Finding website hosting that is secure, reliable and functional is so important. WP Engine offers a managed hosting platform that specifically caters to WordPress users (like us!). It’s one of the most popular hosting options for WordPress websites, and for plenty of good reasons.
Here are just some of the cutting-edge features that make WP Engine our favorite hosting provider:
Simplifying Tedious Processes
WP Engine makes life easier for our dev team by simplifying otherwise time-consuming and tedious processes, such as:
- Migration: WP Engine makes migrating a site less of a headache with an automated WordPress migration plugin. The plugin imports the database and replaces domain values by itself, giving us more time to work on other projects.
- Backup and Restore: WP Engine has both manual and automated backups to protect your data. You can create a manual backup at any time and restore an old copy of your website in just one click! If you need it, an older version of your site can be up and running within a few minutes. WP Engine also backs up your site automatically each night, in case you forget to back it up before making changes.
- SSL: Adding an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate to a website can be done with the click of a button to ensure a safe connection between a site visitor’s browser and your website!
- Password Protection: WP Engine makes password protecting your website during development very easy. When a password is added, the site cannot be accessed unless the user has the login information. This way, the site remains private until it is ready to launch. It also ensures that search engines don’t crawl your staging environment and penalize you for duplicate content published on the production site.
- Cache Clearing: With a one-click clear cache option, we can see our most recent website changes. WP Engine’s developer tools also make resetting file permissions for SFTP uploads very easy. This comes in handy when we’re adding new code or files to the server. The server can quickly forget the old code and search for the new code we uploaded.
Quality Developer Tools
More than just a website hosting solution, WP Engine is a digital platform that equips users with powerful tools to enhance website design, agility, security and more. WP Engine offers a suite of tools for site developers and designers of all skill levels, simplifying and streamlining workflow. One tool we use regularly is Local. This application works with WP Engine’s hosting API and allows us to easily pull down an entire site locally, make edits offline, and put it back up with just a few simple clicks.
Staging Options
One of the great benefits of hosting through WP Engine is the ability to set up a one-click staging site. This feature allows a user to create three versions (clones, essentially) of the same site. These stages are Development, Staging and Production. This ability lets us test out new features and make changes to a website in a simulation of a live environment, without affecting your public-facing site.
While local development can be a great way to test new features, being able to develop on an identical live site offers more accuracy when trying out new themes, plugins and code snippets. It allows us to add changes to an exact copy of the site and see precisely how the adjustments will perform on the production site in real-time—without any risk. Then, once the changes are finalized, the user can easily push them through to the production site.
Expert Support
WP Engine offers 24/7/365 support, so you can get expert WordPress help when you need it, via chat or over the phone with a live person! Their professionally trained support team is very knowledgeable and quick to respond to any and all requests.
WP Engine’s Support Center features an incredible database of documentation, containing informational articles and guides. You can learn about all of the necessary WP Engine processes, from site set up to troubleshooting, on your own in WP Engine’s helpful collection of documentation. This way, we can easily find the correct way to do something, rather than wasting time searching for an answer on Google or using trial and error.
WordPress Compatibility
Parkway Digital builds websites almost exclusively in WordPress (which powers over a third of the internet), so we love that WP Engine is a WordPress-specific hosting option. Many applications and WordPress plugins are created to work seamlessly with WP Engine. WP Engine integrates with several technology partners, including Google Clo