Web Hosting Business SWOT


Almost every business would say its products are the best and most authentic. They are skilled, pioneered, and leaders in the industry. A customer enjoys a happy and resilient buying experience. How many such businesses do SWOT Analysis? They keep repeating the same lines, but the day they start self-awareness, they start improving their products and services, performance, ethical marketing, and sales culture. The customer gains value and shares positive feedback or comments. Knowing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and becoming self-aware tend to make them trustworthy. A bright, intelligent business always develops a customer-centric approach that can positively impact its company and its continuity.

Organizational culture develops where every employee is emotional towards the customer. From sales to after-sales support, the business wants to reduce the buying complexity and let the customer experience the same with authenticity.

The critical aspect is to ‘know its customer,’ what it is looking for? And whether the product or service caters to its needs? The proper filtering or segmentation of customers must relate them to the offerings. It’s not only the customer who should always research to find the best company and product or services which cater to its needs. It’s moreover working on its strengths to serve best to its customers and become a market leader. The business tends to work naturally on its strengths where they are good at, as they feel energetic and motivated. It’s evident if their sales and marketing team works on the products in which business is weak, they may find it draining and stressful.

Management wants to sell every product or service, but some become core, and on the others, they need to put extra pressure. Take an example of CPWebHosting; they are good at selling cloud shared hosting services, but as they are resellers for SSL and a few other products, the staff find it hard to compete in the market. The team correctly understand what is their strength & where they are weak and thus want to focus effectively on its core only.

It’s true that businesses also focus on the best-performing products or services and support resilience. Selling the under-performing products or services is a challenge, and if there is high competition, sales don’t look to lead others. In a web hosting business, cloud shared hosting has almost replaced shared hosting, which is apparent by its values, performance, and purpose statements. Still, people go with shared hosting because of the low cost and needs or requirements. The hosting providers nowadays don’t consider them effective hosting plans and thus don’t inspire the sales team to inspire customers with solid rational beliefs and mindsets.

The hosting consumers buy with a particular perspective influenced mainly by habits, thoughts, emotions, biases, thinking patterns, and behaviors. There is not much awareness or research conducted before the purchase. Ananova always suggests going through resources, reports, and user reviews, before making the tough decision of hosting an online presence. It could be possible that the decision may go wrong, even after proper planning, strategy and research, but the chances are significantly less. The study is precious and vital and helps more effectively find the perfect hosting provider. The deeper the analysis goes, it helps to find a more authentic provider.

Web Hosting Stewardship


In a web hosting world, who are the leaders? It’s a question on which the Ananova research team daily works and tries to bring the list of authentic web hosting providers in its reports. Before making the hosting buying decision, a customer goes through company reviews. Still, it’s always back of their mind that whatever is available is unbiased and written by customers who have experienced the hosting services or done by the marketing team of the companies. A suspicious mind does not trust easily, and it’s good also. A lot of web hosting review websites are available. Does the reviewer go everywhere to give feedback? The authenticity of such a website is a big question?
The reviews posted on rating and review websites do not provide much of the facts to support the available content as they have the answer; it’s user-generated. Then how, websites like SiteGeek, Ananova, and BHJ claim to provide the list of the best web hosting providers, who are the true leaders in the market. When we raised this question through an email, they answered that user reviews are not only the criteria; their research team monitors other vital factors like uptime, hosting plan comparison, and support to strengthen the foundation for this leadership list. The process is continuous, but the research team of the above-provided websites takes the ranged data to reach their conclusions. And each time, the research starts again by exploring the same question for another period. Their reports define how their results help the hosting customer understand the company’s offerings to match its requirements. Furthermore, it explains how the hosting provider’s routine processes like updates, upgrades, backups, innovations, and new technology enhancements benefit its customers to succeed in online business. These reports are provided free of cost to the hosting consumers to embrace hosting consumers to make the right choices in the beginning.

It’s a sentence in everybody’s mouth that technology is racing, bringing many changes to how websites are built professionally. The old-style developers find it difficult to pace with the changing web hosting world. Thus, they realize to upgrade or would be uncertain about their future. The work has entered into lives and has diminished or blurred the separation between the two. These developers suggest the best hosting platform to their customers. They have been working day and night to build professional-looking websites with the provided functionality precisely per requirements. The developers also feel the burden of suggesting the right hosting provider, as otherwise, it affects the relationship with their customers and brings a time of uncertainty. Ananova reports proved beneficial for such developers, who already know and are aware of hosting technologies compared to the hosting consumers. Thus, hosting reports help them to bring a decisive & meaningful approach in choosing the hosting provider for their clients. Their clients depend entirely on these developers, as they consider that they have a higher level of engagement. The right web hosting provider brings website performance and effectiveness.

It’s apparent humans make decisions, and probably their decisions are emotionally biased. The hosting provider’s marketing team leads the approach to provide facts and hosting information to increase customers’ emotional intelligence, making them self-aware with a deeper understanding of the hosting technologies. A customer with authentic information feels strength, giving the best purpose to choose a particular web hosting provider. Ananova stewardship drives the curiosity of the hosting consumer before judging and accepting a hosting provider. It’s always challenging to choose the right web hosting provider that matches hosting needs and requirements and supports whenever the issues arise. By giving one of the best support, the hosting providers keep a healthy relationship with their customers. They encourage communication, feedback, or comments and thus, try to build confidence by being in touch.

Best WordPress Web Hosting Services 2022


The WordPress web hosting market is growing substantially. Ananova’s team predicts this trend will continue, and WordPress will cover the top market in the upcoming years. Ananova.com is a trusted provider of current, unbiased, comprehensive web host reviews and reports developed using in-depth, real-time, data-driven tracking, social media sentiment analysis, and honest user commentary. Their team uses research tools to analyze the hosting industry. The portal recommends top web hosting providers https://ananova.com/best-hosting-providers by assessing the hosting company, growth, resources, support, strategies, and hosting plans. Ananova team does the SWOT analysis of the thousands of web hosting companies to help consumers face challenges while selecting the best web hosting provider. The individual company reviews enable the consumer to understand better the web hosting provider offered resources to match its needs or requirements. The consumer requirements may vary depending upon:

  • Platform: Linux or Windows
  • Consumer Profile: Individual, Small company, Medium size enterprise, Large Enterprize, Non-profit organization, Government institution
  • Regional: North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa

Different consumer personal pertains to additional market share, product demand, and growth. Ananova analysis of web hosting provider companies, plans, hosting resources, support services, and latest developments helps consumers make the perfect hosting buying decision. Ananova follows the hosting provider’s expansions, merger & acquisition, research and development, and hosting plan strategies. The Ananova best WordPress list is the outcome of the market study, executive summary, and competitors. 

WordPress 6.0 Closer To WCAG 2.0 AA compliance


WordPress 6.0 features numerous accessibility improvements that bring it closer to WCAG 2.0 AA compliance. WordPress announced the version release on May 24, 2022, with inclusiveness and accessibility as a core goal, making it easier for users to publish content regardless of device and maintain a website or application.

Accessibility Improvements in WordPress 6.0

WordPress

  1. Alt Text used on the featured image: It will use the post title as the alt text when a featured image is linked to the post.
  2. Improvements to Tabbing into a block placeholder as requested by the GitHub pull: This makes the placeholder controls keyboard accessible when the “Contain text cursor inside block” preference is enabled. Tab allowed into placeholder controls during edit mode when focussed on a block with a placeholder.
  3. Screen Reader Related Improvements: Making it easier for publishers who use screen readers to navigate through the blocks and get things done. Ensure that blocks with placeholder setup have their description ready by VoiceOver, giving context for the block itself and the resulting controls.
  4. Search Results in Block Manager
  5. Improve successful Draft save notification for screen readers by making it more descriptive as Draft saved instead of just Saved.
  6. Add button text labels to the site editor to show text labels instead of icons on interface buttons.
  7. Avoid duplicate labels for the “Save Draft” and “Save as pending” buttons to reduce confusion.
  8. RichText: Reverse disable line breaks to determine the aria-multiline state.
  9. Remove role attributes on SVGs meant for “decoration.” It is about adding a role=”img” tag without adding an aria-label to SVGs. 
  10. Improvements to the Navigation Block
  11. Improvements to WordPress List View: improved the ability to select specific blocks, improved aria labels, and improved keyboard controls and announcements.
  12. Screenshot of List View Toggle Button
  13. Improvements to Handling Media: “Preserve attachment properties on cropping custom logo. It means that the alternative text, title, description, and caption of an image will migrate over to the cropped copy of the image after cropping.
  14. Stop arrow keys switching media if URL focused.
  15. Add a “Copy URL to clipboard” function to the list table view. Set break-word on sample permalink so the full permalink will be visible on mobile devices in posts, media, and comments.
  16. Remove target blank attribute target=”_blank” from media uploader edit links to change permalink structures and change the link text to clarify link purpose.
  17. Improves screen reader and keyboard functionality in the Quick/Bulk editing, fixes issues with the login and registration buttons to add autocomplete values but in a way that doesn’t represent a security issue since the values are stored in the browser.
  18. Miscellaneous accessibility improvements to official WordPress themes: “Twenty Nineteen: Override flex order in the comment form. Transform search into a dialog role and fix the handling of aria-expanded to synchronize mobile and desktop buttons.
  19. Twenty Twenty-One: Reverse logic for prefers-reduced-motion media query.
  20. When hovering over the theme details button, use the pointer cursor for consistency with the theme card.

End of Life (EOL) ‘.htaccess’


WP Engine announced ending support for the ‘.htaccess’ directive and has a set date of October 2022 for its complete removal. And, when managed WordPress hosting provider WP Engine is saying this, it means a lot. WordPress websites stop working if something happens to ‘.htaccess’ and, with time, become an integral part of the platform. The WordPress platform generates the default version of .htaccess while installation. It’s a longstanding established practice to customize the file for better performance and security tactics and control certain website aspects. 

Most web admins use the ‘.htaccess’ file for URL redirection purposes or for blocking IP addresses of malicious hackers and scrapers, among many other uses. But for this, the WordPress plugin ‘Redirection’ can easily manage redirects and headers. The plugin provides a convenient log file that shows 404 responses and alerts inbound misspelled links. The plugin offers the most efficient way of managing activities like blocking IP addresses or redirecting URLs. Another way is by creating Web Rules that allow users to manage IP-based allow/deny rules and setting header responses. Yoast SEO plugin also comes with a redirect manager.

WP Engine, such an announcement sounds like a deal-breaker. Is the company looking for some new technology, as most web admins won’t find the web hosting suitable for their professional websites? The company might be doing this with complete strategy and planning. Their decision is not pop-up like a surprise, and it would be well researched and thoughtful. The company has been in the WordPress Managed Hosting business since 2013. Their team is dedicated to improving website performance, protection, and accelerated development. 

The company is giving the reasons behind removing .htaccess from site-level is achieving performance and matching industry trends. The company has developed a list of recommended alternatives, and rewrites will be handled at the server level. Another reason the company provides is that the official Apache Software Foundation itself recommends not using .htaccess at the website level. According to developers of the Apache server software, the only time ‘.htaccess’ files should ever be used when access to the server configuration file is restricted, such as one might find on budget shared servers. The file is used on servers that run Apache open-source server software and Nginx servers that run as a reverse proxy for Apache.

The Apache Software Foundation documentation advises:

“There is, for example, a common misconception that user authentication should always be done in .htaccess files, and, in more recent years, another misconception that mod_rewrite directives must go in .htaccess files.

This is not the case.

You can put user authentication configurations in the main server configuration, which is the preferred way to do things. Likewise, mod_rewrite directives work better, in many respects, in the main server configuration.”

WP Engine claims that there are clear benefits for their users and website visitors.

The large ‘.htaccess’ file hurts SEO and conversion-related metrics such as the Time to First Byte (TTFB). The metric measures how long it takes for a server to download web page resources. It impacts both server performance and scalability, as it has a measurable and significant impact on CPU & memory usage. The WP Engine wants to create website friendly environment to make the website faster.

Will other web hosts follow WP Engine and deprecate the .htaccess file?

No Criminal is beyond FBI Reach


Every parent wants decency in every media, whether movies or the Internet. But, on Internet, you may find everything. During the Corona pandemic, even small kids were given access to the mobiles and Internet. Keeping an eye on children every time is not possible. Although firewalls block specific websites and routers also come with parenting guards.
There has been a sharp decline in adult hosting websites in recent years, and even now, the hosting providers are very stringent on this. But, online adult websites still exist on the Dark Web, and land laws are not sufficient or powerless to some extent to stop them. It creates a sense of urgency to stop abuse and adultery. Negative things gain more popularity, such as adultery websites, images, gallery rack up a substantial number of views.

A single collection of images, labeled “Melinda – my daughter,” was viewed more than 467,000 times. The most challenging part is that viewers or members of such sites are not punished, or significantly fewer numbers get punishment. The agencies find investigations of such websites costly, slow and difficult.

Recently FBI hackers resorted to hacking to hunt down pedophiles hiding anonymously on the Internet. They took down a child porn ring on TOR by hacking, spying, and conducting home raids. The details came into focus when the FBI played the hacker spies role going beyond legal boundaries with court authorization.

In Operation Torpedo started in 2011, Netherlands police found a large child porn site and gained administrative access. The web server was located inside a data center at Power DNN, a Web hosting service located in Bellevue, Nebraska. Prosecutors said police rescued over half a dozen children. According to court records, Dutch cops then tipped off the FBI.

The judge approved FBI spying on Omaha, Nebraska, home of one Power DNN employee, Aaron McGrath. In late 2012, The federal agents burst into his house and caught McGrath signed in as the administrator of PedoBook, a social media site where people shared photos of child pornography. His laptop data was encrypted and locked, but investigators could determine the password and unlock the computer, as per court records. FBI agents could not identify the website’s visitors, as the website on the Dark Web was accessible through the TOR browser, which hides visitors’ location by bouncing Internet traffic signals around the globe. Then FBI was granted a search warrant for a “network investigative technique,” allowing agents to slip computer code into photos on the child porn website.

Every time a website visitor clicked on an image of a naked child, their computer also downloaded extra data that reported its actual IP address and operating system and identified users. The FBI agents exploited notoriously vulnerable Flash to establish a direct connection to reveal IP addresses. Those using an outdated version of TOR and didn’t set computers block Flash, their IP got revealed. They catch the slowest, dumbest of the bunch without breaking TOR’s anonymity.

One more challenge is that few, in the name of free speech, criticize the government’s actions and question the legality of bringing down such websites; they say the Internet is free and such websites can also run, and people can freely watch them. Challenging the FBI hacking methods in the Operation Torpedo case, the defense attorney claimed the mass hack was “overreaching of law enforcement.” “FBI unfairly sneaked upon his client.” The defense argued that the search warrant required notifying the suspect of the electronic search within 30 days.

These criminals’ acts were beyond one’s imagination. A 22-year-old from Ashford, Alabama, promised to produce images of his yet unborn daughter while still in her mother’s womb, and the FBI stopped him, and now he is in prison for 15 years.
A 42-year-old boasted about the many girls he raped in the Philippines. He’s now serving 20 years.
(source: https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/25/technology/fbi-child-porn/index.html)

Why is WordPress Best For You?


WordPress has been the most widely used CMS platform throughout history and continues to be so today.

Do you wish to create your website on the WordPress platform and look for the best plan. The Ananova would guide you to choose the best hosting plan for your online business presence. CPWebHosting is an affiliate to WordPress.com and earns commission whenever anybody purchases hosting plans using the partner links. The Ananova editorial team’s opinions and evaluations are unbiased, honest, impartial, comprehensive, and current despite the above. The team highly recommends WordPress.com to build a business, e-commerce, stores, blogging, & individual websites because of its competitive pricing, features, security, and the best customer support.

Although one can ask why only WordPress.com website builder, when WordPress offered is same through WordPress.org?

Further, is it necessary to have a premium domain? Why not use the freely available sub-domain with WordPress.com like Ananova.wordpress.com.

A website looks professional with a premium domain, and it should not be a staging domain. You can get a domain from Godaddy, Enom, Dynadot, Google domains, or other registrars. The premium domain costs from $8 to $14 if the domain code is .org or .com annually. 

WordPress.com offers:

WordPress Free‘ with limited functionality, storage, and traffic. It is free and does not include a custom domain name, premium themes, WordPress plugins, premium support, WooCommerce, SEO Tools, advanced social media tools, professional email, WordAds, SFTP, database access, automated backups, and jetpack essentials. This free plan comes with 1GB storage, does not allow uploading videos, displays ads, and allows only one administrator.

WordPress Pro‘ plan includes a custom domain name free for one year, premium themes, Unlimited WordPress plugins, premium support, Sell Products with WooCommerce, Collect payments, SEO Tools, advanced social media tools, professional email free for 3 months, WordAds, upload, videos, SFTP, database access, automated backups, and jetpack essentials. This free plan comes with 50GB storage, without ads, and allows unlimited administrators. The plans enable the installation of 3-rd party premium themes and plugins.

For those who want to try other hosting providers, Ananova provides a list of trusted web hosting providers

where they can install WordPress through cPanel Control Panel. 

Since early April 2022, WordPress.com has offered two plans as listed above with differences. The Pro plan includes everything a business website needs.

WordPress Theme Newspaper


The flexible, powerful, and stunning template is suitable for news agencies, article writers, individual journalists, magazines, e-commerce websites, stores, reviewers & bloggers. It’s GDPR compliant and supports YouTube videos, RTL, Google Ads, AdSense, & multilanguage support. The template easily integrates with Instagram, bbPress Forum, BuddyPress, and WooCommerce.

The mobile-ready theme comes with gorgeous and effective prebuilt elements, custom colors selectable for each category & built-in tools for search and load-time optimizations to attract more traffic. The theme is fast, simple, and easy for fashion, food, lifestyle, modern, personal, travel, luxury, viral, minimal, minimalist projects, web development, and professional websites. Overall, the theme’s popularity is bolstered by the professional designs it delivers.

The Responsive Newspaper theme helps establish authority in the industry by creating an overall enjoyable experience for site visitors. The built-in performance analyzer helps make critical adjustments to improve your site’s search engine optimization and load times. The tool analyzes page structure and helps to move CSS code to better areas, cutting down the number of requests and the size of crucial files required to load your site. Thus, making the site blazing fast.

The theme includes tools for:

  • Composing beautiful blog posts and WordPress pages
  • HTML5 Prebuilt elements and layouts to deploy on your site
  • Header and footer builders
  • Simple to use customizable sections
  • Opt-in forms and gated content for subscribers
  • WooCommerce shop builder
  • Instagram, bbPress, and BuddyPress integrations
  • There are no incompatibility issues while adding JavaScript; the theme itself uses a minimal number of external libraries. 

The users use the template for better reach and easier creation and adjustment to every element.

WordPress Elementor Website Builder Plugin vulnerable to Critical RCE Flaw


Elementor is the leading website builder platform for professionals on WordPress, with over five million active installations. It serves web professionals, including developers, designers, and marketers. Furthermore, it boasts a new website created every 10 seconds on its platform. Recently in the latest plugin version, vulnerability to an authenticated remote code execution flaw (RCE) was detected that enables abusers to take over the affected website. The abuser can upload an arbitrary file, potentially leading to code execution.

Plugin Vulnerabilities disclosed a bug introduced in version 3.6.0, released on March 22, 2022, and roughly 37% of users of the plugin were on that version. The bug allows any authenticated user, regardless of their authorization, to change the site title and site logo, change the theme to Elementor’s theme, and upload arbitrary files to the site. The provider advised users to update the plugin as soon as possible to mitigate further risks.

Elementor helps web designers to turn design visions into professional websites, accelerate and innovate website development and make an online business shine and grow its audience. With the live drag & drop editor, 90+ widgets with total customization freedom, zero coding is required to create a flawless website with custom positions, padding, margins, and global settings for colors & typographies. The platform helps create unlimited web creations like anding pages and eCommerce stores to full-blown websites. Designers use it to create unique & consistent website designs using advanced animations, custom templates library, global design settings, custom CSS, responsive layouts, and more for Business & Services, Portfolio & CV, Creative, eCommerce, Events & Entertainment, Landing Pages, Media & Blogs, Health & Wellness.

Future of Web Hosting Providers


Web hosters are always concerned about sustainability, continuity, and business growth as business needs continuous up-gradation and updates to keep pace with continuously changing technology. Big companies take over the small companies, and those who want to run their companies struggle to cope with big brands’ sophisticated, long-term hosting models. The big brands have money & human resource to plan, create strategies, and appropriately implement their processes. They apply various methods to interact with multiple stakeholders, especially their customers. The support team interacts with the technical or back-end team to help customers solve problems or issues related to their managed applications or infrastructure.

I’ve found some small hosting businesses are also managing smartly, with a limited number of customers. Runs their hosting services on public cloud VPS servers, cPanel Control Panel, Cloud Linux, and Immunify365. Their clients are individuals or small businesses with limited resource requirements. They also keep their support systems always manned to provide the best connectivity.

Most hosting businesses are emerging as Software As A Service Providers, where they have hosted applications on AWS, Vultr, or Google Cloud Computing Server. Their client needs minimal functionality, as they are more concerned with hosted applications. The hosters are termed differently, like e-commerce platform providers, educational platform providers, and health platforms. These platforms provide all the sector-related operations. SaaS providers are emerging quickly in the market and can gain a customer base by offering complete solutions.

Thus, the hosting industry seems to be divided into Public & Private Cloud Providers, Data Centers, and SaaS Providers.