 sight ground specific plugins that come
13:57 with your WordPress install so if you go
13:59 to plugins
14:01 you can see them here so they are
14:04 security Optimizer and then speed
14:06 Optimizer so speed Optimizer gives you
14:08 settings to speed up your website as you
14:11 might imagine so if we go here on the
14:14 left sidebar to the plugin and they have
14:16 three different types of caching and you
14:19 can also set these in the site tools
14:21 dashboard um but you can turn them off
14:23 or on at least for the first two um
14:25 right from WordPress if you want to use
14:28 the third type meme cached or mem cached
14:30 I should say you do need to turn it on
14:32 first in site
14:35 tools so in your site tools you want to
14:39 go to speed caching go to mem cached and
14:45 here and then after you turn it on in
14:46 site tools you should be able to turn it
14:48 on in
14:50 WordPress and another feature that I
14:52 found pretty helpful is that under
14:55 caching settings you can Purge the cache
14:57 manually and I find this really helpful
14:59 to do after makinging can changes to the
15:02 website files all right and then if we
15:07 environment these are some settings that
15:10 you can use to enforce https in your
15:13 WordPress site you can also rewrite
15:17 requests for insecure assets to use
15:19 https and you can also optimize
15:22 WordPress to not use as much CPU when
15:24 you're logged in which I found pretty
15:26 helpful and you can also clean up your
15:29 database every week all right next in
15:30 the front-end section these settings let
15:33 you Minify and combine your website
15:35 files to reduce the number of server
15:37 requests that they create if you haven't
15:39 you know done that yourself in your
15:41 files all right then in the media
15:43 section um these settings let you
15:46 compress images and it'll also convert
15:49 your images to webp images which is a
15:52 smaller format than regular jpegs or pgs
15:55 and you also have some lazy loading
15:58 settings and then in sight performance
15:59 this will let you test your website with
16:02 Google page speed although this kind of
16:03 gives you like the numbers which is nice
16:06 to have but if you want more details
16:08 then you may need to go directly to
16:10 Google's page speed site or use the
16:13 lighthouse tool in Chrome all right so
16:15 let's check out the security Optimizer
16:19 now so in security Optimizer we have
16:22 some settings for site security and
16:24 these basically lock your files and
16:27 folders from editing or execution that
16:29 you don't want to happen and you can
16:32 also disable some WordPress features
16:34 that are often leveraged by hackers then
16:37 if we go to login security you can
16:39 customize the login URL to be different
16:42 from the default WP admin page you can
16:44 also limit logins to certain IP
16:46 addresses which I think is really
16:48 helpful and you can set up two- Factor
16:50 authentication for users and do some
16:52 other things to make the admin site of
16:55 your WordPress site more secure so they
16:57 also have the logs of activity to the
17:00 website and they have post hack actions
17:03 that you can take if you have been
17:05 hacked so these optimization and
17:08 security tools just do a lot of work for
17:10 you without you having to set all this
17:12 up yourself which I think are pretty
17:15 time-saving services and again you can
17:16 charge your clients for these because
17:18 you're getting them from site ground you
17:19 know there are other plugins that can
17:21 handle security caching and image
17:24 optimization for you but then instead of
17:26 having to install and manage multiple
17:28 individual plugins I do think it's
17:30 pretty nice that you have these two site
17:33 ground plugins that do so many things
17:34 and they've been designed to work with
17:36 the site ground server all right so if
17:38 we go back to our site ground site tools
17:40 in the WordPress section there are some
17:41 more tools that'll help you with the
17:44 process of development and deployment
17:48 all right so in staging you can create a
17:50 copy of your site to be a staging site
17:52 which will have a different subdomain
17:54 name and this means that you can test
17:56 out changes and get client approval
17:58 before they get pushed to the live site
17:59 and to help keep the staging site
18:02 private you can put the URLs behind a
18:04 password or limit them to specific users
18:06 of the site ground site then once you
18:08 get approval for you know changes or the
18:10 new features from the client you can
18:12 then deploy those changes to the
18:15 production site and Sr also has a
18:17 migrator tool that you can use to
18:19 migrate a WordPress website from another
18:21 hosting provider to site ground they
18:23 also can handle auto updates of the
18:27 WordPress core software and optionally
18:29 you can have them update your plugin as
18:32 well in addition to these updates side
18:34 ground will also automatically update
18:36 the PHP version for you which I found
18:39 immensely helpful as someone who had to
18:42 do all these kinds of updates myself and
18:44 if anything goes wrong with updates you
18:46 can easily revert your site to a backup
18:49 version using the site tools and if you
18:50 ever run into an issue or break your
18:53 website you do have access to 247
18:55 support from the site ground staff who
18:57 have been trained in WordPress specific
18:59 support all right so you've gotten a
19:01 look at the tools that you can use to
19:03 set up and maintain a site ground
19:06 website so that it runs fast and secure
19:07 but there are a few other tools that I
19:09 wanted to mention that can help you
19:11 manage your clients as well as employees
19:13 who are going to be working on the
19:15 websites so from your main sight ground
19:17 dashboard if you click on your profile
19:20 pick in the top right and then go to
19:23 manage users you can create new users
19:25 who will get access to the site tools of
19:27 the website that you want now there are
19:29 two types of users that you canate
19:31 create you can create a collaborator
19:33 user and that would be someone like a
19:35 developer that you want to have access
19:37 to your site Tools in order for them to
19:40 manage the website or make a code change
19:41 so here's what the collaborator sight
19:43 ground dashboard will look like it is
19:45 pretty much the same as yours it's going
19:48 to load on the sr.com domain and they
19:50 are going to have access to the whole
19:52 site ground menu options up top as well
19:54 as site tools for the website that
19:56 you've added them to so you can go to
19:59 websites go to collaborations and these
20:01 are the sites that have been added as a
20:03 collaborator website so if you click on
20:06 site tools for either of those sites
20:08 then you'll go to the site tools
20:10 dashboard for that specific site so the
20:12 main difference between the collaborator
20:14 options and site tools and yours as the
20:16 owner is that they just won't have
20:18 access to the same email settings as you
20:20 are since you're the one in charge of
20:22 the email settings now the other type of
20:25 user is a client user and this would be
20:26 if you're working as a web hosting
20:29 reseller meaning that you are purchasing
20:31 a large hosting package from site ground
20:33 and then selling smaller parts of that
20:35 package to your own clients for their
20:37 websites and then they might want to
20:39 manage the websites themselves so this
20:42 is what a client user is going to see so
20:44 they're not going to have that main
20:45 sight ground dashboard with all the
20:47 different menu options at the top the
20:48 only thing you're going to have access
20:51 to is the site tools for the website
20:54 they that they have gotten from you and
20:56 you might notice that this dashboard is
20:57 white labeled so it's not loading on a
20:59 site ground domain but it's loading from
21:03 a mysite area.com domain and there's no
21:05 site ground logo it just says site tools
21:07 in the top left here and then it has a
21:09 name of the website that they are added
21:12 to on the top but other than that they
21:14 have all of the other main site tool
21:17 tools that you have so that they are
21:20 able to manage this website themselves
21:21 another tool that you can utilize from
21:23 site ground that will help you work with
21:25 clients is getting some security and
21:28 performance reports so you can see those
21:30 by going to the top right clicking your
21:32 profile picture and going to
21:34 notification preferences and if you
21:38 scroll down you can see that you can get
21:41 monthly security reports and monthly performance
21:43 performance
21:45 reports and you can pass the info in
21:47 those reports onto your clients to show
21:50 them how their website is doing each
21:53 month also site ground has a really
21:55 convenient tool for client handoffs once
21:57 You' finished building the website so
21:59 let's say you've built the website you
22:00 have a staging version up and you got
22:04 client approval for the site to go live
22:05 now if the client wants to retain
22:07 ownership of the website you can
22:10 actually transfer ownership to the
22:12 client the way you can do this is if you
22:14 go to websites and let's say we want to
22:17 transfer this website here to the client
22:19 you can click the three dots button
22:22 that's on the right side and then go to transfer
22:28 ownership and then you can recommend a
22:30 site ground pricing tier as well as some
22:33 other add-on services and you can
22:34 optionally add yourself as a
22:36 collaborator on this website when it's
22:38 transferred over to the client as the
22:41 new owner so all these site ground tools
22:43 that I've been mentioning here are
22:44 things that you would have to do
22:46 yourself if you were using self-managed
22:48 hosting obviously if you do have the
22:50 skills the time and the desire to do
22:52 server management then you could do that
22:55 and save on hosting costs but sometimes
22:57 it's just easier to pay for managed
22:58 hosting especially if you can pass on
23:01 those costs to your clients all right so
23:02 thanks for watching I really hope that
23:04 you find this video helpful and we'll
