When you compare WordPress against other platforms for building Web sites, one of the more important features is that there are literally thousands of options for hosting sites. If you find the current WordPress host isn’t meeting your needs, you can move the sites to a host that does provide what you need. I’m going to share how we recently moved a block of our own sites and those of clients from one host to another.
Five years ago we chose WP Engine for our own sites and for client sites we host through our WordPress Gold and Platinum Care Plans. We purchased a block of site hosting at WP Engine and we have paid a year at a time to get the best pricing. At the time this decision was made, WP Engine was considered one of the premier WordPress hosting options.
Over time we became frustrated with the speed of their servers and occasional downtime due to server errors. Because we paid a year at a time and moving a number of sites would be a major project, we started looking for a better hosting provider over a year ago. By late summer, we felt we had found a great option and the plans started to be put in place for the migration.
Then in September, all hell broke loose when Matt Mullenweg started a war with WP Engine. Soon after the war started, we experienced some issues on our WP Engine sites because they weren’t able to update plugins and themes hosted in the WordPress repository. Not to mention the attempted theft of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin. Thankfully the courts stepped in and solved the WordPress repository problem as well as blocking Mullenweg’s theft of ACF. While this solved things for now, things could certainly change again and we want to part of it.
This craziness solidified our plan to move away from WP Engine. It also meant we wouldn’t even consider any hosting offered at WordPress.com, Pressable or WordPress VIP since they are controlled by Matt Mullenweg. We preferred to find a smaller company that is outside of the drama while providing powerful hosting at reasonable costs.
Our search led us to Bigframe Digital. We heard the opinions of WordPress pros we trust and also directly asked a series of questions to the team at Bigframe Digital to verify they were the right choice for us. Before I go any further, I’ll disclose that the links provided to Bigframe Digital are affiliate links for which we’ll receive a small commission. While you can directly sign up with them, I’d encourage you to consider our Gold and Platinum WordPress Care Plans that include hosting with them and much more.
We worked with Alex Vojacek at Bigframe Digital to develop a migration plan that would make the process as smooth as possible. With any migration, the DNS settings need to be changed from the old server to the new server. This process can be fraught with problems depending on where the DNS settings are stored. Alex suggested we move the nameservers for all domains to Cloudflare. There are paid plans at Cloudflare, but they also offer a free plan that is extremely powerful.
Moving the nameservers for our own domains was very easy and there was no site downtime at all. We then worked with each of our clients to get their nameservers migrated. On each domain controlled by Cloudflare, we put in firewall rules based on the Web Agency Hero Cloudflare WAF Rules V3. There were a few other settings we adjusted to provide the best combination of speed and security. A huge benefit of having nameservers at Cloudflare is that you also have access to their Content Delivery Network (CDN) at no extra charge.
The Migration
We purchased a hosting plan in early January 2025 and started migration of sites almost immediately. Rather than trying to do them all at once, we felt it was better to do 2-3 at a time. This allowed the sites to be migrated at off hours and then to be tested after migration to verify all was working well. The first sites migrated were smaller sites that don’t change often. Once those were completed, we moved on to ecommerce sites where any downtime can be a problem. After a month, all sites have been migrated and we have given 30 days notice to WP Engine that we wish to cancel hosting with them.
I’d love to say the process was flawless. It wasn’t. We did discover some weird issues with some of the sites after migration. After researching, we found that none of the issues were with the migration itself. One that affected several sites was due to a security setting at Cloudflare that was blocking some JavaScript from properly loading. A quick change to those settings solved the problem immediately. The most frustrating problem came from shipping software used by an ecommerce site that did some things in a non-standard way which caused security settings on the Web servers to completely block it. Getting the shipping software to behave properly could take a lot of time so instead the security settings on the server were adjusted to allow just that software to access the ecommerce store.
In Closing
I am thrilled to have our hosting at WP Engine done. The last few months there were very problematic. It was been an absolute joy to work with Alex at Bigframe Digital and I have no doubt we’ll purchase more hosting with them in the future. Our sites are so much faster on the new servers. And should issues arise (they always do), I have full confidence that Bigframe Digital will work with us to get them resolved in a timely manner.
As long as I’ve been using computers, I’ve heard that I needed to back up my data. The same is true of a WordPress Web site. Think about the amount of time and the expense that has gone into building your site. If something were to go wrong, do you have an easy way to return the site to a time when it was working? Should the site become infected with malware, can you easily return the site to a time it was free of the malware? If true disaster struck, do you have a way to resurrect the site? It isn’t uncommon that a potential client with an existing site comes to me and they have no backups at all!
In this post I’ll cover three types of backups to perform on your WordPress site. There is not a single right answer as it is a good idea to use all three types.
Hosting Company Backups
There are probably thousands of companies offering WordPress site hosting. Many of these plans include some form of backup performed by the hosting company. It is common that they backup your site daily and some even offer the option for you to manually backup at a specific time. Performing a backup right before installing the latest version of WordPress, a theme or a plugin is a good idea. Should something go wrong with the update, you can quickly restore the backup you created.
Even if you don’t do a backup right before installing an update, having a daily backup means you can quickly roll back to the site you had less than 24 hours ago. If you realize malware appeared at a certain date, you can restore the backup from a time before the infection (assuming it was in the time period of backups the hosting company retains).
It is extremely important that you choose WordPress hosting that includes backups for the reasons already listed and likely many more that I didn’t list. In our WordPress Maintenance Plans, all of the hosting we provide includes backups as part of the hosting.
While having backups as part of your hosting is a very good thing to have, it should not be the only backup of your WordPress site. I’ve run into two situations where other methods of backup were needed and there is a third I thankfully haven’t encountered.
In the first instance, the client had their own hosting plans and let the payments lapse. The hosting company gave them a grace period and even that passed without payment. So the hosting company deleted the site. They had no backup and the site had to be re-built from scratch. Not only did this mean a bigger expense, but it also meant being without a site for a period of time.
The second instance was even more severe as the data center housing thousands of servers was destroyed in a fire. The company I was working with had a site that contained massive amounts of data and would have taken enough time to rebuild that it could have driven them out of business. Thankfully they had a backup and had everything back online in a week or so.
While I have no direct knowledge of another instance, it is also something that should convince you to have alternative methods of backup. What happens if the hosting company goes out of business and takes your site (and others) with it?
On-Site Backups
The next type of backup is an on-site backup where a WordPress plugin is used to backup the site. This is extremely important if your hosting plan doesn’t include backups, but is also a good idea as a second-layer of safety when you do have backups as part of hosting.
The first thing you’ll need is a good backup plugin. Check out 6 Best WordPress Backup Plugins (in 2023) for a rundown on the top options. We use UpdraftPlus for our on-site backups and it also happens to be the top choice in that article.
Off-Site Backups
Of course an on-site backup is still not a solution should there be a problem with the hosting or hosting company. It is just a very large piece of data on the server. If you are going to create an on-site backup, you should take one more step and have those backups sent off-site.
One of the reasons I really like using UpdraftPlus is that it makes it easy to have that on-site version of the backup sent to your favorite cloud service. I’ve used this feature to send backups to both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and to Dropbox. Those are only two of the many options they offer.
Should any of the disaster scenarios (discussed earlier) happen, restoring the site can be as simple as spinning up a new WordPress instance and restoring the backup stored off-site.
In Closing
You shouldn’t consider the three types listed as something where you should choose the “best” option. That’s because the best solution is to implement all three types of backup. If you aren’t sure if you are getting the backups you need or aren’t comfortable with implementing them, I encourage you to consider one of our hosting and maintenance plans and we’ll take care of it for you!
We’ve been fans of the Divi WordPress theme since purchasing a lifetime license back in November 2015. In the seven plus years since that purchase, we have used Divi on all sites in the Unleashed family as well as the numerous sites we’ve built for clients.
While building all these sites, we have gained expertise in Divi and now we want to share things we’ve learned with everyone else. To do this, we have built the Divi Unleashed site which is dedicated to sharing our Divi knowledge. The site launched today with three videos. Over time, we expect to add many hours of video training. For now, we’d like to share the three videos with you so you can begin your Divi learning journey.
You’ll see how to load a logo file in Divi Theme Options and then how to display the logo using Dynamic Content in the Divi Menu module.
What’s Coming
Our goal is to add a new video each week that either teaches a general Divi skill or explains a specific task in Divi. Of course we are open to suggestions from you, our viewers, as to what we should add to our list. We hope you enjoy these videos as a start and we’ll get back to work creating more videos.
For as long as there have been multiple products in a specific category, there have been comparisons made. There is no doubt these comparisons help us choose the right product for our needs. I can’t imagine these comparisons ever being created without at least a small amount of bias. But today I’m here to talk about one such comparison that is loaded with bias and includes information that I simply can’t trust.
Before I talk about this comparison, I want to roll back the clock about 20 years for a comparison where I was involved. Adobe was creating a comparison of Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. They reached out to me because I was the CorelDRAW guru at that time. Prior to publication, I was provided their view of how the products compared and I gave them feedback where I didn’t think it fairly represented CorelDRAW’s capabilities. Yes, I was compensated for that. At least I felt like Adobe wanted to put out an accurate comparison even though it would obviously favor their product.
Comparing WordPress Page Builders
I freely admit that I’m a die-hard proponent of Elegant Themes and their Divi theme. It contains the Divi page builder. I use the Divi theme on all sites I build for clients. In some instances I use something else only because a client already has a site built while I suggest we makeover the site with Divi. I say this to admit my bias towards Divi in this comparison.
Now let me link to the article that has me up in arms. Elementor vs Divi vs SeedProd (Compared) – Which is the Best? was published in April 2022 and my post is written nine months later. As I mention issues I have with the comparison, I’m not talking about features added in that time frame.
The most egregious error is a massive conflict of interest that isn’t adequately disclosed. The wpbeginner.com Web site and the SeedProd page builder are owned by the same company. Given that information, it is no surprise that they conclude that SeedProd is the best choice. Even if that is their conclusion, it doesn’t explain why they include inaccurate information.
Am I the only one who has noticed this? Not at all. Below is an embedded tweet thread all about this.
In their overview, they talk about active users of each product. They specifically mention the Divi Builder plug-in which leaves out the Divi Theme. It also ignores the fact that some users build multiple sites with their tool of choice. So it is best to compare the number of sites using a specific technology. I used BuiltWith to get an idea of the number of sites built with each tool. Below are what I found and my numbers are linked to a page with details.
According to their article, Elementor has five million active users, Divi (Elegant Themes) has 806,000 customers and SeedProd is used by over 1 million professionals. Clearly their numbers are far different than the actual usage stats measured by an independent party.
Integrations
As we move down the various categories compared, we get to integrations. This is the section that compelled me to write this post. The write-up on Divi ends with “Sadly, it doesn’t integrate with third-party email marketing tools or CRMs.” which is blatantly incorrect. I use the Email Optin Divi module quite regularly and it can integrate with 20 popular email marketing providers (see graphic below). This isn’t anything new, it has been around for several years.
Pricing
Pricing screenshots are shown for each of the products. With Elementor and SeedProd, all of the plans are annual. So the price may be lower for the initial purchase, but it will be far higher after 2-3 years when compared to Elegant Themes lifetime access. My own story is that I bought Lifetime Access for a total of $198 (coupons lowered the price) in November 2015 and I still use it today on a large number of sites.
While making a decision on the “winner” in this category can be subjective, the statement they make is laughable. “SeedProd offers affordable pricing plans compared to Elementor and Divi. Plus, you get more features and integrations with SeedProd, making it excellent value for money.”
In Conclusion
I’ve made it clear that Divi is my tool of choice. Maybe you prefer a different page builder or none at all. Elementor and Divi are generally considered as two of the top options. If I didn’t currently have a page builder I use, I’d also put Beaver Builder and Oxygen in consideration. One tool I wouldn’t consider is SeedProd and the deceptive marketing displayed by their post means I will never consider it nor recommend it.
Just over seven years ago I made a decision that changed my WordPress career drastically. I bought a lifetime license to Elegant Themes which includes their powerful Divi theme. Today I’m going to share information on Elegant Themes Black Friday sale. This could be a great way for you to get your own license or other tools to extend Divi in a wide variety of ways. Many of the links I include will be affiliate links that earn me a commission. But keep in mind that I’m writing about tools that I own (I’ll note a couple of exceptions) and rely upon as I build WordPress sites for clients.
Let’s start with a video that explains the sale. Keep in mind that the sale prices start on November 22, 2022 at 7 am Pacific time. If you read this post before then, the sale prices (and prizes) won’t be available yet.
The first people to show up will get their pick of some amazing free prizes and huge discounts!
✅ Tens Of Thousands Of Free Prizes
✅ Huge Discounts On Divi, Divi Cloud & Divi Teams
✅ Exclusive Divi Theme Builder Packs & Layouts
✅ Exclusive Divi Marketplace Discounts
✅ Exclusive Divi Marketplace Bundles
Elegant Themes Membership
The most important thing is you need an Elegant Themes Membership to take advantage of all the other things I’ll discuss in this email. You can purchase yearly access or lifetime access. Each of them include the same things, the difference is how long you have access to updates and support. You’ll get the Divi theme, the Divi Builder plugin, Bloom plugin, Monarch plugin, hundreds of Web site layout packs and more that can be used on an unlimited number of Web sites. With the Black Friday sale pricing, you really should go for the lifetime membership.
Now maybe you’ve heard something about Divi being slow. That may have been true in the past, but it received a major performance update over a year ago. Learn more in Speeding Up Divi From Every Angle. Worried that Divi won’t be a good solution in the future? Then you’ll want to read Let’s Talk About Divi 5.0 And The Future Of Divi.
Divi Cloud and Divi Teams
In the last year, Elegant Themes has announced two services that are separate from the main subscription. First was Divi Cloud which allows you to access, organize and share your Divi assets. I signed up for the service when it was initially released and they offered a nice discount that will remain in place for my annual renewals. Their Black Friday pricing will also include future renewals and it is discounted by 44%!
Divi Teams allows you to build a team who each have access to your Elegant Themes subscription and the benefits it includes. This means they can access products and get support. Each team member requires a separate Divi Teams seat and you can purchase as many or as few as you need. I have not yet purchased any seats, though it is quite possible I’ll add some in the near future. In my case, I’d buy the seats for my Web design clients so they could directly contact support. Just as with Divi Cloud, adding seats is 44% off during the sale and that price will also apply to future renewals.
Divi Marketplace
One of the things I love about Divi is the very active third-party community. They add new modules, new layouts, new child themes and much more. The Divi Marketplace is a central location that allows third-parties to offer their products so they are available directly from Elegant Themes. I encourage you to visit Divi Marketplace and find products that solve your needs. In addition, I’m going to list below some of the products I personally use. Descriptions are from the creators of the tools.
Divi Events Calendar – Our bestselling Divi Events Calendar plugin adds custom Divi modules that allow you to display, customize, and style events from The Events Calendar in the Divi Visual Builder. This is the only way to integrate Divi and The Events Calendar with custom Divi modules! If you use the popular free The Events Calendar plugin and want to show the events in Divi, then this plugin is the perfect solution for you!
Divi Social Sharing Buttons – Did you realize that Divi does not have any social sharing module? Every website needs this important social feature, but it is missing on many sites. So we are pleased to introduce to you the first ever module for adding social sharing buttons in Divi!
Divi Contact Form Helper – Upgrade the Divi Contact Form with tons of new settings and premium features like file uploads, date & time picker, custom subject line, confirmation emails, Zapier integration, save submissions to database, SMTP, icons, new merge tags, dashboard stats, and so much more!
Divi Tabs Maker – Easily create beautiful and functional advanced tabs in Divi with hundreds of custom content and design settings!
Divi Headers Pack – This product comes with 960+ Modern & Creative Header Layouts with 40 Easy-Headers built just with Divi’s default settings. Perfect pack for Freelancers. You can choose any layout and customize it to work with your or your Client’s website.
Divi Plus – Divi Plus is a premium multipurpose plugin that comes with multiple exceptional modules. Using these unique and powerful modules, you’ll be able to create different web page elements that would increase your site’s functionality as well as appearance.
Divi Gallery Extended – Add masonry images to your Divi Theme website with the all-new Divi Gallery Extended plugin. Now, you can present users with engaging and beautiful masonry image galleries without using any masonry gallery CSS. All you need to do is, install this Divi masonry gallery plugin. Enable the Divi Gallery Extended module by inserting it on a page, then add images to it, and you’ll get your beautiful image gallery in a masonry grid formation.
DiviFlash – DiviFlash offers 40+ powerful Divi modules to build websites fastest than ever that will reliably attract and converts traffic. Each Divi builder module provides you countless options to take any Divi theme website’s design to the next level without any coding skills.
Divi Supreme Pro – Unlike other Divi plugins, the Divi Supreme comes with many creative and useful yet powerful Divi modules and Divi extensions. Stand out from the crowd by implementing our innovative Divi modules not found anywhere else. No coding needed and no additional skills are required if you’ve worked with Divi or Extra themes before.
Divi Blog Extras – An easy-to-use Divi plugin that has a fast and intuitive blog module to create beautiful & attractive blog archive pages without writing any code. It includes 8 different blog layouts with several layout variations that support creating archive pages of Category, Tag, Author, Date, Custom Post Type, and Custom Taxonomies. Plus, using its highly customizable options, you can add a category filter bar on top of the blog pages to make it easy for users to browse content from different categories. Moreover, it could also be used in Divi Theme Builder for Archive templates.
Divi Toolbox – Have you ever spent hours looking for a Divi tutorial to achieve a really cool effect on your website? Or experimenting with code, trying to make it work and never getting it completely perfect? It’s so frustrating! When you sweat over one bit of customization and it doesn’t come out right, no matter what you try…What if you could achieve these advanced effects in Divi with just a few clicks? What if you could make these changes easily in your Theme Customizer? Think of all the time you would save! And how much more awesome your website could be – with just a few clicks!
Divi WooCommerce Extended – Build a highly functional and extraordinary Divi store by spending less time using the WooCommerce Extended plugin. It includes multiple intuitive and innovative Divi modules that furnish you with the power to shape your Divi eCommerce store magnificently per your liking. The Divi shop modules available in this plugin even provide you with more options and functions to optimize its use and the Divi store’s ability to perform. Try WooCommerce Extended risk-free for 30 days to discover the best!
Divi Ajax Search – The Divi Ajax Search plugin adds an advanced search bar to your Divi theme website that allows you to display live search results right under the search field. Using this plugin, you can allow users to search Posts, Pages, Projects, and WooCommerce products with their Title, Excerpt, and Featured Image. Moreover, with faster result delivery, you can also customize its look and feel to make it engaging.
Divi Flexile Headers – Make it easy and exciting for your website visitors to explore the site with exceptionally unique and user-friendly header menus. The Divi headers pack provides over 80 unique Divi header layouts that you can apply to the website using the Theme Builder in no time. All header layouts are designed keeping the latest design trends in mind and can fit perfectly to any website regardless of the business industry.
Divi Restro Menu – Using the Divi Restro Menu plugin, a user can easily create attractive and delicious food item menus in no time. No coding or extra effort is required. Its custom post type support for food items and categories, allows a user to make changes to the food items’ information easily. Such as price, ingredients, description, and more without going to the page and launching the Divi builder where the layout was used.
Divi Flexile Hero Sections – What do visitors see on a website at first? The hero section, and if it’s not eye-catching, they’ll return without scrolling. Fortunately, with Hero Sections available in the Divi Flexile Hero Sections, they’d scroll, interact and like to see more on the site every time they’ll have a visit. You can catch users attention on the first visit and make a long-lasting impression till they remain on the site because it’s important as the saying goes, “The First Impression is the Last Impression.”
Divi Mega Menu Pro – Divi Mega Pro taps into the power of Divi to allow you to create any kind of Mega Menu you desire. Use the Divi Builder to easily craft your Mega Menu and have full control over the design and content like never before.
Divi Overlays Popups – Divi Overlays is the original, most powerful, and most popular popup builder for Divi! 😍
Divi Blurb Extended – With Divi Blurb Extended, you get dual Divi blurb modules with additional blurb layouts and customizations. The available layouts in the Divi Blurb Extended module make it possible to create blurbs that are informative, interactive, and power-packed with lots of functionalities that stand them out.
Divi Testimonial Extended – Using the Divi Testimonial Extended plugin, you’ll be able to create testimonials that are unique, impressive, and rich in design. It adds a testimonial slider to the website that can display multiple numbers of testimonials without any problem. Plus, multiple layouts and customization options make Divi Testimonial Extended the #1 choice of designers and web developers for adding testimonials on the website. Compatible with Divi ( earlier versions than 2020), Divi 4.0, and its both page builders: Visual and Classic.
Divi Flexile Footers – Not just the header menu but also the footer on a website also plays a significant role in providing users an improved way to navigate from one page to another. And with the Divi footers available in this pack, you’re going to achieve that in a lesser time and minimum effort. These footer layouts for the Divi theme can become your last and forever choice to design engaging, beautiful, and useful bottom of websites.
Free Stuff Included With Purchases
Everyone who buys any of the products listed above will get a free prize. Even the smallest purchase is eligible and prices can be worth more than $100. There are a limited number of prizes so buy early in the sale to get your favorite prize.
You can also download exclusive Divi Theme Builder Packs that are only available during Black Friday. Once the sale is over, the downloads are gone forever.
Unleashed Products
Our Seamless Textures Unleashed site has thousands of images that can be seamlessly tiled in most all graphics software and for Web site backgrounds. Yes, they work great in Divi! Everything is 35% off until the end of November 2022.
Earlier in my career, I focused much of my energy on the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. You’ll find books I wrote, tutorials, an add-on and some clipart (that doesn’t require CorelDRAW) on my Foster’s Favorites site. All of these products are also 35% off until the end of November 2022.
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