Would an opening page help speed of loading?

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This stuff can get pretty geeky and budgets also play a part, so I’ll give you the Janet & John version.

The first thing I would say is that you shouldn’t automatically believe everything these online speed testers tell you, because they are often working on out of date concepts and fail to consider individual objectives.

For example, Pingdom reprimands my sites for not using Gzip, but it has no idea I am using Brotli, which is faster. I’ve had others make recommendations that were only relevant before http/2 and now we even have http/3, so a lot of those “best practices” from the past can actually be counterproductive nowadays, assuming you have a good web host.

In some cases, using a service like Cloudflare is very helpful, however it depends greatly on individual requirements and mainly of use if your site has a global target audience or faces particular security threats. On my own sites I recently ran some tests and found they were very slightly slower with Cloudflare than without it, however this was only the case after moving to a new webhost and the clue was actually in the bandwidth stats at Cloudflare.

Previously Cloudflare was trumpeting that they were saving me around 80% on bandwidth that then dropped to 5%. For a while I wondered if CloudFlare was simply being less helpful, but it works on a system of calculating whether the content is served fastest from the origin server or through their network and seeing the big drop in saved bandwidth was very telling. I don’t care about bandwidth because it is cheap these days.

Previous tests had shown a big speed improvement by using Cloudflare on my old web host almost everywhere, however it was now generally a fraction slower when enabled due to the extra hop and only seemed to gain a minimal advantage in really far flung locations thousands of miles from my customers. Given that there is additional complication involved by running Cloudflare I surprised myself by then removing all but a couple websites.

If we look specifically at your situation as a web designer I am guessing that most of your clients are in your area, so it would probably make most sense for you to have a web host with a data centre that is as close as possible to your clients and reduce latency. Then look for the fastest servers possible using technology like LiteSpeed and Quic.

A solution like Cloudflare can be useful in shouldering heavy loads of traffic that might overload a budget priced shared server, but a Blocs site is massively less demanding on the server than something like Wordpress that makes constant requests to a database and likely to slow down badly under a heavy load, especially in a badly managed shared environment.

Getting back to your initial question if you want free or cheap CDN solution check out Cloudflare. If you are determined to keep server costs really low check out Cloudflare, but for many of us it may actually be better taking a closer look at the choice of webhost and running precise tests based on individual needs.

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Are you familiar with Powweb? https://www.powweb.com/ I’ve been using them for 20 years. Their uptime percentage is very good and their speed - when I recently tested it against others - was also good. It’s shared hosting (so that I can offer hosting more reasonably) but still seems plenty fast. At this point, I’m just wondering if utilizing a CDN like Cloudfare is sort of a next “logical” step as I continue to look for ways to improve my websites. I am trying very hard to increase my knowledge, continue to build better and better sites, become more knowledgeable and actually good at SEO, all so that I can build a solid client base and grow my fledgling web business.

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I think you mentioned them before and I have no direct experience, but I imagine you must be happy with the setup if you have stayed there that long. My only initial observation is that their website looks like it hasn’t been updated in a long time and isn’t even mobile friendly.

Are you hosting all your clients through a shared hosting package with a single control panel login? That may well be in breach of their terms & conditions but also something I would advise against generally.

Most web designers would take out a reseller package with WHM and create a separate account for each client, so that they can be properly set up for individual requirements. I do this and I make money on every client I add to the server. Blocs sites are low on resource requirements, so I can pile them high and not come close to the account limits.

I’ve run fully dedicated and VPS solutions in the past for my own sites, but that is overkill in terms of $$ and required horsepower for my current needs. What I do nowadays is rely on a shared Cloud hosting package with guaranteed 100% uptime for my own sites, then I have clients on a separate reseller account running the same technology that has guaranteed minimum 99.99% up time at the same place. Many web designers will just have a single reseller account and host their own sites there as well.

This set up seems to be comparable for speed and reliability with a fast VPS, but for a lot less money. The beauty of true cloud web hosting is that is eliminates single point hardware failures by storing websites across a cluster of servers. Beware of web hosts who claim to offer cloud hosting through tricky wording, when it is really just a standard shared package.

I have actually offered Cloudflare set up as a service to my clients for the last two years and not one of them has taken it up. In hindsight I now realise it is just far too technical for them and they just want to know the hosting will be fast & reliable. By offering Cloudflare as a service you are almost saying your own hosting isn’t up to scratch.

If problems occur you will have more difficulty troubleshooting the cause and it also tends to become a pain with cache issues every time you update the site. This is particularly evident if your own server has something like LiteSpeed cache enabled. By all means experiment with Cloudflare but I think you should do this with one or two of your own sites and really see what is involved before you do this for clients.

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What is WHM?

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I take it you are familiar with cPanel. WHM is like an admin version of cPanel with root access, so you have much greater control that allows you to set up new accounts and more. I’ve run fully dedicated servers where the range of options was pretty daunting and I tried to touch as little as possible, but the sort provided as part of a reseller account is much easier to manage. I’ve just found an explanation here of the basic features HOSTEK | Shared, VPS, & Reseller Hosting Provider

In a nutshell, when I have a new client website going on the server I log in to WHM and either select or create a package that sets out parameters like the amount of space, bandwidth, features or number of email accounts permitted for a particular domain and all of this is editable later on. I then create the account and move to the newly created cPanel of that client’s website to do the rest.

This keeps everything nicely separated and it may take a little more time in setup, however it is a much better way to work. If you are having server related issues with one particular site you can work on that without affecting others. If you ended up having to offer access to the client for any reason at least they would only be looking at their own domain and not find all the other websites.

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Thank you so much for that information. I’ve been on the phone exploring switching from my shared hosting with Powweb to a VPS plan with iPage. (sibling company of Bluehost). You can see their website here: https://www.ipage.com/

My plan is to move just one website first (my own) from Powweb to iPage VPS and make sure there are no glitches in the migration process, and once I’m convinced of that, go ahead and move all remaining websites (about 14) to iPage VPS.

Do you feel I can handle the migration myself or is it complicated enough that I could justify the $150. fee iPage charges PER DOMAIN to handle the migration?

Does my plan sound reasonable to you?

Thanks Ashley as always. Your expertise and willingness to help is truly appreciated!

  • Randy
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I don’t know what the setup is at iPage, but this appears to be a standard VPS and they don’t say how many others are sharing the server. Curiously it doesn’t mention having root access, so on that point alone I’d look around first and I sure as heck wouldn’t sign up to anything with a minimum term of 12 months before you even know what it is like.

Rather than looking for a straight VPS I think you would be better off with a standard reseller package somewhere with WHM on a one month rolling contract, so you can leave if needed without taking a financial hit.

I know I charge my clients far too little for everything, but $150 per domain for the transfer sounds like daylight robbery. If you were just copying from one server to another with a single account via cPanel some web hosts would do that for free. If you want to do this properly and have a cPanel login for each website I figure you would need about an hour at most per domain at the server end. That’s roughly how long I take, but I am ultra careful and take my time, working from a 21 point checklist I’ve developed, including points like setting up DMARC, IPV6, latest PHP and all the rest.

Just a few thoughts that spring to mind here:

  1. Who controls the name servers for all your client domains? Every one will have to be updated with a new server.

  2. Assuming your clients all have email via the domain, you can set up email accounts using the same passwords, however every one of them will have to update the mailserver details in their mail clients on phone and computer etc.

  3. Do you know what the SSL set up is on this VPS? You really want a server that allows free 1 click Let’s Encrypt installs without automated renewal.

There are a few things you need to ponder here, so I really wouldn’t rush this. If you get yourself a reseller package it will most likely need to be associated with a specific domain that you may have to register if you have nothing spare for that purpose. The set up for that will probably be automatic and from there you could watch tutorials etc to set up one or two of your own and get a feel for it.

Once you are more familiar with it all you could then start migrating your clients one at a time. Once you have the FTP accounts set up, you’ll have to recreate the email accounts etc and think about the mail migration, assuming your clients are all using IMAP.

I don’t know how many of your client domains are using databases, but that is another consideration. Basically you’ll want to test all these things before you flick the switch with the name servers and I think every client will need a bit of hand holding. Some will be uncomfortable at the idea of moving, so you may have to sell this a little.

Before moving to any new web host always read the small print for things like acceptable use policy, minimum uptime SLA and the rest. That should give you an idea how serious they are and what kind of company they are.

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