We just completed moving a client’s website to a new server and installing a new WordPress theme. The result is not only eye-appealing but speed-efficient as well.
Amanatidou.com is the personal website of professional Psychologist, Fostiria Amanatidou. Fostiria’s office is situated in Thessaloniki, Greece and she often appears in TV shows and speaks at local radio stations, where we are sure she mentions her website quite regularly.
As a result, her website is accessed daily by Greek residents. That can be an issue when the domain is hosted in Texas, USA and visitors notice slow loading times when accessing her website. Slow page speed means driven-away visitors, which results to less conversions and patients for her. Thus, a move to a European server was in order, so that people don’t need to wait for the website to load.
Think that 30% of a website’s traffic is lost for every second of delay in loading. By regaining just one second of loading time, Fostiria should now expect more emails in her inbox and more customers for her business. And given the website now loads under one second for the majority of her visitors (still, the website does feature an English version for non-Greek visitors), we bet not a single visitor is going away before the whole front page loads!
Moving Amanatidou.com to the top-notch hosting company, WP Engine, was done much easier than it sounds.
Initially the website was hosted with HostGator, which meant a lot of data going back and forth over the Atlantic. So next, we thought of another… ocean and moved the domain to DigitalOcean, relocating the server to London for an initial speed boost. By the time we thought it was time for a theme redesign, we decided to combine that with transferring over to WP Engine.
We had used a theme by ElegantThemes for Amanatidou.com, which had served its purpose perfectly. As we no longer have a license with ElegantThemes though, we could not keep the template updated properly. Thus, we went with a professionally-looking template made by Theme-Junkie, where we hold a lifetime membership.
[dt_highlight color=””]Summary[/dt_highlight]: This week, we moved Amanatidou.com domain to a testing server of WP Engine, where we installed a new theme and redesigned the whole website. Today, we launched the website, which now loads faster and features a fresh look. Fostiria was able to update her blog all this time, while the website experienced zero downtime. DigitalOcean server now provides a workable backup of her website in case of emergency.