A successful business thrives not just on a good website, but there is more behind it. Imagine hosting for eCommerce website that crashes on peak sales days or has lagging hosting services for businesses when the client is trying to get information from the website. That is where reliable hosting mixed with perfect customer support becomes the ultimate deal breaker.

MilesWeb is more than just a hosting service; it is a commitment to seamless performance and round-the-clock assistance. One can use the expert support team that ensures that your website keeps functioning without any technical glitches. In this blog, we will discuss why hosting and customer support go hand in hand, as well as why a web hosting provider can make or break the online success of a business or an individual.

Understanding Web Hosting, Its Types, and Why It Is Important for Your Website

Every website requires hosting. Getting your website online will require access to a physical server somewhere in the world to house its files. When you subscribe to a hosting plan, you rent a portion of a server for the use of your website.

There are many kinds of hosting; three main ones include: shared, VPS, and dedicated. With shared hosting, your website is on a server with other websites. There can be anywhere from dozens to hundreds of websites on your server. Shared servers are meant for simple, static websites and businesses that don’t receive much traffic yet.

The second mainstream type of hosting is VPS hosting, which can be a lot more powerful than shared hosting, giving your website the performance it needs to handle higher traffic with more storage:

While your website is on a server with other websites, you share access to your own partitioned section. Thus, other websites cannot affect your speed and security.

The last important type of hosting is dedicated hosting—where dedicated servers host your website files only for your use. This is the most potent option, but it is also the costliest.

Also, every hosting plan can be managed or unmanaged. In managed plans, everything from updates to security scans is taken care of by the web host; in unmanaged plans, space on a server is provided and everything else is up to you.

It is crucial to choose the appropriate hosting provider; a bad decision would surely be detrimental to the growth and well-being of the company. Here is why web hosting matters:

Your website should be up and running 24/7. Frequent downtimes mean loss of business. While some maintenance downtime seems reasonable, downtime due to host issues is never acceptable. VPS and dedicated servers offer much higher uptime and reliability than shared hosting plans, which can slow down or crash under heavy traffic.

As your company matters, so should your hosting. To maintain good performance under sudden traffic spikes and even during growth spurts of the business, you need to have a scalable solution, VPS, or dedicated server.

For businesses that deal with sensitive data, security becomes a matter of utmost importance; hence, VPS and dedicated servers have better protection. Shared servers pose a potential threat. SSL certificates and malware protection help to protect customer information.

Alternative support for troubleshooting and optimization is a must. Managed hosting offers support 24/7 for everything including updates, security, and maintenance, whereas self-managed plans leave everything to you.

A dedicated server gives the maximum power and exclusivity, but the price is high. Choosing the right plan guarantees smooth operations and maximum security for your business, whether managed or unmanaged.

What is Customer Support in Web Hosting and Its Types?

One of the most common misunderstandings is that web hosting support is intended purely for problems caused by the actual hosting. Owing to this, website owners find it difficult to figure out a way to resolve these issues without consulting any other person.

However, it's much more complicated than that. Most web hosting support teams are happy to assist you with whatever you need in your website, even if it's somewhat out of the range of what's intended.

For example, if you want to learn how to do something, they will definitely guide you in the right way if they cannot intervene. That is why web hosting support is possibly one of those elements that can make or break the relationship with the web host.

All the known, reputable web hosts have customer support channels through which they provide their customers with service. Below are the most common channels for availing customer support:

Phone support provides a direct line for users to call and get in touch with the support agent if they need help.

Using email support, the customer is provided with an email address through which they can contact the company in case they require their assistance.

Live chat is usually the right place to be for instant gratification. Visit the hosting provider's website to activate live chat and start with some instant messaging with the support crew.

The ticketing software proves to be the most reliable and trustworthy of all support channels. In this system, the submission of requests is done and the whole process is usually timed and monitored effectively to get all customers timely assistance.

Most of the primary questions and first-line assistance topics will most probably be found in the knowledge base of a web hosting website. The knowledge base is similar to a support dictionary, in which subjects known are dealt with so that common problems can get sorted out independently by users.

Why Reliable Customer Support is Crucial

It has been previously stated that most support teams are adept at solving anything under the sun. Mostly, this attitude depends on how the host views customer support.

The following areas are instances in which customer service can come in handy:

The support team is there for you if you happen to be having any problems with even something as far-fetched as a faulty configuration file!

Conclusion

Choosing the right web hosting and customer support is not just about keeping your website online. In fact, it's about performance, security, and reliability. When it comes to eCommerce sites or a business platform, quality hosting services for business definitely make a difference, and MilesWeb's very strong hosting with 24/7/365 expert support for eCommerce websites provides you with the security and support that you need to grow without having to worry about a thing. All you need is to invest in hosting services that not only power your website but also lend you help at every step of your success journey.

Think Again: Is Your Website Secure? You may be surprised to know that every day more than 30,000 websites get hacked; around 43% of the malicious attacks are targeted towards small businesses.

Irrespective of whether you’re an entrepreneur or run a personal blog, cyber attackers find your website a lucrative target if it is not secured properly. Since a single attack can expose confidential customer data, harm your reputation, and take your website offline, leveraging powerful safety measures isn’t an option but a necessity.

Every decision you make, from selecting reliable CodeIgniter hosting to making the most of a virtual private server for increased security, plays an important role in strengthening your website’s security against cyber attacks.

In this blog, we’ll discover the best practices that will fortify your website against cyber threats and keep it online. Because in this digital battleground, you need to be one step ahead of hackers if you hope to survive!

Website Security Unfurled

Website security consists of applying powerful preventive measures specifically crafted to secure your website from unauthorized access or cyberattacks and preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your digital assets, server resources, and your customer’s trust.

Securing a website is not something you complete once and then forget about; it is an ongoing process that includes the various types of safety measures, staying current on the evolving threats, and actively watching irregularities.

Why is it a Necessity, Not an Option?

Even though technological advancements have made businesses reach customers easily, it has created new security risks that can be exploited by bad actors. The infected website can result in the following harmful implications:

Securing your website will help in:

Common Security Challenges that Put Websites at Risk?

As mentioned earlier, website security is not just about protecting your website from various threats; it also secures your website from internal vulnerabilities and human errors. Some of the common security challenges that put the websites at risk include:

Threat actors compromise web pages by injecting malicious scripts that can steal confidential information, install harmful malware, or redirect users to fraudulent websites. 

Malicious attackers manipulate authorized users to execute unintended actions, resulting in compromising their accounts.

Cyberattackers bombard servers with malicious traffic, denying access to rightful users.

Dangerous software that hijacks your website and locks website access until payment is done.

Fraudulent schemes are used to steal confidential and sensitive user information, such as login credentials.

These involve SQL Injection (SQLi) attacks, DDoS attacks, cryptojacking, and the installation of malware that can affect website integrity and be distributed across computer networks.

Malicious attackers attempt to break accounts by guessing the username and password through the assistance of infinite combinations.

It is a technique that takes advantage of database vulnerabilities, enabling unauthorized users to alter your website’s backend and retrieve sensitive information by gaining unauthorized access.

After knowing the importance of website security and some of the prevalent threats to your online business, you will be able to take proactive steps to secure your business and customers.

Steps to Strengthen Your Website Defenses

Define what you will evaluate, such as your systems, data, and assets, along with what you want to accomplish.

Use vulnerability scanners and security solutions to uncover flaws like SQL injection, XSS, and configuration anomalies.

Have a good look at the firewalls, IDS systems, and user authentication mechanisms. Is it working?

There should be regular training to identify frequent threats.

Make a list of things your website depends on and determine possible risks based on their estimated impact and likelihood.

A report should be prepared stating all the findings with simple-to-follow recommendations on how to fix the issues.

General monitoring should be put in place to become aware of any new threats before they become issues.

With these steps, the current security status of your website will be clear to you and, most importantly, a guide on how to proceed to make it stronger.

Conclusion

Your website is often the first point of contact for customers with your business. Safety of your business today secures the future of the business, plus the trust of every visitor. Start implementing policies for security and do not hesitate to seek expert help when you need to.

Since security threats are always evolving, you need to keep yourself informed about trends in website security. Therefore, whatever small investment you make today into your website's security could save you loads of hours and dollars in the future. Protection comes first!

When the topic of Ruby on Rails comes to developing web applications, an intuitive, efficient user interface is standard. User interfaces built using Rails perform redundantly with robust Ruby on Rails hosting services. 

In Rails, the presentation layer refers to views and layouts that structure and style your web pages. To ensure efficient rendering and smooth visual output, especially for high-performance applications such as 3D rendering and AI tasks, an affordable GPU server cost is considered. It is similar for developers who use Rails’ Views and Layout—the process where they learn how all of these pieces work together to build dynamic, well-organized, and maintainable user interfaces.

We know developers are looking to know more Rails views and layouts, so here’s the solution. This article explains how views and layouts work, how they interact with controllers and models, and also includes some other essential strategies for effective use in your application to enrich the UI of the application.

The role of Rails hosting providers

Views and layouts render with ease in a Rails application. Rails hosting providers thus offer reliable servers, optimized infrastructure, and good tools to get an application user interface out within the shortest time possible without hindrances. 

Features for enhancement of Views and Layouts in Rails by hosting providers

With the ideal hosting partner, you can enhance your views feature. A reliable Rails hosting provider offers: 

  1. Caching: It is a mechanism by which data, as accessed locally, is cached as much as possible. This reduces the fetching of data from the server and thus improves the page load time.
  2. Asset Pipeline: The asset pipeline provides optimization and compression for your CSS and JavaScript files, which makes the file size smaller and delivers it quite quickly to the browser.
  3. CDN Integration: Most web hosts offer simple integration with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which distribute your application's static content across multiple globally distributed servers. This, therefore, offers a lower latency for users in different regions.
  4. Database Optimization: Rails hosting providers are usually equipped with a wide range of tools and expertise to ensure database performance; the data retrieval is efficient, and hence leads to fast page rendering.

Understanding Views in Rails

In Rails, views are responsible for displaying data to users. Since most of the fields are going to be filled with content, views are templates whose fields are filled in with content HTML. They even include embedded Ruby, which is code that's put in them to print out information dynamically from a database or other parts of the application.

How Views Work in Rails

<h1><%= @article.title %></h1>

<p><%= @article.body %></p>

The <%= %> syntax is used to output data.

The @article variable is passed from the controller to the view so that it can be accessed in the view to be displayed.

Partials in Rails Views

Partials DRY up your views with common code reusability. You don't need to duplicate identical code across various views. You can extract it into a partial and include it where you need.

Creating a Partial

A partial is a view file that generally includes an underscore, _. So, if you have a form you know you'll use both inside new view and edit view, the first thing to do is to break the form out into a partial:

<!-- app/views/articles/_form.html.erb -->

<%= form_with(model: @article) do |form| %>

  <div>

    <%= form.label :title %>

    <%= form.text_field :title %>

  </div>

  <div>

    <%= form.label :body %>

    <%= form.text_area :body %>

  </div>

  <%= form.submit %>

<% end %>

Rendering a Partial:

To render the partial in your views, you use the render method:

<!-- app/views/articles/new.html.erb -->

<h1>New Article</h1>

<%= render 'form' %>

Partials make your views more modular and, hence, more manageable, so that you can modify or update UI components in one place.

Helper Methods for Views

Rails offers you a range of helper methods that you can apply to your views to make them concise and to the point. These helpers help in generating links, forms, and a lot of other common HTML elements.

Examples of Helper Methods:

For example:

<%= link_to 'Show Article', article_path(@article) %>

For example:

<%= form_with(model: @article) do |form| %>

  <%= form.label :title %>

  <%= form.text_field :title %>

<% end %>

Custom view helpers

You may define your own helper methods that can help keep your views even cleaner. These often go in the app/helpers directory and are available to any view.

Defining and creating a Custom Helper

You might want to create a helper to format dates like this:

# app/helpers/application_helper.rb

module ApplicationHelper

  def formatted_date(date)

    date.strftime("%B %d, %Y")

  end

end

Now, you can use this helper in your views:

<p>Published on: <%= formatted_date(@article.published_at) %></p>

Understanding Layouts in Rails

Layouts in Rails give a way to wrap your views in a common template. They enable defining such a general structure of your application's pages—headers, footers, and navigation bars. You wouldn't have to duplicate the same code in every view.

How Layouts Work in Rails

By default, Rails appends to an application.html.erb layout found at app/views/layouts/. It wraps every view that the controller renders in a common structure for all pages of your application.

Example of a very simple layout file:

<!-- app/views/layouts/application.html.erb -->

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

  <head>

    <title>MyRailsApp</title>

    <%= csrf_meta_tags %>

    <%= csp_meta_tag %>

    <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'application', media: 'all' %>

    <%= javascript_pack_tag 'application' %>

  </head>

  <body>

    <header>

      <h1>My Rails Application</h1>

      <%= link_to 'Home', root_path %>

      <%= link_to 'Articles', articles_path %>

    </header>

    <%= yield %>

    <footer>

      <p>Footer content goes here</p>

    </footer>

  </body>

</html>

yield:

In other words, the yield keyword is where the particular view is going to be injected. For instance, if it were articles/show.html.erb, it is going to replace its content in the layout of the yield section while rendering.

Multiple Layouts in Rails

Although the application layout is the default layout, you can still use a different layout for parts of your application. Rails allows this by letting you declare and use multiple layouts by informing the controller which one to use.

Specifying a Layout in a Controller:

You can decide that a particular controller or action should use a particular layout by calling the layout method in the controller:

class AdminController < ApplicationController

  layout "admin"

  def dashboard

    # Action logic

  end

end

This will use the admin.html.erb layout found at app/views/layouts/.

Conditional Layouts:

You can also have multiple layouts and apply them conditionally according to the logic:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  layout :choose_layout

  private

  def choose_layout

    current_user.admin? ? "admin" : "application"

  end

end

Asset Pipeline in Views

The asset pipeline in Rails tracks all JavaScript, CSS, and image files. These are pretty vital for building new user interfaces. You can include these assets inside your views and layouts with the help of Rails helpers.

Including Stylesheets and JavaScript:

Chances are high that you have come across the following lines of code in your application.html.erb layout file. These are applied to include the application's stylesheet and JavaScript files.

<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'application', media: 'all' %>

<%= javascript_pack_tag 'application' %>

Rails will automatically compile and serve it through the asset pipeline.

Rendering JSON Views for APIs

Most views in Rails are HTML-based, but in Rails, you can also render the JSON for an API. Instead of an HTML template, you can render JSON directly from your controller:

ndef show

  @article = Article.find(params[:id])

  render json: @article

end

Alternatively, you can define a .json.jbuilder template to format your JSON output more precisely:

# app/views/articles/show.json.jbuilder

json.extract! @article, :id, :title, :body, :created_at, :updated_at

json.author do

  json.name @article.author.name

end

Quick Overview of Views and Layouts in Rails

FeatureDescriptionPurpose
ViewsTemplates that display data to the user, usually in HTML or JSONDefines how the user sees the content
LayoutsCentral templates that wrap around viewsProvides consistent structure across pages
PartialsReusable snippets of views that avoid code duplicationAllows reuse of common elements across views
Helper MethodsPredefined methods to simplify repetitive tasks in viewsKeeps views cleaner and easier to maintain
Asset PipelineManages and compiles static resources like CSS, JavaScript, imagesOptimizes performance and asset management

Summarizing Views and Layouts in Rails

Views and layouts are also important in Rails because they are the primary movers of the work from the framework itself. This in turn presents well-structured, dynamic, and highly interactive user interfaces. Views take care of how to present data for a user, while layouts give you the structural skeleton holding together the look and feel of different parts of an application. In short, while content has to be presented consistently across all pages, they are flexible and adapt to various needs.

Using partials, developers reuse common things across views without redundancy, making it easier to maintain a codebase. At the same time, layouts provide a central template in which to embed views so that the overall structure of the application is always uniform. 

For developers, that's where the craftsmanship begins and how these pieces work together. It is what makes a web application scalable, maintainable, and responsive, regardless of whether you are doing something as simple as creating a little personal blog or a complex enterprise-level application. Mastery of views, layouts, and their related features will help you create an efficient, user-friendly interface, adapting seamlessly to your users' needs.

With an added layer of functionality richness, complex web applications call for optimization. Optimizing your server, app, or website brings the best advantage of faster speed. Optimization of apps for high performance offers usable fluidity. Major apps utilize powerful and trendy JavaScript libraries for dynamic user interface building, like React, and several readymade mechanisms are available. Further, with React js hosting solutions, your optimized apps can perform better. 

A developer can also opt for something more, like HTML web hosting, to tweak their apps towards higher quality, faster, and more responsive performance. In this insightful read, we will go deeper into some of the key strategies for optimizing React, including practical advice and tips and tricks that can help you build faster and more efficient applications.

What is React?

React is one of the favorite JavaScript libraries used for the construction of user interfaces. It is powerful and efficient in building dynamic web applications. However, as complexity and scale evolve, performance becomes a bottleneck. Optimizing React performance is necessary to ensure that applications are delivered to users in a smooth way, improve web pages' rankings, and ultimately achieve business success.

Need of optimizing React performance

Here's why optimizing React performance is necessary:

  1. Faster applications result in more satisfactory use from users and retain them on your website or app for a longer period. The better response times are, the better your applications will perform. 
  2. Optimizing React performance makes your app show up higher in search results and gain greater visibility and traffic. Thus, with optimization, you see improvements in search engine rankings. Search engines, including Google, have begun considering the speed of websites as a ranking factor. 
  3. Another notable aspect is the higher conversion ratios. If your apps load at the fastest speed, it is very likely that it will yield a higher conversion rate. Thus, users view their desired results quickly and have a better user experience.
  4. It’s not hard to figure out that if your apps load faster, you’ll get lower bounce rates. Optimization of performance can help in reducing the bounce of an application and getting the users to spend more time with it. 
  5. The more your application grows, the more performance means to you. Hence scalability becomes essential. Optimizing React can help your app scale effectively and handle increased traffic without compromising on the user experience.

Optimize React for faster performance: Essential tips and tricks

Use the Production Build

The first tip would be to ensure that you're using a production build of React. It is one of the react optimization techniques for seamless performance rates. The development build includes extra warnings and debugging information. Although development build is useful in development, it can make your application slower in production. Hence, for better performance, use production build. To create a production build, run the build command, which compresses your code and removes unnecessary warnings, ultimately making your app faster and lighter.

Command: npm run build

Avoid Unnecessary Re-renders

One of the common reasons for the React application's slow performance is the use of unnecessary re-renders. For every case of a component re-rendering, React updates the virtual DOM and compares it to the actual DOM, which can be rather time-consuming, especially for large applications. Developers can significantly improve this by avoiding re-renders.

Here’s how you can avoid unnecessary re-renders:

Use shouldComponentUpdate() or React's PureComponent: 

The shouldComponentUpdate() method allows you to choose which components you want to manually update. If you use React's PureComponent, it will automatically call shallow comparisons for both state and props to prevent unnecessary renders.

Use React's memo function:

Using React's memo function on functional components with React.memo() to "memoize" the component only re-renders the component when its properties change.

Example:

const MyComponent = React.memo(function MyComponent(props) {

  // component logic

});

Employ the useMemo() and useCallback() Hooks

In functional components, expensive calculations and functions can be very time-consuming when computed on every render. React’s useMemo() and useCallback() hooks can help optimize performance. These hooks enhance the performance by memoizing values and functions. 

Example:

const computedValue = useMemo(() => expensiveFunction(input), [input]);

Example:

const handleClick = useCallback(() => {

  // function logic

}, [dependency]);

Lazy Loading Components using React.lazy()

Lazy loading is a wonderful way to optimize for performance. You don't necessarily need to have all of your apps loaded at one time; instead, you can split them into smaller pieces and then load them on demand. React's React.lazy() lets you import a component only when it becomes relevant for rendering. This narrows your initial load as well as enhances your overall performance.

Commonad: const LazyComponent = React.lazy(() => import('./LazyComponent'));

This method can be used in combination with the Suspense component to render fallback content while the component is loading.

Webpack Code Splitting

Code splitting is an optimization technique that allows you to split your application into smaller bundles, thus reducing the amount of JavaScript code that needs to be downloaded at once. Webpack is the default bundler for React applications and has full built-in support for code splitting.

You can import that dynamically like this:

import(/* webpackChunkName: "component" */ './Component');

This will ensure that your application only loads the code needed for the current page, hence minimizing the time taken to load.

Avoid Inline Usage of Functions and Object Literals

If you use inline functions and object literals in JSX, you should be aware that it leads to poor performance as each render recreates them, leading to unnecessary re-renders. The solution here is to avoid or minimise the use of inline usage of functions and object literals. 

Start by defining outside of JSX or memoizing using useCallback().

Avoid inline object literals and the event listeners for instances of an element. It is best to make these outside of the render method or memoize them with useMemo().

Example:

const styles = useMemo(() => ({ color: 'blue' }), []);

Optimizing List Rendering with React.Fragment and Virtualization

Rendering a large list has a major impact on performance. This is mainly because rendering everything in the list takes time and slows down the application. React provides tools that will optimize list rendering and allow only the necessary items in the list to be rendered.

Use React.Fragment to remove unnecessary div wrappers that slow down rendering.

Virtualization: Packages like react-window or react-virtualized will help you optimize huge lists so that only visible items are rendered, and therefore it greatly improves performance.

import { FixedSizeList as List } from 'react-window';

<List height={500} itemCount={1000} itemSize={35}>

  {({ index, style }) => <div style={style}>Item {index}</div>}

</List>

Browser DevTools for Performance Profiling

React DevTools and browser DevTools such as Chrome DevTools have fantastic profiling tools. You can use them to identify performance bottlenecks. Use them to measure time taken for your components to render, to note unnecessary re-renders, and improve your code accordingly.

The Profiler tab in React DevTools lets you record performance and view how much time each component is taking to render.

Debounce or Throttle Events

Debounce or throttle event handlers limit how frequently performance-heavy operations like search input or window resizing are called. In other words, debouncing ensures that a function is called only after the end of a certain period of inactivity. It prevents repetitive occurrence of functions over time, thereby improving the performance for faster apps.

Example of debounce:

const handleSearch = useCallback(debounce((event) => {

  // search logic

}, 300), []);

Avoid Deeply Nested Components

Deeply nested components increase the complexity of your application and slow down the rendering. By breaking up large, complex components into smaller, reusable pieces, you will improve the performance and maintainability of your code.

Web hosting provider and performance of your React app

Your web hosting partner is a major determiner of whether or not your React app is fast. A good hosting provider offers key elements that help improve your React performance. Look for the following key elements while choosing a hosting service:

  1. Server Infrastructure: A robust server infrastructure with adequate resources meets the demands of React applications. For your React apps to be faster, you need an industry-recognized web hosting provider, like MilesWeb. They ensure you get all the resources and features with the best infrastructure.
  2. Network Connectivity: Choose a provider that has top-line network connectivity. It helps quick delivery of the app's resources, increasing the performance of your apps.
  3. Caching: A good caching mechanism can store frequently retrieved data in the local cache, thereby greatly reducing the need to fetch that data from the server.
  4. Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN serves static content like images, CSS, and JavaScript of your application from multiple servers across various geographies of the world. This server is the closest to your target users, reduces latency, and is beneficial, especially when you serve international audiences.
  5. Security: The hosting environment of your chosen provider should be secured so that your application and its user data are safe at all times. A good hosting provider will, thus, implement robust security measures so that your application does not fall under attacks and remains consistent.

Summary

Optimizing your React app not only offers seamless functionality but also ensures that users have the best experience. The best thing you can do to optimize your React performance is avoid unnecessary re-rendering with the help of a few inbuilt React hooks, like useMemo() and useCallback(). In this detailed blog, we have also included some modern JavaScript techniques, such as lazy loading and code splitting. All these tricks and tips will let your React application be fast and scalable in the long run.

Again, performance optimization is not a fix-and-forget job. You should profile your app regularly and check its analysis report to find new areas of improvement as your application grows.

© All rights reserved by Mohit Goyal

© All rights reserved by Mohit Goyal | Inspired Monks 2024

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