October 2019 - Dream Logo Design

The first and most crucial step in building a website is to choose the right hosting company. Merely designing and developing a website is not enough. It also has to be published via a great and useful hosting service provider.

Here are the current top 6 hosting companies for aspiring bloggers, small businesses, and startups that provide excellent speed and real-time performance.

1. Bluehost

To rev up any primary blog or website, Bluehost is probably the number one choice for most. With 689ms load time and 99.99% uptime, it has been one of the most trusted names when it comes to providing web hosting. Further adding to its credibility is being listed as an official WordPress recommended provider.
As a Bluehost user, following the initial signup, you will be provided with a free SSL certificate upon paying 65% of the hosting fees and also a free of cost domain name with your account. Domain prices begin at $7.99 per month for regular users, but for WordPress users, it comes at only $2.75.

2. SiteGround

Second, only to Bluehost in terms of uptime (99.98%), SiteGround is yet another much-preferred hosting company which comes at affordable rates. The specialty of SiteGround is that it is one of the very few names which offer location-specific hosting with three data centers around the world – one in the USA, one in Europe, and the third one in Singapore. Using SSD as storage helps enhance the loading time, which is 649ms for SiteGround.
With excellent firewall security, automatic updates of plugins, and speedy loading, this is a natural choice for many. Prices start at $11.95, but once again for WordPress users; it is at a discount rate of $3.95 per month.

3. HostGator

One of the main reasons website owners prefer HostGator is its low cost. Starting at only $6.95 per month, it provides multiple aspects of secure website hosting such as a free site builder, round the clock support, endless disk space, high bandwidth, and email addresses. Moreover, if any user is not satisfied with the service, they can terminate their subscription within 45 days with a full refund of their payment.

The wide range of tools HostGator provides is the chief reason behind its popularity, along with 691ms load time and 99.96% uptime. For WordPress users, there is a 60% off, and free SSL certification, and the package comes at $2.78 per month.

4. GreenGeeks

Staying true to their name, GreenGeeks is a web host provider that is committed to making its service eco-friendly and environment-safe. So for those website owners who are conscious about their carbon footprints, GreenGeeks assures them by putting back three times the amount of their power consumption back to the grid by using renewable and clean energy forms for their operations.

The best thing about GreenGeeks is that unlike most other green companies, they do not have a sky-high rate for the services they provide. The monthly plan for regular users begins at $9.95, but to opt for a 30-days billing cycle, there is a $15 setup fee, which is not there for quarterly or annual plans. For WordPress users, the packages start at $2.95 per month and come with a free domain name as well.

5. iPage

If you are looking for a hosting company that would be simple and straightforward and also a light on your pocket, iPage is one of the best names out there. Once again, a crusader of green and environment-friendly operations, iPage is an EPA green power partner and therefore runs its data centers and web servers on wind energy.
At only $7.99 per month, iPage gives 99.98% uptime, which is as decent as a web hosting service can get. If you are a WordPress user, it gets even cheaper for you at only $1.99 per month, along with free domain name and SSL certification.

6. DreamHost

A bit higher priced than others, DreamHost makes sure it delivers according to its rate. Along with BlueHost, it is one of the most widely used website hosting company with more than 1.5 million blogs and websites to its name. DreamHost is independently owned, and one of their main specialties is their usage of SSD storage instead of regular HDD ones, which makes them two times more speedy.

Regular prices for DreamHost start at $10.95 per month and $2.59 for WordPress users. Moreover, there is a three-month money-back guarantee in case any user is not satisfied with their plan or their services.

While the list of such hosts is only increasing day by day, selecting the right one for your blog or small business website is crucial for many reasons. It not only goes on to affect the presentation of the website but also influences aspects like search engine ranking, site loading, and uptime.

“Less is more” is the way of the world right now. So why should the realm of web design be left behind in that?

However, despite being a raging trend in the world of digital marketing, implementation of minimalism in web designing is not the most straightforward task to pull off. It is not only coming up with a simple design and create clean-cut graphics, but much more than that. It requires the skill and experience to be able to speak as much needed about the company and its brand with as little as possible, making no compromises whatsoever.

Here are ten principles of minimal web design, which are crucial to striking a balance between underdoing or overdoing a particular project.

1. Inclusion of white space

Using white space adequately and intelligently is one of the foremost skills to master if one wishes to create attractive websites. Also known as negative space, it means the total blank area in a page that is devoid of any text, images, buttons, or any other element. Appropriate inclusion of white space helps to direct the viewer’s attention to the necessary parts and bring about a soothing, balanced effect on the eyes.

2. Investment in simple textures

Textures in web designing refer to the usage of different additional formattings such as shadows, highlights, embossing, glossing, gradients, and 3D effects. While some of it is needed depending on the content of the website, going overboard with textures can backfire if you are hoping for a minimalistic website.

3. Experiment with fonts

Since minimalism leaves minimal scope to indulge in much experimentation, one can try it out with the fonts. The style and size of fonts are an excellent opportunity to go creative with the design. The font style will most certainly depend on the nature of the brand, although Sans Serif fonts are the most widely used ones for minimal effects. When it comes to font size, it can be used to draw attention to the right words and establish hierarchy, as well as contribute towards mobile optimization of the website.

4. Usage of color blocking

Putting too many shades together wholly defeats the purpose of minimalism. The best way to infuse hue to the webpages is by color blocking. In this, instead of going for too much spectrum, only two or three contrasting shades are chosen and used in solid blocks of overlapping monotone to be extraordinarily straightforward and in-your-face.

5. Specific labeling of menus

The users need to have a concise idea of which button will lead them to where and for that, naming the menus and links only yet appropriately is very important. It would be unfortunate if the website loses out on traffic simply because the user could not decipher the purpose of the different drop downs and lists.

6. Using the right images

Images are an essential part of any webpage. Starting from the head banner right down to product or service demonstrations, the pictures present on the website can make or break its reputation. If you are going for minimalistic designing, the images must be in line and consistent with the idea. They need to be bright and deliver the message of your brand, but devoid of too many elements or crowding of colors.

7. Focus on a single point

This is especially applicable to the home page of a website, which is the front door for the business. In minimalism, it is highly recommended to avoid cramming the introductory page with information and keep it focused on a sole, simple focal point. It can be the brand logo or tagline, or it can be any other piece of element relevant to the website.

8. Put in creative elements

Staying within the limits that minimalism allows, creativity and aesthetics can be infused into the graphics in the form of geometrical shapes, abstract elements, quirky objects – the options are endless.

9. Leave out all extra details

The cornerstone of minimalism is to know which elements a website can do without and show the courage to leave them out. There will be a lot of great content suitable for inclusion, but not all of them need to be up there for the sake of drawing the user’s attention.

10. Proper alignment of content

Last but not least, placing the right element in the right place adds tremendously to the idea of minimalistic web design. The best offerings should be on top in the biggest and brightest fonts, images and texts should complement each other perfectly, and there are many more such simple aspects of aligning the content correctly which can do wonder for a website.

The concept of minimalism is essential in any excellent contemporary designing of a website. The idea is to emphasize on a simplistic yet practical look, the visual appeal of which to the users depend on the usage of subtlety and nuance. At the very core of the minimalist web, designing is making the content on the webpages easily consumable to the viewers.

Monthly Archives: October 2019

Top 6 Hosting Companies for Bloggers & Small Business