GoDaddy, one of the world’s largest hosting providers, definitely had a rough go of it in 2021. With an extensive data breach in the fall and continued issues with speed and support, GoDaddy has definitely fallen from the heights of their capabilities in the early 2000s. If you’re a longtime GoDaddy user, you’ve probably noticed sluggish page load times and more frequent, random glitches in site performance. it may be time to consider moving on to another provider. But what to choose?
Brand3’s web team has found Amazon Web Service (AWS) to be the best solution for our clients who are looking to move away from GoDaddy. Even though the highly-publicized recent outages, our clients’ AWS sites stayed active and secure. We know how important website functionality is for our customers, and we work hard to ensure that their sites are running at their best as part of their website maintenance.
Keep reading to see some of the most common issues we see with site performance.
Pixelated images are not a good look on your site, and the temptation to use the highest resolution can be very strong. But remember that image resolution requirements for print are different than those for the web. Often the file size of those hi-res images is way too big for your website server to handle.
Consider how the image is being used on the site. If it’s a thumbnail image, you really don’t need an image that’s 2500px wide. A good rule of thumb is to make sure none of the image files on your site are larger than 500KB (0.5MB). This is especially important if you have a gallery of images on your site. We recommend not compressing images more than 70% to maintain visual quality.
Site plugins can improve the functionality of your website, but there can be too much of a good thing. Too many plugins can slow down your site, and if you’re not careful when updating your plugins, you might break your website. Of course, you can’t completely avoid updating your plugins as they can stop functioning and expose your site to security risks.
We recommend regular website maintenance by a web developer to keep your site up-to-date and secure. A developer can test your plugins and fix any bugs that might occur while updating your site. Plus, it’s always good to have someone on standby in case your site starts malfunctioning.
If you are a GoDaddy user who is frustrated by site performance issues, let us know! Our team can help you transfer your site to a new hosting platform. And with a web maintenance package, you can rest assured that your site is getting regular updates to keep it working at its best. Contact us to learn more about how Brand3 can help your business in 2022.