If you are already using Ezoic for your publishing needs, you must have heard about the Ezoic WordPress Hosting app, an application that allows you to host your website 100% free on Ezoic servers. Being an artificial intelligence platform that allows them to test different ad placements and sizes to find the best combination, Ezoic is known for helping publishers make the most money out of their work.
If you have always wondered how this could be possible, and also how to connect your WordPress website to Ezoic’s free Cloud based hosting service, this article is for you. Here, you will discover all about Ezoic’s free WordPress hosting and full instructions on how to migrate your website in order to make use of this free service.
What is Ezoic WordPress Hosting?
Ezoic WordPress Hosting allows publishers to take advantage of their Cloud-based hosting by adding their sites free on Ezoic’s servers. For those who are already connected, it means 100% free thus allowing them to save all Webhosting associated fees, and something which helps them earn more.
What are the associated benefits?
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited cloud-based memory
- Unlimited cloud-based CPU cores
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Uses PHP 5.6 by default, with the option to change to 7.2, etc
- Ezoic will stop malware at the DNS level
- Ezoic detects and excludes unsafe content
- The system currently also offers DDoS protection and other security measures
- We will be offering (free) malware scanning soon
- Sites hosted with Ezoic will also benefit from having tech team members monitor user experience metrics regularly
Additionally, there is no limit when it comes to bandwidth, memory, CPU, and others. You can find other associated benefits here.
How do you get started?
Getting started with Ezoic WordPress Hosting is very simple and easy. Since the app is available in your dashboard under settings, you simply need to activate it in order to get started. In order to activate this service, a staging site (clone of your website) will be created.
The staging site which will be hosted on Ezoic rather than by your current hosting will help you migrate website files, test, and confirm that everything is working well. And once you’ve confirmed that your staging site looks exactly like your current site, you can switch to Ezoic DNS.
Instructions to activate staging site
- Log into the Ezoic dashboard
- Select the site you want to host with them
- Click “Settings” and scroll down to “WordPress Hosting”
- Click “Create Staging Site” and confirm.
- Click “Preview site”
- Select turn on or turn off.
Note: If your site is HTTPS supported, check the box under that. Also, each preview currently expires after 3 hours of activation whereby you will need to re-activate in order to continue using the staging site.
You can now continue to activate your staging site by going through the initial WordPress new install stapes until you sign in. You can choose to use your existing account credentials to log in, set the same username and etc. But don’t forget to disable the index of your staging site to avoid duplicate content in the search engines.
How to prevent WordPress staging site from the index
- Log into “Staging site”
- Click “Settings”
- Click “Reading”
- Check the box next to “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”.
- Save settings.
And don’t forget, finally, you have tested your staging site, confirmed it works, and decided to switch to Ezoic DNS, follow the same procedures above and uncheck the box so your site can continue to be indexed by search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, etc.
Backing up and moving your files
Now that you are ready, it’s time to backup your website files including the database in order to migrate them to your staging site for testing and launching. Backing up your current site files can be done using a number of ways including manual and automatic depending on your choice.
You can use WordPress backup and restore plugins like All-in-One WP Migration, a free and paid migration plugin by ServMask, UpdraftPlus, a backup and restore plugin by UpdraftPlus.com, and DavidAnderson, or even any FTP client of your choice.
How to backup (export) WordPress using the All-in-One WP Migration plugin
- Log into your live site as “Admin”
- Hover on “Plugins”
- Click “Add new”
- Search for “All-in-One WP Migration”
- Click ‘Install” and “Activate”
- Hover on “All-in-One WP Migration”
- Click “Export”
- Click “Advanced” to deselect whatever you don’t want to export.
- Choose how you want to save eg File for free or others for a paid option.
- Wait for your files to be processed and a download option to appear.
- Click the “Save” file and wait for the download to complete.
How to import backup files to staging site using All-in-One WP Migration
- Log into your staging site as “Admin”
- Hover on “Plugins”
- Click “Add new”
- Search for “All-in-One WP Migration”
- Click ‘Install” and “Activate”
- Hover on “All-in-One WP Migration”
- Click “Import”
- Select importing option, select the file, and wait for import and processing to complete.
Note: Like you can see above, importing WordPress backup using All in one WP Migration is limited to 1GB file size. This means that for larger sites, you either upload manually using SFTP clients like FileZilla or upgrade to lift the limits.
How to backup using the UpdraftPlus plugin
- Log into your live site as “Admin”
- Hover on “Plugins”
- Click “Add new”
- Search for “UpdraftPlus plugin”
- Click ‘Install” and “Activate”
- Hover on “Settings”
- Click “Updraft backups”
- Click “Settings” under the Updraft menu and configure as per your choice.
- Click “Backup / Restore ” and click “Backup now”
- Wait for your files to be processed and sent to remote storage.
How to restore using UpdraftPlus plugin
- Log into your staging site as “Admin”
- Hover on “Plugins”
- Click “Add new”
- Search for “UpdraftPlus plugin”
- Click ‘Install” and “Activate”
- Hover on “Settings”
- Click “Updraft backups”
- Click “Settings”
- Click “Backup / Restore”.
- Click “Scan remote storage” to retrieve existing backups
- Click “Restore” and wait for the operation.
- Select the files you want to restore and complete the operation.
Upload WordPress Using FileZilla SFTP client
- Launch FileZilla FTP client
- Click “File” and “Site Manager”
- Click “New site” and enter the site name
- Select “SFTP – SSH File transfer protocol” under the protocol
- Copy “SFTP credentials” under “WordPress Hosting app on Ezoic”
- Fill them inside FileZilla ie username, password, host, and port.
- Click Connect and start uploading your downloaded website files.
Note: Unlike other web hosting providers which use FTP, Ezoic Hosting uses SFTP. Therefore, you will need an FTP client with the support of SFTP for example FileZilla.
Switching Staging Site To Ezoic Hosting (DNS)
Now that you have successfully moved your files to your staging site and tested it. The next thing is activating it by switching to Ezoic DNS. What happens is that once you switch your site to Ezoic DNS, your old website hosted by your current hosting provider will stop working and your site will officially be hosted on Ezoic servers.
Instructions to switch to Ezoic DNS
- Log into “Ezoic dashboard”
- Click “Settings”
- Scroll down to “WordPress Hosting”
- Click switch “DNS TO EZOIC”
- Confirm
Your WordPress website will be officially hosted on Ezoic cloud-based servers thereby enjoying more than benefits. Remember, you get free unlimited cloud storage and unlimited bandwidth with up to 99% uptime. Interested in this, join Ezoic using my link and lets both of us enjoy more than hosting.
Solving Variant also negotiate error
If you experience a variant that also negotiates errors after switching to Ezoic DNS, you may need to contact [email protected] for quick help. Since the error code is related to an internal server configuration error, which you may not have control over, the best way to have it solved will be to seek help from support. The Ezoic WordPress plugin will make everything better if you have it installed.
Also, you can try to temporarily deactivate Cloudflare assuming you had integrated your site using that option, and switch to the nameservers option. In case the error is solved or not, support will be the only alternative to sort this out permanently.
