Have you ever used a Chromebook, the latest in cloud-based computer technology from Google? The first thing that happens when you open the laptop is that a large notice pops up on your screen that declares, “Welcome to Chromebook… this is not a typical computer!” as it begins to explain its various features. Well, the same goes for LittleBizzy… our approach to Quality First web hosting and Technical SEO makes us a bit unique! You may learn more below…
Welcome to LittleBizzy. We are not a typical web host!
We put together this guide in an effort to provide a user-friendly way to welcome new customers to our web hosting family. While there are several sources of information on our website (including an ever-growing FAQ section), such resources are perhaps overwhelming at first, especially for non-technical website owners. So, please, continue reading!
We love WordPress, and our goal is to make your website load lightning-fast.
The first thing you should know about LittleBizzy is that we are focused purely on WordPress-based websites. If you are not aware, WordPress is a free, open-source software used to build websites, and is currently the #1 most popular website-building platform in the world (and has been for several years now). We are BIG fans of WordPress because it is both easy to use and also very powerful and customizable at the same time. You can read more about our company vision and web hosting philosophy over at our About Us page if you are interested — but in summary, you should know that our biggest passion is making WordPress websites load lightning-fast with the most cutting-edge web hosting technology available.
You should also know that we do not target “brand new” websites or “newbie” webmasters. This is because we actively seek out well-established websites from well-established businesses, and do not wish to compete with the likes of GoDaddy (etc) who “coddle” their customers with daily phone conversations about how to edit a logo color (etc); that’s simply not us, and if you are expecting such treatment we kindly request that you refrain from ordering any hosting from us. We do not offer web design services of any sort, nor do we provide “coaching” related to the design, layout, or coding of your website (except in regard to the speed, security, and overall stability of your website as it relates to the server environment). In other words, while we strongly welcome business owners who might be less tech-savvy, please realize that your company should still have a knowledgeable web designer or developer on hand to deal with such issues, rather than asking us for ‘dev’ help! :)
Sound good? Well then let’s move on to what you should expect!
We have a few requirements and features that are different from other hosts.
One of the most important elements of our web hosting is that we require all customers to point their domain’s nameservers at our CloudFlare network, which allows us to properly monitor, protect, and optimize your domain’s DNS and overall performance. Many people don’t realize how important DNS technology is when it comes to website performance! If you ever need to add or update a DNS record, simply contact our team and we will do it for you free of charge. When our team initially sets up your LittleBizzy server, we will install a free CloudFlare plugin along with several other “Must Use” plugins that you are unable to delete or deactivate; for example, this includes an Opcache management plugin along with a WP StageCoach plugin, which is a free service that allows you to create temporary remote staging websites.
It is also important to understand that we run on LEMP (Nginx) servers and not old-fashioned Apache/cPanel servers, for better performance and security. Among other things, this means that htaccess files do not exist and that control panels are not needed to manage your website (only your WordPress Admin and SFTP access is needed). Furthermore, we don’t install or allow phpMyAdmin or other dependency-based database administration tools for security reasons, and lastly there is no “PHP mail” or default emailing functions installed or enabled on any of our servers (please use SendGrid instead).
IMPORTANT: keep in mind that in order to clear caches for your website, your developers must set CloudFlare to ‘dev’ mode, and must also clear the Opcache if the contents of any PHP file has been altered (although Opcache clears itself automatically every few minutes). That is, while clearing the (recommended) Comet Cache plugin is fairly easy to understand, your developers should familarize themselves especially with CloudFlare’s ‘dev’ mode too as that also greatly affects your website’s cache (Redis object cache is also included on Enterprise level plans only, and automatically manages and clears itself).
In return, we also provide a few free yet valuable services as part of our hosting.
Server setup and migration of your website is included free of charge with all hosting plans on LittleBizzy. We also include CodeGuard nightly backups on every single hosting plan, which keeps your website files and database securely backed up onto remote Amazon servers, along with UptimeRobot, a monitoring service that alerts our customers (and our team) anytime your website goes down (for any reason). As far as the UptimeRobot service, you will be sent an email confirmation link which we kindly request you “click” if you wish to receive immediate notice anytime your website goes down.
Also, while our team monitors and upgrades your custom DigitalOcean cloud server “behind the scenes” as needed, we also keep (basic watch) over your WordPress software as well. Our team sets up a new admin-level user named “littlebizzy” on all WordPress sites hosted by LittleBizzy and we kindly ask that you don’t delete this user, otherwise we lose access to your backend. If you site becomes hacked or infected with malware, our team at LittleBizzy can only “fix” your site free of charge if you’ve been maintaining our admin-level access to your backend in recent weeks before the hack or infection occurred; otherwise, we will need to charge you hourly to fix/restore your website in the case that you decided to “lock out” our team from your WordPress backend (free malware removal is on a case-by-case basis only and is not offered if an insecure theme or plugin is at fault, which is most often the case, we’ve found).
Besides hosting, we also offer a “boutique” collection of premium add-on services.
The ultimate goal of LittleBizzy is more than just improving WordPress performance — it’s to help small and medium sized businesses “offload” the technical worries of web hosting and digital marketing as much as possible. In other words, a large part of our goal is to simplify the billing and decision-making process that frustrates so many business owner these days who lack an in-house web development or marketing team. That is precisely why we developed our add-on Services by offering a hand-picked, boutique collection of optional features to our hosting clients.
For nearly all of our clients, SFTP, SSL, and SendGrid are “core” recommended add-ons. Recall that there are absolutely no “email” services on our web hosting network, meaning that [email protected] addresses are not available nor will your server/website be able to send any email (things like contact forms will not work out-of-the-box). In order for your site to send mail, you will need to either make use of SendGrid (as mentioned) or an SMTP service of your own choosing. We recommend Google Apps for [email protected] addresses as it comes with the world’s best email service, Gmail, as well as integration with other popular Google tools such as Google Calendar, Google Drive, and so forth. Other popular services include our world-famous SEO Audit, DNSSEC, and Google GSC, although several other services are also available.
We are very happy you are here, but please keep in mind some of the things below!
Customers love our loading speed, free SSL, and “WordPress monitoring” services which are big selling points for us on the web to business owners. Another big score for us is that we never ban any WordPress plugins whatsoever, like many other managed WordPress hosting providers are doing these days; we truly believe in keeping WordPress an open-source, and completely flexible software. That being said, we recommend avoiding security plugins and “backup” plugins as much as possible, and we also do not support multi-site versions of WordPress on our network.
We are happy to offer SEO or server-related advice to you anytime, but we cannot contact third parties on your behalf nor are we available to “fix” theme or plugin issues on your site (i.e. web design or coding type issues), as those are not included in our LittleBizzy plans. However, if your website requires a special PHP module to work properly, that is definitely something we can help adjust on your server free of charge as part of our VPS configuration support.
Are you looking for a web developer or designer? Check out or Experts page for recommended agencies!
We do welcome resellers (i.e. design agencies) to host all of their clients in the same billing account on LittleBizzy, but please kindly remember that we do not offer refunds on any purchases because of our upstream purchase arrangements with our business partners (unless there has been some legitimate billing error on our part). Ultimately we have very high expectations of ourselves, but also of our clients, and ask that you pay heed to our “failed payments” policy as well. Cheers!
Here is a recommended to-do list and set of reminders for our clients (post-launch):
1. keep the “Must Use” plugins properly configured at all times
2. keep the Comet Cache plugin (or other high quality cache plugin) activated
3. keep any license or API keys configured (for themes/plugins) to receive security patches
4. avoid installing “auto optimize” or “security” or “backup” plugins for the most part
5. avoid over-loading your site with tons of plugins (even “deactivated” plugins)
6. avoid uploading files/images/etc to your server outside of your WordPress installation
7. before any major changes, login to CodeGuard and perform a backup of your website/database
8. consider ordering some add-on Services from LittleBizzy if you haven’t already
9. when you have a few minutes, browse through our FAQ (updated often)
10. if you receive a “payment failed” notice, please settle it quickly to avoid interruption
11. make sure to open and read our email newsletters to avoid missing important announcements
12. for any technical issues please use our contact form to get in touch (not direct email)
13. if you don’t have in-house design/dev teams, consider hiring an Expert
Below are the ONLY account logins you should need while hosted with LittleBizzy:
A. (your WP Admin and/or SFTP logins)
B. LittleBizzy.com (for billing/ordering purposes)
C. CodeGuard.com (to access/restore your nightly backups)
D. GoogleApps.com (if you make use of Google Apps on your domain)
ALL PASSWORDS AND ACCOUNT SPECIFIC INFO IS RELAYED DIRECTLY VIA EMAIL TO THE ACCOUNT OWNER ONLY.
Still have some questions? Please check out our FAQ or contact us anytime. As a LittleBizzy customer, you are automatically signed up for our email newsletter, which largely announces new blog posts along with some extra treats :)