We are thrilled to introduce Destiny Kanno in our latest episode of the Hostinger Academy podcast. As the Head of Community Education at Automattic, Destiny plays an important role in the Learn WordPress platform and the overall WordPress community.

The Background

Destiny’s WordPress journey began when she was working for a small Japanese digital agency and building websites with the platform.

She then applied to Automattic, and her WordPress journey took off. Her career there has been dynamic, with roles spanning from a Happiness Engineer to a Technical Account Manager and eventually settling in her current position as the Head of Community Education. 

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Unveiling the Growth of Learn WordPress

Destiny’s mission as a community education manager is advancing the Learn WordPress platform, managed by the WordPress Training Team. This digital learning space offers courses, tutorials, and lesson plans to equip users with WordPress knowledge.

“Learn WordPress is where we create a video about content from documentation. Suppose I’m looking up how to use full site editing or a block theme. In that case, we’re probably going to get a lot of information from the documentation and then incorporate that into actionable things that someone would use in real life,” explains Destiny.

But Destiny doesn’t want Learn WordPress to be just a place to get content. That’s why the team launched the Learning Pathways project, which offers curated content for specific user groups. 

For example, if the team curates content for WordPress developers, they will find the right content for beginner, intermediate, and expert levels. “I think that’s really a critical stepping stone to make Learn WordPress the number one place to learn about WordPress,” adds Destiny.

How You Can Help the Training Team to Grow

A diverse group of people drives the Training Team. To be more specific, Destiny mentioned these groups of contributors and their roles:

• Content Creator – crafts the tutorials courses.
• Editor – reviews the content and ensures it looks good and presentable.
• Content Translator – localizes the Learn WordPress content and helps the team connect with local communities.
• Subject Matter Expert – guides people who need help with the content.
• Administrative role – manages the operation of the team.

Destiny is looking for more content creators and translators to drive the project forward. “We do have this ambitious goal of creating these learning pathways, but we also need help creating and translating the content,” she explains.

If you want to be part of the journey, visit the Make WordPress Training Team site and find the Getting Started link to the handbook. You will find an onboarding video guide and instructions to create the necessary accounts, like WordPress.org, GitHub, and Slack, to start with. It may sound complicated, but Destiny assures that the guide will make these look easy. 

“You’ll see Benjamin Evans in the video, who is the team representative, and he’s made these brilliant videos helping welcome you. It guides you through five pathways to contribute to the Training Team,” encourages Destiny.

Destiny’s Involvement in BlackPress

In addition to her role at Automattic, Destiny’s passion for community building has drawn her to BlackPress. Established in 2022, this initiative aims to create a platform where individuals from the Black diaspora can collaborate and be heard. A key aspect of BlackPress is empowering members through WordPress education, and Destiny has been a vocal advocate for this cause.

Destiny shared that one of the founding principles is bringing members of the Black diaspora into WordPress. “Maybe by teaching WordPress to communities online and bringing the networking to them. Additionally, we really want to see a future for Black folks in schools to get into WordPress early and find out what opportunities are out there for them once they’ve skilled up in this software,” she explains.

To introduce this initiative to the community, Destiny was one of the speakers in a WordCamp US 2023 panel talk, “Amplifying Black Professionals in WordPress”, which you can rewatch the session on YouTube.

Wisdom for WordPress New Comers

Before finishing the podcast, Destiny gave some advice to people who are jumping into WordPress or attending a community event like WordCamp for the first time.

“Everyone is more friendly than you’re probably anticipating. Don’t hesitate to initiate a conversation or raise your hand during a speaker session. If you have a question, we’re all learning together – no one is a super expert. I think you’ll find that when you just poke a little, that wall will crumble faster than you would expect,” advises Destiny.

For a new website, you will need both a domain (your site address) and hosting (where your content will live). But where do you go for these services?

Some people like to keep it all separate by using a different company for each. But that’s not always the best option. In this article we’ll explain why choosing a single company for your domain and website hosting is often better.

The misconception about domains and hosting

If you ask your friends for advice or search online forums, you might hear that you need to keep your domain registrar and hosting separate, with a different company for each. But this is simply not true. 

Consider just a few of the advantages of housing the two products under the same roof:

• Single point of contact
• Manage domain and hosting through the same account
• Customer support can help you with both products at once
• Easier DNS management
• Avoid back and forth between providers

So why do people recommend keeping these services separately?

This myth originated in the days when domain registrars focused mainly on the domains themselves. Twenty years ago, most providers were new companies trying to balance demand and services with their bottom line. Lots of small companies were entering the ring and had to cut corners just to compete, often over-promising and under-delivering. So it was difficult to find a company you could trust.

Complicating matters, most registrars that did offer hosting treated it as an afterthought, neglecting key investments in the hardware, security, and support needed for reliable hosting. If customers found the hosting inadequate, they may have had difficulty moving to a better provider.

But with today’s more robust and stable tech market, these problems are a thing of the past (much like the <blink> tag has vanished from nearly all websites). Web professionals now recognize that there is no danger in registering your domains with the same company that provides your hosting.

Your domains and hosting in one place

Instead of trying to find two companies for your domain and your hosting, why not use your time researching the single best company for your website? Here are some extra reasons that it makes more sense. 

Convenience 

One provider for both domain and hosting means management is much simpler. With all your website-related services in one place, it’s easier to update settings, renew services, and troubleshoot any challenging issues. You also won’t need to deal with multiple interfaces and logins.

Seamless integration

With just one provider, the integration between domains and hosting will usually be much smoother. Your setup will be quicker because the connection between the two accounts is closer and DNS management is much easier to handle.

Technical support

When domains and hosting have the same provider, you can rely on a single point of contact for technical support. Your support team will have a clear understanding of both your domain and hosting setup, which means faster and more efficient troubleshooting and problem resolution.

Compatibility and optimization

Some hosting providers offer specific optimizations or features tailored to their own domain services. So when you keep them together, you can take advantage of these optimizations, ensuring better performance, security, and compatibility between your domain and hosting.

Billing and renewals

Managing billing and renewals is more streamlined when you have both domain and hosting with one provider. You receive consolidated invoices and reminders, simplifying the payment process and helping you avoid potential disruptions caused by missed renewals.

Choosing a trusted and reliable provider

A quick search will show that most of the larger hosting providers also offer domain registration services. But with so many options, choosing the right one can be a daunting task. 

There are four important questions to ask when choosing a hosting provider.

1. How does the provider manage its servers?

Every website, email, online game, and mobile app sits on a server somewhere in the world.

When considering your hosting provider, you should find out how they manage their servers, especially for shared hosting, which is a common option for smaller websites.

Does the company overload servers with too many separate accounts, causing downtime and outages, or does it treat all hosting with respect, ensuring that even the most inexpensive options get the same great service?

All Namecheap servers for Shared, Reseller, VPS, and EasyWP (WordPress) Hosting use the latest hardware technologies, which is a combination of servers with enterprise components. All our servers come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. 

For monitoring, we use a card in the server that has spares onsite, as well as same-day or next-day replacements from our vendors. For your safety, we always follow the best practices in security and network protection.

We host a high number of accounts and provide real-time data for optimal server-loading policies. We also avoid the cost-cutting strategies other hosting providers use, such as overloading physical hardware to maximize profit margins. 

Instead, we only load servers with half the accounts that our competitors do using similar hardware. With growth, we add new servers when existing servers reach their optimal load. 

Our customers frequently find Namecheap hosting to be superfast, so feel free to try out our speeds for yourself.

2. Does the hosting provider use a datacenter?

All hosting provider servers should be located in at least one data center. These include registry interaction services, DNS servers, email servers, database servers, and hosting servers.

Namecheap only uses higher-level datacenters, Tier 3 or above. These include fully redundant power, cooling/environmental controls, and physical security, and they must be located in areas at the lowest risk from natural disasters.

Namecheap runs redundant power to all of our shared hosting servers, which means there are two or more physical power supplies. We have never experienced a power issue with either our primary or redundant power feeds, but for extra safety, each server has two power supplies, connected to two separate power distribution systems, battery backups, and generators.

When choosing our datacenters, we consider:

• Cables and paths into the building with multiple bandwidth carriers on-site.
• Fuel to power the onsite generators if the main power goes out.
• Coldwater storage onsite for cooling the environmental systems in the event that the water supply is disrupted.
• Proven redelivery contracts for any consumables that provide power.

At Namecheap, we are extremely careful in our datacenter selection to ensure all customer data is protected.

3. How is the Hosting Provider’s Network?

In order to deliver content to a global audience, a good hosting provider needs a fast and reliable network that connects all of its datacenters. This network must have the capacity for natural usage growth and traffic spurts, as well as sufficient protection against DDOS or other attacks on services.

A high-quality network involves a number of different providers, ensuring constant service even if part of the network is disrupted. The network must also employ top-rated network hardware—routers, switches, and firewalls.

Some hosting providers rent network capacity as bandwidth or data transfer from their server provider to save money and resources. Namecheap avoids this, but instead, we’ve built our own network, which has the ability to switch to different servers when one is unavailable. 

This network has multiple routers, each with multiple routing engines, power supplies, and network meshes, and it means we’ve enjoyed 100% network for a long time.

We have also built our own system to protect against DDoS attacks.

4. What about Customer Support?

Some hosting providers outsource their tech support. This leads to support personnel unfamiliar with the products and lacking motivation to provide excellent service. As a result, bugs, errors, and other user difficulties aren’t properly communicated to the provider for resolution.

Namecheap support couldn’t be more different. We manage our own 24/7 support team and hire the best people to assist customers at every stage of their journey. Our CS team is committed to providing excellent support and ensuring every problem is fully resolved.

We have separate support teams for domains, hosted services, and SSL, and each team knows its products inside and out. The teams are also categorized into three levels. Levels 1 and 2 are customer-facing and handle sales, technical, and general questions. Our Level 3 team focuses on operations as well as research and development.

The way our support training works, you’re much more likely to speak to an expert who can help you across multiple issues than you are to be transferred from one department to another.

The result? Our team delivers an extremely high level of customer support.

Why Namecheap?

At Namecheap, we take our tech seriously, investing in top-of-the-line equipment and staff to ensure your websites are fast, experience 99.9% uptime, and are easy to manage. This means up-to-date cPanel access and a dashboard that is specific to EasyWP. We integrate domain registration and hosting so you can get up and running super fast. And even with all of that, we still crush our competitors in terms of our excellent pricing and support.

Our size and our buying power allow us to leverage economies of scale at every level. We pass these savings on to our customers and offer great value hosting options. This includes Shared Hosting and EasyWP, one of the fastest and most affordable managed WordPress hosting options around.

With Namecheap, it’s easy to find an available domain and the hosting plan that’s right for your specific needs. 

Jarrott Brown is a deputy sheriff with a side gig – he runs Diplomatic Lawn Care, a landscaping and lawnmowing company.

Jarrott has been pushing a mower since he was eight years old. To him, mowing grass wasn’t just a chore – it was an opportunity to earn pocket money. This influenced Jarrott years later when he was deciding on a part-time activity. He started a business to help the community keep their lawns spick and span.

The problem – the local market is saturated with people and companies offering landscaping services. To stand out, Diplomatic Lawn Care positions itself online with a professional website that Jarrott created himself with Hostinger AI Website Builder.

Lawn Enforcement

If you’re a homeowner in an American suburb, one of your chief responsibilities is maintaining a perfect lawn. Take care not to let it overgrow or brown, or your property might be deemed an eyesore.

Diplomatic Lawn Care is there to prevent that from happening.

The company’s current iteration traces its roots to 2011. Back then, Jarrott and his cousin joined forces and started offering landscaping services to the community. The pair quickly attained a small but loyal customer base.

“I still have a customer, an elderly gentleman, whose yard I’ve been taking care of since 2011. We have an excellent working relationship,” Jarrott says.

The business had to cease operations in 2014 due to other engagements. Since then, Jarrott kept thinking about the best way to relaunch the company. In February 2023, he reintroduced Diplomatic Lawn Care with a business website.

“I decided to create a website because it gives people the opportunity to see the different services that I offer.”

Since then, Diplomatic Lawn Care has become a successful side hustle with a clearly defined ideological core.

“We currently provide personalized services to about 28 customers. We shoot for long-term customers who are almost like our family,” Jarrott shares.

Easier Done Than Said

Built with Hostinger Website Builder, Diplomaticlawncare.com is the company’s digital business card and main channel of client acquisition.

“The majority of our customers learn about us through the website – I would say about 75 to 80%,” Jarrott reveals. “Previously, we tried word-of-mouth marketing, passing out flyers, direct door mailers, things of that nature. It just wasn’t effective.”

Jarrott reveals that Diplomatic Lawn Care is the first website he’s ever built.

“I found out about Hostinger AI Website Builder on YouTube. It took me no time at all to actually have the website up and running, and it was really easy. Now, my site gives me a professional presence in the industry and lets me compete with the big players in my area,” Jarrott smirks.

Once the website was up, Jarrott needed to put the word out. He did just that by implementing SEO strategies and utilizing Hostinger AI Builder’s integrated SEO tools.

The result – a professional website with AI-generated SEO-friendly content pieces. Now, anyone in Jarrott’s area googling relevant keywords knows that he’s there to help.

Saving Time and Effort

A business like Jarrott’s is built around the notion of saving time. If the tools and platforms Diplomatic Lawn Care relies on do not contribute towards this goal, they must make way for better alternatives.

“We give people the opportunity to spend time with their family and cherish those moments that they would spend doing lawn care. That’s what happened to me when I chose Hostinger. It streamlined the process of creating my website and, ultimately, gave me back my time,” Jarrott reflects.

In fact, Jarrott has already put the time he’s saved to good use.

Knowing how simple the process is, he has since created a second website, Henrico Junk Removal. Lawn care and junk removal often go hand in hand, so it made sense to create an additional site for such services. This time, Jarrott used the builder’s AI Tools to craft it. It was so easy that Jarrott plans to keep building websites.

“Hostinger AI Website Builder takes seconds for the AI to process the information you’ve given it and then generate a website. The result was spot-on to what I wanted – it came up with the layout and content for the site. The only thing I had to do from there on was tweak it to my liking. It definitely cut down on a lot of the guesswork that it takes to build a website from the ground up,” shares Jarrott.

Aspirations for the Future

While it is currently a part-time commitment for Jarrott, he has big plans for the future of the business.

“At the moment, Diplomatic Lawn Care is just me and a couple of other part-time employees. When I retire, I’ll probably go full-time with it and scale the business all the way. That means a broader range of services, multiple employees, multiple locations,” Jarrott says.

He’s already taken the first steps – Diplomatic Lawn Care is steadily growing with two websites people can easily find on Google.

“I’m going to keep on developing more websites and enhancing them. I wish Hostinger continues to grow and helps me scale my business as it does,” Jarrott winks.

Get your business site off the ground with Hostinger in minutes, just like Jarrott did! Try Hostinger AI Website Builder.