You saw the title and the thumbnail, so you already know this is a pretty sweet deal. However, while it is a great offer - it’s not the best web hosting deal for everyone.
Who’s it best for? If you’re hosting a small single site or multiple small sites that fit within the 10 GB storage limit. The offer is phenomenal for Wordpress, especially for a small business, and great for hosting hobby Node.js or Python apps.
I am part of these forums called LowEndTalk and LowEndSpirit, and I browse them constantly. And by constantly, I mean multiple times a day, every single day.
What for? Well, as their names suggest, they feature low-cost deals on VPS, dedicated servers, and web hosting - the whole package. I don't splurge often, but sometimes, I get so tempted - so very tempted - that I can’t restrain myself.
This deal from HostBrr is one such deal. I mean, just look at what it includes - unlimited domains, emails, databases — unlimited everything, really — except storage. Limited to 10 GB storage, this DirectAdmin offer is great - especially considering it costs just $5/yr. The cost alone makes this an too-good-to-pass-up offer.
If you’d like to check out the offers:
10 GB DirectAdmin Shared Web Hosting: @$5/yr (affiliate)
10 GB cPanel Shared Web Hosting: @$10/yr (affiliate)
What makes it greater still - and the best web hosting deal I’ve gotten - is that these are run on LiteSpeed Enterprise servers. LiteSpeed Enterprise servers come with recurring quic.cloud credits, which can be used for CDN, image optimization, and more. And if you host Wordpress websites, like I do, that monthly credits makes a great difference.
Now, we’re going to use the monthly recurring quic.cloud credits to speed up our Wordpress site with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin and quic.cloud CDN - all for free.
Since most shared hosting runs on LiteSpeed servers, the following steps aren’t just for these servers; they might help optimize your Wordpress installation as well.
Making use of the quic.cloud integration in Wordpress is incredibly simple. All you need to do is install the LiteSpeed Cache plugin from your Wordpress dashboard. The LiteSpeed Cache plugin is excellent at caching Wordpress websites, and for the most part, is the only caching plugin you’ll ever need.
After you install and activate the plugin, navigate to the LiteSpeed Cache Settings. You’re going to need a Domain Key going forward.
Fortunately, getting a Domain Key is a breeze. Simply navigate to the General tab of the LiteSpeed Cache Settings, and Click on ‘Request Domain Key’. A request will be submitted, and the Domain Key will be filled automatically if your shared hosting runs on LiteSpeed servers. Fetching the Domain Key shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
After you have successfully received your Domain Key, navigate to the Presets tab of the LiteSpeed Cache Settings.
The LiteSpeed Cache does everything you’d want from a caching plugin - Page Cache, Browser Cache, Image Optimization, Minification, Removing Unused CSS. It’s pretty much the only caching plugin you’ll need. These features are conveniently grouped into presets, allowing you to choose how aggressive your Wordpress caching should be.
I personally mostly use either the Advanced, the recommended preset, or Aggressive. Choose a preset based on the dynamic content of your Wordpress site. Since the website I’m currently working on has no dynamic content, I am going to choose Aggressive, and switch to Advanced if anything breaks.
Now that the caching settings are configured, and the Domain Key has been obtained, it’s time to set up quic.cloud CDN.
Simply navigate to the CDN tab in the LiteSpeed Cache Settings, enable ‘QUIC.cloud CDN’ and click ‘Save Changes’.
The changes you’ll make to your Wordpress installation are almost complete. Now, we’re going to create a quic.cloud account, and link your Wordpress installation to it. This will allow you to track analytics, change CDN settings, and such.
Navigate to the ‘General’ tab in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin settings. There, where you previously clicked ‘Request Domain Key’, you should now see another button labeled ‘Link to QUIC.cloud’. Click this button to proceed.
After clicking the button, you’ll be prompted to log in to quic.cloud. If you don’t have an account, create one first.
Once you’ve successfully logged in to quic.cloud, click the ‘Link to QUIC.cloud’ button from your Wordpress dashboard. You’ll be redirected to quic.cloud, and a popup will ask you to link your domain to your account. Click ‘Yes’ and then ‘Continue’.
You should now see the quic.cloud dashboard.
You should see your connected domain in the dashboard with the status ‘OK’. Click on your domain.
In the ‘Services Overview’ section, everything except the CDN should have the status ‘OK’. This means the LiteSpeed Cache plugin is working as expected.
Now, let’s set up the CDN for your website. Click on the ‘CDN’ link, then in the CDN Overview section, click ‘Enable CDN’.
To enable the CDN, you’ll be asked to either use a CNAME record to point your domain to quic.cloud or switch your DNS provider to quic.cloud entirely.
If your current DNS provider supports CNAME Flattening, you can use a CNAME record for the CDN. If not, you’ll need to use quic.cloud DNS instead.
My DNS provider, Cloudflare, supports CNAME flattening, so I’ll use a CNAME record to point my domain to quic.cloud.
You will now be provided with a CNAME record, which you need to use to update the CNAME for your root domain.
Since I’m using Cloudflare, I’ll head over to Cloudflare and update the DNS records.
Type = CNAME
Name = YOURDOMAIN
Target = PASTE FROM QUIC.CLOUD
After adding the DNS records, go back to the quic.cloud dashboard. It will take a short while for quic.cloud to verify the DNS changes.
Once the DNS has been verified, your website will start being cached and served from 82 quic.cloud edge servers around the world.
We’re now almost done!
Navigate to the ‘CDN Config’ tab in the quic.cloud panel, then go to ‘Connection’, and turn on ‘Enable QUIC Backend’.
You’ve now successfully enabled the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, and configured the quic.cloud CDN to make your site quicker throughout the world.
You can verify if the CDN is performing properly using tools like KeyCDN.
Last week’s post, Free Uptime Kuma, was the first piece of writing I ever published online. And in that post, I mentioned that I would be writing and publishing two posts per week. However, after working on this post, I’ve had to re-evaluate my goals.
At my current pace, writing and publishing two posts per week isn’t realistic, especially since I want what I write - what I share with the world - to be the best it can be. I want to feel satisfied with what I’ve written.
So, for now, I’m revising my goals: I will focus on writing one post per week and gradually increase to two posts by the end of February. I’ll aim to reach that goal before the last week, but until then, my focus will be on publishing one quality post per week.
I write about tech, open source, and such. If you’d like to support my writing journey, please give me a follow. Thanks.
/#wayofpennypincher /#wayofpp
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