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As far as WordPress goes, you have either the option to host your blog on WordPress.com or host your own WordPress. Hosting your own WordPress gives you more freedom in themes, customization, and plugins. I host my own WordPress site and recently made the switch to Dreamhost for my WordPress hosting. Well, to be honest, my wife had her blog hosted on Dreamhost, so it made sense to jump over to combine things.

Previously I hosted my WordPress site on Bluehost and honestly didn’t care for them all that much. My site was never running at its optimized speed and their support/customer service was not ever very helpful in helping me achieve what I wanted to with my WordPress website. They claimed to be optimized, but I had to do a lot of tweaking by installing a ton of plugins to try to make my site faster and it just never seemed to get there.

Dreamhost offers…

Excellent Customer Support

Dreamhost’s customer service has been spot on from day one. They helped me get my domain transferred from Bluehost correctly, as well as made sure my WordPress plugins were playing nicely with their hosting configuration (some were not). I love being able to use their online chat, knowing that I’ll get someone right away who is eager to help me. I find it easier to often chat with someone rather than jumping on a call.

WordPress Optimized Hosting

Having a hosting solution that is optimized for WordPress is very important. It’s kind of like using synthetic oil vs conventional oil, both are ok but one is made for better performance. Dreamhost offers hosting plans that are structured and have the infrastructure behind them to help your site perform even better. When I switched to Dreamhost, my Google Page Speed shot up 20%, which Google looks at for helping rank my website in search results. WordPress optimized hosting means less installing performance boosting plugins, and more built-in tools to help speed up your website.

Automatic WordPress Updates

If you have a WordPress website/blog that you host yourself, you know how time-consuming keeping up with updates can be. Dreamhost offers automatic updates to your WordPress install and plugins. Making sure your site is updated is critical to keeping it secure from getting hacked. It’s less stress letting Dreamhost take care of the security of your WordPress while you focus on building and maintaining the content of your site. 

Ready to make the jump to a more optimized WordPress hosting solution? Join Dreamhost today! Also, feel free to reach out if you need help moving your WordPress website to Dreamhost.

This week I’ve had amazing interactions with two really big company’s. I frequent Starbucks for coffee in the morning on my way to work and Amazon to buy things we need for the apartment/upcoming wedding.

Amazon

After our first rain rain in quite awhile, the apartment started to leak in the bedroom, getting the bedding and mattress all wet. We read stories online of people discovering their mattress was moldy after getting wet, so we did’t want to take a chance. This displaced Stephanie from staying in the apartment at night.

This week we eventually decided we should get a mattress. We took to Amazon, because where else do people this day in age buy things? Tuft & Needle had amazing reviews and we’ve heard Dave Ramsey endorse it, so we took a leap of faith and ordered it. My Address on Amazon is still set to my parents address, so I hit order and didn’t think about it.

Would we want to haul a 60LB mattress up to the second story of our apartment or have UPS trek it up the stairs for us? So, after a few calls to Amazon and them connecting me to UPS, we were able to change the address to the apartment and not have to haul the mattress upstairs ourself.

Amazon was truly amazing by going the distance to change the shipping address to the apartment in the same city as my parents address. They went above and beyond with their customer service.

Starbucks

On Wednesday morning, I went to Starbucks like I do most mornings (out of convenience) on my way to the office. I’ve been on Whole 30, so I order a Grande Pikes. By now the lady knows my order and usually starts pouring it before I can order.

I head back to the office and take a drink of my coffee and instantly get a mouthful of coffee grounds. What do I do about it? Well I make a snarky tweet of course.

Just got a mouthful of coffee grounds in my @Starbucks. pic.twitter.com/BEVKTY5xML

— Justen Martian (@JustenMartian) September 27, 2017

A couple hours later, I received a tweet from Starbucks asking which location it happened at. I told them and then they told me they would be adding $10 to my Starbucks card for the mistake. $10 for a $2.55 Grande Pike Place drip coffee? Yes. At that moment it clicked with me that Starbucks really cares about their customers and they’ll do whatever they can to make things right.

All in all, I was really blown away by both Amazon and Starbucks. Two big company’s that didn’t have to go out of their way to make things right, but did. Have you experienced outstanding customer service from a company? What was that experience? 

I don’t know about you, but just about every time my phone gets a notification, I seem to have the urgency to look at it. We are so reliant on our phones for work, communicating with people and keeping up with the latest news. However, it does seem like far too often I am sucked down the blackhole that is Facebook and Twitter, endless scrolling for no real purpose at all.

A few years ago I took a family vacation and I decided to unplug and leave my phone in airplane mode, and I just used the camera function to take photos and I also had it off when I was not taking photos. I noticed during this time that I was able to focus more on my family and really engage with what was going on without being bombarded with texts and notifications. There was a sense of rest that came with that. It was nice to not being connected with anyone else besides the people I was with.

I urge you to unplug, it is essential to truly resting well. Even if it’s just leaving your phone in your bedroom while you are out in the other room for the afternoon or evening. You’re not going to miss out on a whole lot with your phone not being in your hand every second. I’ll be honest, I don’t do it as often as I should and as I am writing this post, I am thinking of implementing this more often. Especially when I am on vacations with family or my fiancé. The most important people will be with me and I don’t need to keep everyone updated with a play by play every second. Rather, I could give a recap maybe at the end of the day with a photo or maybe limit myself to posting 2-3 times and then turning off my phone.

Have you unplugged or went off the grid? Did you find yourself more rested after you did?