Technical

Yes — once you have signed up with WP NET we install a fresh copy of WordPress for you automatically. You can then install your chosen theme  — and start building your new site!

However, what we recommend you do is build your WordPress site locally — on your own computer — and then deploy it to WP NET when you’re ready to go “live”. While setting up a local server does have a steeper learning curve and can sometimes get complicated — it’s often worth the effort. The dramatically faster page loads make building and testing a WordPress site a lot faster. Also, if you edit files, you only have to save in your editor and your changes take effect — no round-trip editing with FTP.

There are many tools available to help you run a WordPress server on your local machine.

If you have any questions or need help setting up a development site, just open a support ticket.

BuddyPress is not permitted on WP Site or WP Studio plans. BuddyPress is very resource intensive and the official documentation recommends at least a VPS server. See the Buddy Press documentation for details.

BuddyPress with or without Multisite is supported on WP Server.

WP NET’s servers are fine-tuned and optimised to run WordPress — and nothing else. Our tests have found that new customers typically get a page speed increase of 50-100% compared to other hosts.

If your site does require some additional work to optimise and fine-tune performance, you can request this by opening a support ticket. Often this is covered by your support service, but in some cases fees may apply. We will discuss your options with you, which include:

• Install and optimise page caching
• Asset minimisation and compression
• CDN (content distribution network)
• Database clean-up and optimisation
• Other tasks as required

Request this service by opening a support ticket.

You can run WordPress Multisite on WP Server products only.

WordPress Multisite is not supported on WP Site and WP Studio plans.

Please contact us for more information.

WP Site and WP Studio are a “shared-server” platform, so dedicated IP addresses are not supported.

Each WP Server includes 1x dedicated IP address, which is shared between all sites on the server. Additional IP addresses may be available. Fees apply. Please open a support ticket and we will assist.

For domains registered with WP NET — yes — we provide free DNS zone management via our secure domain management portal. We are happy to assist new and existing hosting customers with domain and DNS configuration — just open a support ticket.

WP Server customers can host zones on Vultr’s Premium Anycast DNS network.

If your domain is registered elsewhere, you will need to provide us with access to your domain registrar’s control panel, or we can just let you know what you need to do. Your registrar’s support team should also be able to help.

WordPress Core

From WordPress version 5.8.1, WP NET support no longer installs WP core software updates automatically.

However, WP Site, WP Studio and WP Shield customers can request that we update your WP core, plugins or themes by opening a support ticket. Depending on the time required and whether any additional work is needed, development fees may apply in some cases.

Plugins & Themes

WP Site, WP Studio and WP Shield plans include managed installation of security-related updates for most WordPress plugins and themes.

General, day-to-day updates that are not security related remain the responsibility of the customer.

Since version 5.7, managing updates in WordPress has become much easier and more flexible. You can configure many settings via the wp-config.php file, or directly on the WP Dashboard. You can set up almost any combination of automated or manual updates for your WP core, plugins and themes. See Configuring Automatic Background Updates for more information.

From version 5.7, fresh WordPress installations are configured to install all WP core updates automatically. However, if your installation pre-dates version 5.7 (even if you have since updated), only WP core security updates are configured to install automatically.

WordPress hosting servers typically use either Nginx, Apache, or a combination of the two. A popular set up in recent years has been to use Nginx as a reverse-proxy, with Apache as the primary server, interfacing with PHP. This configuration provides some of the benefits of Nginx (lower resource usage, better scaling) while maintaining the broad compatibility and familiarity of Apache.

More recently, Nginx-only configurations have become more common and our currently preferred set up is Nginx-only with PHP-FPM and built-in Nginx page-caching.

Nginx-only

• WP Server (no control panel configuration)
  

Nginx + Apache

• WP Site and WP Studio
• WP Server (legacy)
• Managed Server (NZ) (legacy)

Contact WP NET  for more information.

Yes — SSL (TLS) support is included on WP Site, WP Studio and WP Server.

Automated SSL certificates are provided by Let’s Encrypt and subject to their terms and conditions.

Only WP Site and WP Studio servers use Apache web server, so only those plans support .htaccess files for rewrites and other configurations.

WP Servers use Nginx-only, so .htaccess is not supported. If you have redirects or other server directives you need implemented, please open a support ticket and we’ll set them up for you ASAP!