Aruba WordPress Hosting Guide

Would you like to create a website based on WordPress but don’t think you have the necessary skills to buy an online space, a domain and install this famous CMS independently? Are you looking for a unified, simple to use and possibly economical solution to create WordPress sites without limitations regarding the use of advertising banners or the space available for content to be published online? Then I believe you should consider Aruba WordPress hosting solutions.

Aruba, a well-known Italian company that operates in the fields of Web hosting, cloud and online practices, offers hosting solutions with pre-installed WordPress including unlimited online space, second-level domain, SSL DV certificate and MySQL database, which offer the possibility to customize the site through additional themes and plugins and to manage files via FTP.

Among the most interesting solutions of Aruba, to get more into the matter, there is Managed WordPress Hosting which offers all the above advantages plus automatic updating of WordPress, themes and plugins (essential for maintaining your site is safe), specialist support, optimized performance, backup on demand and much more. All at an extremely low price. If you want to know more, read on: everything is explained below.

Index

• Aruba WordPress hosting plans and pricing
• How to activate Aruba WordPress hosting
• How to use Aruba WordPress hosting
  • Service management
  • WordPress first login and setup
  • Content publishing
  • Automatic update of WordPress, themes and plugins
  • Access via FTP
  • Staging
  • MySQL database management
  • Backup and restore
  • Advanced support
• For more information

Aruba WordPress hosting plans and pricing

Before getting to the heart of this tutorial and explaining, in detail, how to activate and use Aruba WordPress hosting, it seems only right to list the plans and prices of the service.

First of all, a distinction must be made between WordPress Hosting and Managed WordPress Hosting: the first solution involves the classic installation of WordPress, leaving the user with the task of updating the CMS, themes and plugins. Managed WordPress Hosting, on the other hand, includes an automatic update service of WordPress cores, plugins and themes, which is very useful for keeping your site safe and at peak performance. In addition, it offers a platform optimized specifically for WordPress in order to improve site performance, specialist support (with free credits to use it), a staging environment to test the changes to be made to the site before making them public, an on-demand backup system with one-click site recovery, unlimited mailboxes and PEC on domain.

All solutions include a second level domain (with the possibility of transferring an existing domain), SSL DV certificate to take advantage of the HTTPS protocol (secure connection), malware detection, free 24/7 assistance, 1GB mailboxes and daily backups. They are then GDPR Ready, therefore perfectly in compliance with the European regulations relating to online data protection.

Going into even more detail, Aruba offers a WordPress Hosting plan and three Managed WordPress Hosting plans , dedicated to different traffic needs.

• Smart Managed WordPress Hosting– costs 79 euros + VAT per year (in promo at 29 euros + VAT / 1st year) and includes pre-installed WordPress with automatic updates for cores, themes and plugins, thousands of themes and plugins available, optimized platform, staging environment, one domain, dedicated MySQL database (1GB), unlimited disk space (SSD), traffic volume up to 50,000 visitors per month, advanced support with 1 free credit, up to 2 backups on demand with one-click restore, daily backups with data retention up to 7 days, malware detection, DV SSL certificate, 5 1GB mailboxes, free 24/7 assistance, 3 dedicated instances (i.e. the number of software resource containers dedicated solely to the domain) and the possibility to have unlimited email accounts and PEC on domain.
• Premium Managed WordPress Hosting– costs 129 euros + VAT per year (in promo at 39 euros + VAT / 1st year) and includes pre-installed WordPress with automatic updates for cores, themes and plugins, thousands of themes and plugins available, optimized platform, staging environment, one domain, dedicated MySQL database (2GB), unlimited disk space (SSD), traffic volume up to 500,000 visitors per month, advanced support with 2 free credits, up to 4 on-demand backups with one-click restore, daily backups with data retention up to 30 days, malware detection, DV SSL certificate, unlimited 1GB email accounts, free 24/7 assistance, 6 dedicated instances (i.e. the number of software resource containers dedicated to the domain only) and 5 PEC on domain.
• Top Managed WordPress Hosting– costs € 229 + VAT per year (in promo at € 119 + VAT / 1st year) and includes pre-installed WordPress with automatic updates for cores, themes and plugins, thousands of themes and plugins available, optimized platform, staging environment, one domain, dedicated MySQL database (2GB), unlimited disk space (SSD), traffic volume up to 1,000,000 visitors per month, advanced support with 3 free credits, up to 4 on-demand backups with recovery in one click, daily backups with data retention up to 30 days, malware detection, DV SSL certificate, unlimited 1GB mailboxes, free 24/7 support, 12 dedicated instances (i.e. the number of software resource containers dedicated solely to the domain) and 10 certified e-mails on a domain.

To find out more about Aruba’s plans for its managed WordPress hosting, visit this web page and click the Show all features button below. Once you have identified the most suitable plan for you, you can proceed with its activation by following the instructions you find in the next chapter of this guide.

How to activate Aruba WordPress hosting

If you want to activate Aruba WordPress hosting, connect to the home page of the service and choose the solution that best suits your needs between WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting. I, for my tutorial, will choose Managed WordPress Hosting.

Once you click on the button to get more details on managed WordPress hosting, a page with the list of all available plans is displayed. Prices, as already pointed out above, start at 79 euros + VAT per year for the Smart plan, which includes support for traffic up to 50,000 monthly visitors; unlimited SSD disk space; 1 domain; 1 complimentary credit for advanced support, free 24/7 standard support; the ability to perform two backups on demand (with one-click restore); daily backups stored for 7 days; 5 email accounts of 1GB and the possibility of activating the PEC on a domain.

After identifying the plan of your interest and clicking on the relevant purchase button, choose whether to register a new domain or to transfer an existing domain, placing the checkmark next to the appropriate item. Then type the address of the domain you want to register or transfer in the adjacent text field and click on the Verify button.

If the domain entered is free, select it from the page that opens (otherwise select one of the alternative addresses that are proposed to you) and press the Continue button.

At this point, make sure that there is a checkmark next to the name of the domain you want to purchase and next to the item relating to the hosting plan you have chosen (eg Smart Managed WordPress Hosting ), scroll down the page, choose whether also purchase additional services, such as unlimited email boxes, increase in space for the MySQL database or Key position SEO (to improve the site’s position on search engines) and click on the Continue button to move on.

Now, check if the order total is correct, enter a discount code (if you have one), press Continue again and log in to your Aruba account to complete the order. If you do not have an Aruba account yet, indicate if you are a natural person, a freelancer, a company / sole proprietorship or another person and click on the Subscribe button.

This indicates, therefore, the person to whom payable domain and complete the form that is proposed to you with all the required information: name, surname, address, telephone number, social security number, email address etc.

Click now on the Continue button and choose, using one of the options available on the left, whether to pay for the service by credit card (with automatic subscription renewal), PayPal (with automatic subscription renewal), bank transfer (with manual renewal of the subscription). ‘subscription) or bulletin (with the manual renewal of the subscription).

Then indicate, in the appropriate text field, the renewal frequency you wish to set for the service (in years), accept the contractual conditions of Aruba by placing the checkmark in all the appropriate boxes and click on the Continue button to complete the order.

You will receive an email with all the information on the service purchased and, in case of payment by bank transfer or bulletin, the instructions to carry out the transaction. You will also receive emails with information on domain activation, DV SSL certificate and access to the MySQL database.

How to use Aruba WordPress hosting

Once you have received the emails regarding domain activation, MySQL database and DV SSL certificate, you can take action and start managing your website.

Service management

To manage the purchased Aruba services and configure your webspace, connect to the Aruba administration panel and log in by entering your domain in the appropriate text fields (eg domain.ex, without “https” or “www” at the beginning), the login data of the Aruba account and the captcha code displayed in the image below.

You will thus find yourself in the presence of a page with the list of services purchased, divided by categories: WordPress Hosting Managed with all the tools related to WordPress hosting (e.g. website management, backup management, file manager, statistics, advanced support and FTP access management); Domain utility with all the tools related to the purchased domain (eg. Blocking/unblocking of transfers, authorization code, DNS management and domain evaluation) and Mail Services with tools to manage services related to e-mail (eg. Mail Admin, WebMail, Antivirus / Antispam etc.).

In the left sidebar, however, you can find a menu through which to access the various sections of the Aruba management panel.

• General– with general information about the purchased domain and database. It also allows you to modify the personal data associated with the account, change the password and log out of the work session.
• Managed WordPress Hosting– with all the tools to manage WordPress: Website Management to enable or disable automatic updates; Backup management to create, download and restore backups on demand; Website and staging to view public access addresses to the site and activate staging (in order to make changes and updates to the site without risking compromising its public version); File manager to manage the files that make up the site directly from the browser; Tools and settings to test various site functions (eg PHP mail, PHP info, SSL redirect), view the error log and repair permissions;Advanced support to request advanced support; Statistics to view site statistics; FTP access management to set IP or IP classes to allow access to the site’s FTP space; FTP test to test the operation of the FTP connection on the domain; Scheduled Task to create or manage scheduled tasks; DV SSL Certificate to view information about the DV SSL certificate, revoke or uninstall it and HTTPS Redirect Manager to enable / disable redirect from HTTP (less secure and unencrypted) to HTTPS (encrypted and more secure) traffic.
• Domain utility– contains the tools to manage the domain: Lock / Unlock transfers to manage the lock or unlock of the domain and receive the authorization code necessary for the transfer; Authorization code to view the authorization code needed to modify the domain data (eg the owner data); DNS and Name Server management to customize the DNS records associated with the service for free and Domain Evaluation to find out how much your domain is worth in view of a possible sale.
• Web Promotion– includes Key Position, a professional service for listing your site on major search engines, and SiteMap, to generate a sitemap file in XML format that provides information on all pages and their presence to Google.
• Mail services– to manage all mail services (Mail Admin, WebMail, IMAP etc.) and request optional services, such as PEC on domain and GigaMail (which increases the space of the mailbox from 1GB up to 25GB).
• Aruba News– allows you to view the latest news published by Aruba.
• 24/7 Support– to access the free support services offered by Aruba.

WordPress first login and setup

To access the WordPress admin panel, you need to connect to http: //www.dominio.ext/wp-admin / or to http: //www.dominio.ext/wp-login.php (where al place of domain.ext you must enter the address of the domain you purchased).

On the page that opens, you must log in to the WordPress administration panel using the credentials received in the activation confirmation email, in the Managed WordPress Hosting Administration Panel section .

Once logged in, I recommend that you change the temporary password you received from Aruba to log into WordPress. To do this, select the Users item from the left sidebar, click on your username, scroll the page down and press the Generate password button, in order to generate a new secure password (remember to write it down and keep it in a safe place). Finally, click on the Update profile button to save the changes and that’s it.

Now you just have to customize the site as you see fit , for example by choosing a graphic theme for it and installing additional plugins. To choose the graphic theme to use on your site, select the Appearance item from the left sidebar and then the Themes.

Browse, therefore, the available themes, identify the one you are interested in and activate it, first pressing the Install button that appears on its thumbnail when the mouse passes and then on the Activate one. Alternatively, you can also click the Preview button and preview the theme to see if it’s actually right for you.

Once the theme is activated, you can customize it by clicking on the Customize button that appears on its thumbnail when hovering the mouse and an editor will open with which to change the name of the site, colors, header images, background image, menu, widgets, home page settings and set up additional CSS code.

To install new plugins in WordPress, instead, select the Plugin> Add new items from the left sidebar. Then browse the list of available plugins (or search for a specific plugin using the search bar at the top) and, once you have found the component of your interest, click on the Install now and Activate buttons to proceed with its download and activation.

If you want advice on the most interesting plugins of the moment, I suggest you consult the Aruba whitelist, which contains a list of WordPress plugins carefully selected based on criteria of reliability, diffusion and good functioning (both free and paid). Then there is a blacklist which, instead, contains a list of plugins to avoid as they are risky for privacy or harmful to the performance of the site.

If you are looking for a plugin to manage cookie law and adapt your site to the guidelines of the GPDR (the European legislation on data processing), I recommend DFactory’s Cookie Notice for GDPR. More info here.

Once installed, the WordPress plugins can be managed through the relative items that appear in the side menu of the CMS or from the Plugins> Plugins installed menu, always accessible via the left sidebar.

As for user management, however, in case you want to allow access to the WordPress management panel to more people, you can always act from the Users menu accessible via the left sidebar.

Content publishing

To publish a new post on your site, all you have to do is access the WordPress management panel (as I explained to you in the previous chapter of this tutorial) and click on the New button located at the top left.

You will then have access to the WordPress editor, which comes with a very minimal interface. In fact, just click in the Add title field to type the title to assign to the post and in the Start writing field or type / to choose a block to type the body of the article.

The editor works in blocks and each block can be of a different format: paragraph, gallery, image, list, quote, file or more. To add a new one, just click on the (+) button located on the left of the field where you type the text and choose one of the available options. Afterwards, you can change the properties of each block using the toolbar which appears at the top. For example, to edit a post in HTML mode instead of in WYSIWYG mode (therefore in code mode instead of using the visual editor), you have to click on the ⋮ button that appears at the top and select the Edit as HTML item from the menu that opens.

In the right sidebar, however, by selecting the Document tab, you can set the publication date of the post, its level of visibility, the categories and tags associated with it and much more. When you are ready to publish (or schedule) the post, click on the Publish button located at the top right.

The new posts published on the site are shown directly on the home page. If you want to create a page external to the home page, access the WordPress panel, focus on the New item located at the top left and select the Page item from the menu that opens.

If any steps are not clear to you and/or you need more information on how to use WordPress, I invite you to read my tutorial on them.

Automatic update of WordPress, themes and plugins

I remind you that WordPress, its themes and plugins are automatically updated by Aruba Managed WordPress Hosting. To adjust the settings related to automatic updates, access the Aruba administration panel as I explained to you previously and select the items Managed WordPress Hosting> Tools and settings from the left sidebar.

From the page in question, it is possible to suspend updates for 24 hours and disable the courtesy page that is shown to the public when a WordPress update is in progress.

Access via FTP

If you need to freely manage the files that make up your site, you can act through the file manager provided by Aruba, which works directly from the browser, or through a classic FTP client.

If you want to act from the Aruba file manager, connect to the Aruba administration panel and log in to your account. Then select the Managed WordPress Hosting and File Manager items from the left sidebar and you will access the file manager to manage the files on your webspace.

To upload new files to space, you can simply drag them into the browser window or click on the Upload file button (the icon with the white sheet and the green arrow that goes up, located at the top left). To copy, move or delete files online, however, you can use the buttons in the appropriate bar at the top.

If you prefer to act from a classic FTP client, such as FileZilla or Cyberduck, you can go to the Aruba control panel, select the Managed WordPress Hosting> Website and staging items from the left sidebar and write down the site’s FTP address, which you will find indicated in the Public access box.

Once this is done, open your favorite FTP client, connect to the address pinned above and log in using the same credentials used to enter the Aruba administration panel.

If you need some advice on which FTP programs to use to manage the files on the site, take a look at the tutorial I dedicated to this type of software.

Staging

The staging function offered by Aruba Managed WordPress Hosting allows you to create a copy of your site, on a temporary address, in order to make changes to it without “affecting” the original site. Once properly tested, the changes can then be transferred to the site visible to the public.

To activate the staging function on your site, connect to the Aruba administration panel and select the Managed WordPress Hosting> Website and staging items from the left sidebar. Then click on the Activate staging button, put the checkmark next to the item The test environment uses some of the resources of the public website, therefore the performance of the same may suffer a slight deterioration, depending on the chosen plan and site traffic and click on the Activate button to confirm.

Copying may take a few minutes. At the end of the procedure, to start working on the staging version of the site, connect to the address indicated in the Aruba administration panel (always in the Managed WordPress Hosting> Website and the staging section, in the Staging box ) and log in with username and password provided by the same panel (which also contains the coordinates to act on the FTP of the staging site and its home page).

Once you have implemented the changes to the site in staging mode, if they satisfy you, you can bring them back to the main site (the one visible to the public), returning to the Managed WordPress Hosting> Website and staging menu of the Aruba administration panel and clicking on the Staging button > Public website. To do the reverse, that is, to bring back to the staging site what is present on the production site, click on the button Public website> Staging. If, on the other hand, you want to completely disable staging, click on the Disable staging button. Easy, right?

MySQL database management

If you want to manage the MySQL database associated with your site, connect to this web page and log in using the data you received via email from Aruba when you activated the service.

A page will open with, on the left, the list of all the database components and, on the right, the tools to operate on the database. I recommend: use this tool only if you know well “where to put your hands”, otherwise you could compromise the correct functioning of the site!

Backup and restore

As widely mentioned above, Aruba’s Managed WordPress Hosting service allows you to make backups on demand of your site and restore (or download) them if necessary with a simple click.

To take advantage of this possibility, connected to the Aruba administration panel and select the Managed WordPress Hosting and Backup Management items from the left sidebar. On the page that opens, if you want to create a new backup of the site, click on the Create new backup button. This may take a few minutes.

If, on the other hand, you want to restore a previous backup, locate it within the same page, expand the adjacent drop-down menu and select the Restore backup from this item. By following the same procedure, you can also download the backup locally or delete it.

Advanced support

The Aruba Managed WordPress Hosting service allows you to access dedicated support, which allows you to receive assistance on installing themes and plugins in WordPress, editing sites, managing the site, optimizing it and much more. To use them, however, it is necessary to use credits, which can be obtained as a gift when activating the service or can be purchased.

To find out how many credits you have and access Aruba advanced support, connect to the Aruba admin panel and select the Managed WordPress Hosting> Advanced Support items from the left sidebar. If you have at least one credit available, you can open a new support request by pressing the Open support request button.

If, on the other hand, you do not have credits available, you must click on the Buy credits link and purchase credits by checking the appropriate box on the page that opens and pressing the Order button. Each credit costs 60 euros. More info here.

For more information

Do you need more information about how Aruba Managed WordPress Hosting works? In this case, I invite you to consult the official guide of the service, which contains all the information that could be useful for managing your website in the best possible way.

To consult the guide, go to the page I linked to you just now and select one of the topics listed in the left sidebar, for example Service management and webspace configuration, Services included website creation, WordPress management, Website publishing or Certificate SSL DV. A page will open with the list of support articles related to the chosen topic: select, therefore, the one of your interest and consult it to find the answer to your doubts.

If you have opted for standard Aruba WordPress hosting, you can find the official guide of the service by linking to this other web page. Selectable topics are always listed in the left sidebar.

If, on the other hand, you want to contact Aruba support directly, you can connect to the page dedicated to free assistance, log in with your username and password and click on the New request button to send your message.