WordPress Hosting

How WordPress works

WordPress stores site content, users, settings, and relationships in a database, then renders posts and pages through an active theme. Posts suit chronological publishing, while pages hold material such as services, contact information, policies, or other long-lived content. The administration dashboard controls writing, media, navigation, users, appearance, and extensions.

Themes define presentation and can also influence site behaviour. Plugins extend the core with additional functions, from forms and search optimisation to commerce, caching, security, or specialised content types. That ecosystem is the main source of flexibility, but it also means two WordPress sites can have very different performance, maintenance, and security profiles.

Key WordPress features

The editor supports structured content through blocks, while the site editor and theme tools shape navigation, styles, templates, headers, footers, and page layouts when the selected theme supports them. Users can create drafts, publish content, manage media, and organise posts with categories or tags.

Roles and capabilities separate responsibilities for administrators, editors, authors, contributors, and subscribers. Plugins can add more roles or change capabilities, so access should be reviewed after installing extensions rather than assuming the original permissions still describe the site.

WordPress vs Squarespace

WordPress is a self-hosted content management system with a large ecosystem of themes and plugins. Squarespace packages website design tools, managed hosting, commerce options, and customer support inside a controlled hosted platform. Both can produce polished websites, but they offer different levels of technical freedom and responsibility.

Squarespace may suit users who prefer an integrated vendor-managed site builder and its supported infrastructure and feature set. WordPress is more attractive when a project needs a wide choice of extensions, custom development, control of the hosting environment, or the ability to move between providers.

Who uses WordPress

Bloggers, publishers, professional services, local businesses, charities, membership projects, and online stores use WordPress. The same core can power a simple brochure site or a complex content platform, provided the theme, plugins, and hosting plan are selected for the actual workload.

It is less suitable when the site owner wants no responsibility for updates, plugin choices, compatibility, or security review. Managed hosting reduces infrastructure work, but editorial and extension decisions still shape the reliability of the finished site.

Self-hosting WordPress: requirements and cost

Traffic, theme complexity, plugin behaviour, page caching, media size, database queries, scheduled tasks, and administrator activity drive WordPress resource use. The catalogue stack includes MariaDB for posts, pages, users, settings, comments, and plugin data, while media and other files remain in persistent application storage. The recommended plan accounts for both WordPress and its MariaDB container.

AvaHost maps WordPress to Plan 2 at €5, and the software itself is free to run. One-click deployment provisions WordPress and a MariaDB container, but the database remains unmanaged by AvaHost. Scheduled backups, custom domains, and automated HTTPS are included. Automatic updates cover WordPress core files and the core Docker container only; plugins and themes are not updated by AvaHost.