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Special Guest Mohammad Shifat Hossain, Product Manager at xCloud
https://xcloud.host/managed-hosting
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohammad-shifat-hossain-a04610112
#1. How often is a ‘slow site’ actually just a badly built one — and do you tell clients that, or let them blame their host?”
#2. The Containerization Trade-off
“Docker gets sold as ‘freedom’ — consistency, portability, no more ‘works on my machine.’ But what freedom did it cost you? Where has containerization actually made things more rigid or complex?”
#3. Security as a Layered System
“If someone only had budget or time for one layer of Cloudflare’s stack — CDN, WAF, or DDoS protection — which would you tell them to prioritize first, and what real incident changed your mind on that ordering?”
#4. The Caching vs. Database Tension
“Redis often gets bolted on to fix a slow MySQL or MariaDB query instead of fixing the query itself. Where’s the line between ‘this needs caching’ and ‘this needs a schema or index rethink’?”
#5. Product Thinking Inside Engineering
“A lot of technical teams treat product management as a layer that slows engineering down. What’s a moment where product thinking actually saved you from building the wrong thing technically?”
- Mohammad, if you could go back to the beginning of your career journey, what advice would you give yourself?
This Week’s Sponsors
Jetpack: LifterLMS
Ninja Forms: Ninja Forms
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:22.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back to the WP-Tonic show. This is episode 1023. In this show, we’re going to be talking about all things hosting. We’ve got a true expert with us. We’ve got Sharaf Hussain with us. He’s the product manager at xCloud. Um, great guy. He, um, volunteered to come on the show. Um, I am a happy xCloud user, I want to point out. Um, it’s one of our major hosting suppliers. And, um, like I say, we’re going to be talking about everything about hosting. So Sherif, and I’m probably— pardon?
[00:01:05.420] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah, Johnson, it’s Shifa.
[00:01:09.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Shifa.
[00:01:09.800] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah.
[00:01:10.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Um, so Shifa, I butcher everybody’s name, Shifa. So, um, it’s a laughable situation, but the tribe’s got used to it. So, Shifa, would you like to give a quick introduction?
[00:01:30.920] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah. So thanks a lot, Jonathan, for having me on the show. Just a few words about me and what I do. I’m Shifa, the product manager of xCloud. I see the product very closely, more than anyone else in our office. So I get to see what new features are coming and what users need. And like what we are gonna ship, talk with, like, I speak with everyone around our team members and also with our users. And I, I can do this all day. Like, I really enjoy it. And yeah, like hosting things fascinates me. Like, I started my job in the hosting industry from the beginning because the servers are always, like, you know, exciting to me. So yeah, these are like a few words about me. xCloud is a control panel and a hosting service. So we provide servers. We have some great partners who provide us with reliable machines. And also, users can integrate their own VPS with xCloud and manage. So if you have a GCP server or a Herzen server, you can use xCloud as a control panel to make your machine, like, you know, workers or fastest to host WordPress sites.
[00:03:04.360] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
More importantly, in xCloud, it’s now possible to host any type of site or app. So yeah, we will talk about more.
[00:03:14.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, we’re going to go in a big dive, and I’ve got my co-host with me, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:03:23.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, folks, my name is Kurt Von Ahnen. I own an agency called Mañana No Más, and, uh, we also do a lot of great work with the folks over at WP-Tonic.
[00:03:32.940] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Um, before we go into the meat and potatoes of the show, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:03:43.370] – Speaker 4
WP-Tonic is sponsored by Jetpack. Managing WordPress sites shouldn’t mean stitching together a pile of disconnected plugins. Jetpack brings security, performance, publishing, growth, and AI tools together in one WordPress-native toolkit. Use what you need: Backup, Scan, Boost, Social, Videopress, Stats, and more. All with modernized dashboards built into WP Admin. For your site or your client’s sites. See what Jetpack can do. Jetpack.com. WP-Tonic is sponsored by Ninja Forms, and let’s talk about one of their powerful tools: conditional logic. Conditional logic is the clearest example. Every rule for the whole form lives in one panel instead of being buried field by field. On client work, Build speed and low maintenance are part of your margin. A form that is fast to configure and that a client can run afterward without coming back means less friction during the build and less support load after the handoff. Ninja Forms, powerful and genuinely easy to work with without being dumbed down. To learn more, go to ninjaforms.com.
[00:05:03.080] – Jonathan Denwood
We are coming back, folks. Uh, wanna point out we’ve got some special offers from the sponsors. Plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins, services, anything that you might need if you’re a power user, freelancer, or small agency users. To get all these goodies, just go over to wp-tonic.com/deals. wp-tonic.com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved tribe? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. So let’s go straight into it. Um, you know, um, I think it’s always a, you know, a balance between hosting and how a website’s been built. Now we’ve got emphasis here on WordPress, but there’s other, there’s other kind of self-hosted, um, like Joomla, Drupal, a load of others. And then you’ve got SaaS, haven’t you? But, um, when it comes to hosting, You know, hosting tends to be blamed and sometimes it’s justified, but the other time it’s how the website been configured. Have you got any insights about how agencies should deal with this? Um, at all? It’s a big question though, isn’t it?
[00:06:27.170] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah. Yeah. Like it’s a very like important question to start with. And like, honestly, like, uh, the more often than the people want to admit, like, I believe it’s a combination of both. So like sometimes the host really is the problem. Like the server may be underpowered, badly configured, or like, you know, uh, simply not suitable for traffic or, or the workload. But quite often the hosting company gets like blames for the problems that are Actually inside the WordPress site itself, like you can, like, uh, you can move a site to a bigger server and still face the same problem. Like if the site is carrying a huge database, uh, oversized images, massive GIFs, and too many plugins, and most importantly, like inefficient queries. Like regular users don’t understand the difference between these things. And also a lot of like CSS or JS blocking the pages from rendering. Like, so I try not to start with the blame. Like I start like on my support team, start with the investigation. So, so we, we totally look at the system first, like the WordPress application, the database and PHP workers, because in xCloud with every server you get the ability to adjust the PHP workers and memory limit.
[00:08:00.320] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
There is no locking, it’s your server. So you get full privilege from these settings to full root access. So you have the power to look like what needs to be, you know, identified. That is the main thing. Like in many hosts, like you don’t get this opportunity to look for it, then how can you fix it? So First of all, you need to see like what’s causing it. So we help regular users to first identify like what’s causing it. So yeah, like, like if the site is badly optimized, like we tell the customers in a polite way, like your site is bad. We don’t tell that. We kind of say like, like this site needs some optimization like first rather than you just upgrade because we don’t want to upsell ourselves in that way, like just go and upgrade because xCloud gives you one-click server resize. That’s also helpful for, you know, smaller agencies to start with a smaller server and they grow like, you know, gradually. So, so, so it should be like constructive. Like we should say, like we should not say like your site is bad. We should say like, here is the part that creating the bottleneck.
[00:09:15.880] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Like, here is the evidence and here is what we can do about it. Like, I’d like to share a real case here. Like, one case, like, recently, like, made this very clear. Like, a customer was— came to us, like, saying, like, his, like, his site was failing on the Core Web Vitals. So he was kind of, like, very frustrated and was, like, you know, like, he took a very big server with us. So He didn’t reach out first. Like he’s a regular user. He wanted to help himself. He resize himself like from 2GB to 4GB size. And then like we take some time from him, like, and then investigated the site and like found some interesting facts. Like I would like to share, like, like those who run agencies or, uh, are developers, like they can understand like these pretty things, but it’s very tough for regular users. Like, we found that the whole— the full homepage of that client was around 21 megabytes. So, and some GIFs were like larger than 39 MB. So I’m not making this up, like, these are real stats, like, uh, like we have investigated this. So, and, and more than 30 stylesheets, like, were blocking the page.
[00:10:38.040] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So each time, like, whichever host you like use or how fast it is or how caching, like these things needs to be handled separately. So this is like part of the thing like which we educate our users also. Like, so that’s why we give this PageSpeed and other crucial features inside xCloud so that they themselves can understand like what’s causing this. And yeah, like the answer was not simply like install a better cache plugin, add CDN, or resize your server. So Jonathan, back to you. Like I think like it’s a, um, like I believe like it’s a combination of both.
[00:11:29.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s so complicated, isn’t it? Because You got so many different types of hosting providers, you know, from the really ridiculously cheap to, um, you know, mid-tier to higher level. There’s such— and there’s such expectations about what a hosting company should provide. You know, how much support they should provide. That’s really around the website, how it’s been built. And there’s no, there’s no kind of concrete, you know, boundary between what’s the hosting provider’s responsibility and whoever developed the website. It’s all It’s all intermingled in, in a kind of a bit of a hot mess, but it is what it is, isn’t it? Um, all you can do is be helpful and educate and, but you gotta be prepared that some of the clientele you are gonna lose because that doesn’t matter how helpful, they just don’t want to know. So over to you, Kurt.
[00:12:51.130] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I just, I think I’m going to be the one that’s going to be willing to take the hit here, the transparent one. I think customers mainly, but even I would say a large chunk of agency clients don’t even understand the difference in the hosting. Like, like when you shop and you say, well, this is what GoDaddy offers and this is what Cloudway offers, this is WP Engine and this is, this is Conversio, and you get kind of lost. It’s almost like shopping for a new laptop. Right? It’s got— you get so lost in all the features and all the stats and all the numbers that, that people lose focus on what they actually are shopping for. And then like, if you’re looking at Google PageSpeed reports, you know, it’s always going to tell you what, like, the first thing to paint’s red, the last thing. So when they look at those things, if they haven’t done a deep dive themselves or really trained themselves in these areas, they really are at kind of a loss. And so I can see why people would jump in and go, oh well, I’m just going to push the button and upgrade this server real quick.
[00:13:57.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
But they do it and then they get like no result. Then they go, oh well, the hosting must suck. Well, it’s not the hosting fault. It’s like you have some work to do, um, and that is like a whole service unto itself. And I don’t even know— I, I’ve tried to look up like where’s a good— like for me to send a client because to Jonathan’s point, how much of it is our responsibility? So I’ll have a client with like a horribly slow website and I’ll go look at it, go, oh, you got a lot of work to do. You hear, let me give you some assets, some training, some tutorials on how to do this, or you can hire us to do it, but I can’t do it for you for free. And then that’s kind of where things turn into like this weird, um, like when the phone company first split up and they would argue whether it was the phone’s problem or the line’s problem. You know, when the phone didn’t work, I feel like hosting’s like that. Like, people argue about whether the hosting’s bad or the website needs work, and in lots of cases there’s a third party, which is the agency that built it, that didn’t know what the heck they were doing either.
[00:14:57.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s really frustrating. So how do you, how do you approach those conversations or deal with it when it, like, it’s an agency type person and they’re representing 50 or 75 websites?
[00:15:10.050] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Absolutely. Thank you, Carl, for those questions. Yeah, we have so many agencies with whom we are so closely connected in our community and Slack channels. What I can say, around 50% of users, customers of xCloud are technical and 50% are non-technical. We here, like, kind of, like, we don’t have any paid support till now. Like, we treat every customer the same till the point, but yeah, like, the agencies, like, they want some proofs. And if you follow xCloud from, like, since our launch, it’s the agencies, like, who, like, I want to give them credit always. Like, it was the agencies, like, who discovered us because we didn’t run any, like, you know, ads or campaigns or something like that. Like, it’s the agencies, like, who compared with the pictures. Like, they, like, gave, like, genuine portfolios, like, what their site was in previous host and what’s in xCloud. Because we, like, we want to train them. We want to, you know, like, we communicate with them. I think our team is more reachable now. Like, I can bet this, like, we are more easily reachable than any other host. Like, we communicate with the clients in such a way that we are very near to them always.
[00:16:46.760] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So we make them understand where they are coming from and what we do with proofs and the controls they give, like they have in xCloud. Because we can genuinely like have comparisons like their previous host, like what their software versions were and what they are getting in xCloud, how we are maintaining the servers over and over again, how we are updating it. If, if, if there is a new PHP version, how easy it is to adapt it in his servers because we give the patches, we maintain the CVEs for them. Like if there is any security patches, of Ubuntu, customers can configure with single button so that it’s not about always speed or, you know, I think the speed is the key, but in long term we try to make the agency users understand like xCloud is a total package in terms of security too and also management because lots of our features are built in such a way that is for agencies like We have built-in WP Update Manager and the backup settings. Like you can enable backup at once for all of your hundreds of sites. You can update a single plugin on your hundreds of sites.
[00:18:04.860] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So these were like made for agencies. Like xCloud was designed for agencies, like from since beginning for each and every feature. So they see the comparisons like how they find themselves as a regular user on other hosts and how they get the benefits of agency features in xCloud. Because most of our features are designed in such a way that they can perform in bulk operations and a user who is managing— like we have technical users, like they are managing 500 sites in xCloud. So It’s easy to call them all that way. We couldn’t have used— and these numbers based on the number of agents we have, managing 500 sites. Yeah. And more in the next cloud. Nice.
[00:18:54.930] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m looking forward to when my agency is managing 500 sites.
[00:18:59.880] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Let’s do it, Kurt. Yeah.
[00:19:03.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
So the next question that we had dealt more with like how things are architected, right? So we say that the Docker gets sold as like freedom and we talk about containerization. Where all the files for each package are all in one space and everything’s kind of held. Where do you think that that’s helped? Like, has it made things more rigid or more complex, or is it giving people that actual freedom that they think they have?
[00:19:30.790] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah, so first of all, like, we have built xCloud fully scratch, like each and every code is ours. So what I’m trying to say here is like, it’s more customizable. So we can, like how fast we have grown, like the major decision was for this one, like we want to grow really fast. We want to listen to our users. We want to implement those as fast as possible. So this was our vision. Like It was, it was the company founder’s vision. Now our founder is Emasif Rahman. So he, he loves servers. Like he tried all the hosts, all the panels around the globe. And he wanna like, you know, kind of man, like who want to solve the problems which he have faced around the host and panels. And that’s why we didn’t build xCloud on top of Docker. I am not saying Docker is not good or bad. I’m trying to say that with our vision, like the without Docker was the goal because we wanted to scale at a level that we Docker shouldn’t be our, like, you know, a thing which creates backlog for us. And the way we are, like, you can check our changelog, like each week we ship tremendous feature.
[00:20:56.080] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
It’s not about like now it’s cloud code and we are doing live codes. You can just simply, you know, check like how consistently we have shipped features and all. So Docker is like, like you have to think about layer by layer. Like right now in our architecture, each and every features are like separate products. Like the server creation have a separate team, the WordPress team is different. The WordPress site management and backup, we have separate team, you know, designed for these main features. So what I’m trying to say, like, if it had been Docker, then we had to follow their architecture and Node and all. So, so we, we, we, we want to scale like from since beginning, like we wanted to make things customizable, keep things customizable so that none of the things were like blocking for us. But yeah, like if you like, anyone can install Docker and install a WordPress site, they wouldn’t need like, you know, xCloud maybe because it’s all in one package. You already know that it’s open source. You can host it in a VPS. And go on. But yeah, in terms of security, Docker is best. So we also follow, try to follow their structure and strategy.
[00:22:26.160] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Like I’m trying to like keep this in short, like in xCloud, each site has different user. So think about it, like if a user install a null plugin on his site, which is still very common practice nowadays, and people come to our support and We check that it’s a null plugin and their site got hacked. But if a site is infected, then only that site user is infected under that server. So other sites are kept, you know, as it is. They are not infected. So we try to follow these things like since day one. So, and yeah, like I wouldn’t say like we are taking any freedom of any users. So users don’t think, the user shouldn’t think about like what’s going on behind the scene. If it’s Docker or if it’s like our own code, like we are proud what we have built. Each and every code belongs to us. We didn’t use any sort of library or stuff. So we understand these are our languages and that’s how we can easily like listen to our users and make the changes.
[00:23:41.600] – Speaker 4
Nice.
[00:23:42.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Thank you, Jonathan.
[00:23:44.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So let’s go on to security and I’m going to, I’m going to change the question slightly. You know, you know, you know, we all been dealing over the last couple of years how the market is going to be changed by AI. But recently, especially with WordPress, there’s been a number of security core patches that have been, um, pushed out. And you’ve had a lot of, um, news stories about security and AI and how AI has been used to find weaknesses in various platforms. And do you— what do you think What kind of discussions have you been having with your team and how, how do you see the landscape in the next year? Do you think it’s just going to get more and more core updates because security bugs are found? How do you think the landscape is going to be in the next year?
[00:24:56.610] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah, so like this is like, uh, like, apparently, like, bad side of AI, like, the attacks are like, you know, really kind of not predictable, but consistent. So these are coming in batches. And these are huge. Like, it’s like, from attackers, and like, it’s like, they, I think they got easy opportunity, like that kind of thing. But like, we try to get prepared, like, in step by step, process. Like I want to like share this, like recently we have like, this was a very, you know, a long discussion with the Cloudflare team. Like we now have Cloudflare Enterprise inside xCloud. So like this was, you know, requested from day one from our users. Like lots of users couldn’t come from other hosts. They liked us, they are already using it, but their clients were not comfortable to come without Cloudflare Enterprise in xCloud. So we cracked that deal last month. We brought Cloudflare Enterprise in xCloud. We didn’t enforce it like, like other hosts do. Like our pricing is very simple. Like if you need it, come and use it kind of stuff. But this is essential and important scenario. Like that’s why we did We did some major partnership with one of the leading security companies, also PaxTech.
[00:26:34.070] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So it’s, it’s their team is fantastic. They don’t sleep. They do all the hard works for us. So the client, so, so these things are becoming kind of essential right now. We cannot call them as simply add-ons. And yeah, like, like the WAF rules are very important. Like in xCloud, we are giving users all the facilities, like they can integrate their own Cloudflare account with xCloud also, and they can also enjoy all the security and stuff. If their site is enterprise level, they need more bandwidth, CDN, and also another other extra security DDoS features, then they can Enjoy Cloudflare Enterprise through our account. So this was a very costly deal for us. Like we are not making money here. Honestly, I’m speaking about we, who is— so this is like kind of in Cloudflare Enterprise is insanely costly, but we tried to keep the price as low as for our regular users and they are, you know, very grateful like for this offer. And that’s why like We don’t have any plan to, you know, do any profits in this era, at least like after like, you know, reaching a certain amount of target or amount of sites, Cloudflare can do better partnership for us.
[00:28:01.210] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
But once again, like we are investing here for our users so that, you know, they can rely, like they can do their business and keep their servers and sites, uh, headache, like, away. And, and yeah, like, uh, these were the, like, main things, like the Cloudflare WAF rules and other stuff. We brought all the features inside xCloud. They can allow good bots and block bad bots.
[00:28:31.920] – Jonathan Denwood
And yep, yeah, I think, I think You know, long as you’re with somebody like xCloud that takes their responsibilities seriously and you keep the plugins up to date and you know, you just do the basics, you know, secure passwords, not too many admin accounts, you know, the real basics, I think you can avoid. And you’re reasonably fussy about what you’re installing on your website. Um, you know, this is the contradiction because a lot of people now are going to be using vibe coding. They’re going to be producing their own plugins, aren’t they? They’re going to be, um, coding stuff that they wouldn’t even attempt, and they’re going to be installing it and It’s, it’s a difficult situation because we— I’ve oscillated, and other agencies have different policies. I, I know there’s other agencies, if they’re managing a website, they just won’t— they basically take the admin away from the client. They basically say, we’re managing the website. And you know, we’ve got the responsibility, so we have admin access and you don’t. But that, I’ve always found that a little bit queasy myself, um, because it is the client’s website, isn’t it? Um, but yeah, they own it.
[00:30:21.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Um, So it is difficult, but, um, but it’s great to hear that you’re, you’re taking security at WP-Tonic. You know, um, I pay for MailCare, um, I use MailCare on all our clients’ websites and it does cost me. They’re great people and it’s a great security package, but it’s not cheap and And but I take my responsibilities to my clients seriously. So we install Mailcare and they’ve been a fantastic partner of WP-Tonic for a while. But I think it’s a great time for us to go for our middle break. I’m going to butcher it again. Shifat.
[00:31:15.270] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah.
[00:31:16.380] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, Shafat has been a great guest. It’s been a great conversation. Um, we’re going to go for our middle break and we’ll be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:31:26.590] – Speaker 4
Updating plugins and themes shouldn’t feel risky. That’s why over 300,000 WordPress users trust WP-Tonic. With just a click, you can safely roll back any plugin or theme.
[00:31:39.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
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[00:31:41.940] – Speaker 4
And with WP Rollback Pro, you can download premium plugins and themes, tools like Elementor, Gravity Forms, more. Track every rollback you do with detailed activity logs. Protect your workflow and take the stress out of updates. Learn more at wprollback.com.
[00:32:03.830] – Speaker 5
This podcast episode is brought to you by by LifterLMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training-based membership website, or any type of e-learning project, LifterLMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code PODCAST20. That’s PODCAST20. Enjoy the rest of your show.
[00:32:41.280] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast, everything about hosting. Um, it’s been a great discussion with Shafiq. Uh, um, so let’s go on. Um, I’m gonna just throw over to Kirk for the next the next question.
[00:33:01.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think the next question really— I almost feel like it is, um, niched to people that run dynamic websites because I think it’s a more important question for like learning management systems or WooCommerce sites or Fluent Cart sites or things like that. But like the idea of like caching versus like database usage, right? And so just a common thing, right? I’m an agency, I go into a customer’s new preexisting website. They say they’re having some problems with their students being able to sign in or sign out or see their certificates or whatever. And I’ll go in and I’ll see that there’s like 2 or 3 caching tools and like a performance optimization tool and a— and you go, well, wait a minute, like, You— this is a dynamic website. You can’t have all these caching things fighting with each other because it’s going to ruin the dynamic experience for the end user. But then if we even think outside of that niche, it’s— it’s so many people think, well, I’ll just throw on WP-Tonic here, and I’ve already got Breeze from my other, you know, where the site used to be hosted. And I’ve got— and I just think that no one I shouldn’t say no one.
[00:34:18.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think a lot of people struggle with what caching actually is and how it affects the database and how it’s displayed to end users. Do you have any insight that you could share with us?
[00:34:31.790] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah, so in xCloud, we often face this when a server is randomly hitting maximum CPU usage, like he has a 4GB server, which is good to host a regular community or, you know, dynamic website, not much thing. But then again, like we, what we like, you know, we have to, we have to, we several people investigates a lot. So we, we do like, yo, we take permission from user first because we don’t have any Like our support does not have any direct access to our clients’ websites or servers. So if they allow us permission via ticket, then it, then our support agents get like, you know, get activation to visit his server or site to investigate. And we keep all the logs so there, so users can see like what actions they are performing in events. And yeah, like most of the time when we do htop, we see like MySQL is taking a lot of CPU usage. So this is a pretty common scenario. So, so Redis is like absolutely, uh, you know, wonderful thing, a very useful thing. If you have Redis, then for repeated queries it is very helpful. It, it keeps your database server healthy.
[00:36:01.710] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
It’s fine. But the thing is like what people don’t understand, like it is not a bandage for a database problem. So Redis is helpful when you have regular queries and also repetitive queries. And so that’s fine, like safely to reuse the results. So it can help with WooCommerce membership, dynamic sites and all. But if a query is slow, because it is missing an index or scanning a huge table or joining data badly. So, so, so, so, so the queries is still bad. So this is the thing what people miss. So there, so there is a plugin which is called Query Monitor, which is absolutely also brilliant that helps to find out, you know, like which, which queries are doing what, like to which plugin this query belongs to. So these are like, you know, kind of important details of which we like, you also need to follow because just installing Redis or Object Cache Pro will not, you know, forfeit these kind of issues. So we usually ask like which query is slow. If the client cannot answer, then we take his permission to SSH, check if MySQL is doing it. Then we do further stuffs with Query Monitor and like, you know, checking if any query is sleeping or taking more time.
[00:37:38.570] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So, and then like from where that query’s coming, like if it’s generating, plugin is generating the query or if it’s happening with every request. So sometimes The correct fix is, uh, like is an index, but, uh, sometimes it’s clearing all data, reducing the joining queries and changing the data structure. Or even if we can identify like which plugin is causing this issue, then we tell the client like, you need to share this information and query, which is killing your server to your team. And we like this, we have helped so many plugin team, like they’ve patched a better version for WP-Tonic and the client side is healthy. So, so the other part is like, like invalidation, like cache data is useful until it is wrong. So you get my point. So if it’s, if the database query is not wrong, then the cache data is helpful. So that is why caching strategy, what I believe needs a measurement, just not an installation. So we should take away, like, what we often do, like, we, when a client reports these, and we, with htop in live monitoring, if we see MySQL is taking most of the CPU and RAM, we then try to check which query, you know, is taking more time than database load.
[00:39:15.500] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
And yeah, he said—
[00:39:17.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
Shifat, if I could follow up though, I want to— and hopefully I’m not interrupting you too badly.
[00:39:23.180] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
No, no.
[00:39:25.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think people are going to hear this show, they’re going to listen to this and they’re going to go, but, but how does that happen? Like the average user? And like I said, I think most agencies they have a list like their tech stack, right? So maybe you, maybe you have a LearnDash website with a CRM and you’re running the sales through WooCommerce. In their mind, they’re like, these are three, you know, top-shelf plugins, right? They add the plugins and then they give the site to the customer. The customer starts selling courses and adding members and doing their thing. At what point does the Does the database have too many queries and slow down? Like, like people have a hard time identifying or understanding the problem you’re talking about because they don’t understand how they caused it.
[00:40:14.400] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah, right. Like, absolutely. Like as your sites grow and the databases grow, so like these, then the caching and stuff will help a lot. Like Redis, I have mentioned, like if, if like the query like how, like which plugin or software you are using. If it has good queries, then how much the database size has become and all, you do not need to worry about that all, that the caching thing can take care of this thing. So that’s, that’s the safest part. Like no one needs to worry about if they are using a better plugin or a better software and how the site is built. So That’s kind of, you know, safe. You, you, uh, that’s the problem when you don’t use it. And after using it, if you are still seeing problem, then you need to see like what’s like, like it, it should have been okay. So if, if you are growing enough, you, you must use caching. So first of all, you need to have, you know, uh, page cache. And then for database, you need object cache. And for object cache, Redis is absolutely fine. Their free version is great. We love that so much, we kept it inside xCloud since day one.
[00:41:35.930] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So, so, so it does its jobs beautifully. But this is a real, like, scenario what I have shared. Even after installing them, clients like kind of gets disapp— like the users gets a bit disappointed. Like, hey, I’m using your caching, your servers, but my servers or sites are slow.
[00:42:02.060] – Speaker 4
Yeah.
[00:42:03.130] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So, so that’s where, where we go deep and we make them understand, like, it’s not about the host, it’s how the, your site is built or the plugin is doing query. So like you need to fix this, otherwise no paid caching service or CDN service can, you know, keep the load away from the server.
[00:42:27.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Jonathan, over to you.
[00:42:30.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think, I think all these, this is all great, but based on my experience, it depends on the size, you know, of the website, you know, um, I think If you just keep things up to date and you just keep a common sense about what you’re installing on your website, um, and have a staging site. And I think, I think if you’ve got a few hundred clients and that, customers, I think you should be able to afford some maintenance support package. From either the, you know, the agency or from some other source. Um, I think, I think a lot of what we’ve been talking is when you, you’re getting into larger websites and really there’s no excuse for not having like reps, having eyes on the website that really can deal with these issues. So a lot of it is a lot of people, this is just my opinion, they’re doing quite well and they just don’t want to hire anybody to keep an eye on things until things start going wrong. But that’s just my opinion. I just got, I’m going to change question 5 a little bit, you know, like I hinted at the beginning of this conversation is there’s a lot of hosting providers.
[00:44:07.070] – Jonathan Denwood
You know, I think in some ways you’re kind of positioning— xCloud is kind of positioning itself as a main competitor to Cloudways and to Rocket.net. I kind of see them as two of your main competitors in some ways. How do you, how do you think, where do you think you are positioning yourself in the market of hosting? Did, are you, do you see it’s very broad or do you, how do you know if you try and market to everybody, you’re not marketing to anybody. So how do you and your team see how you’re positioning yourself in in the area of hosting?
[00:45:03.280] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. Like, this is a very important question. It matches with our vision, like from where we started xCloud. And it matches our founder’s vision, like we want to help small agencies to grow. So we grow with them, they grow with us, and that’s how like everything is structured in xCloud. So our like main vision was this, giving small agencies, you know, the power to grow with themselves. If you see like from features angle, like I believe like we have accomplished, I think, more than like anyone kind of thing because we now have enterprise-level CDN and enterprise-grade level security and form feature. And like we have, so like our main goal was in mid of June 2026 to go beyond WordPress and we also kind of accomplished that. So we, we kept the— what, like WordPress is our major goal for sure, but we, we don’t want to, you know, be a platform like where the regular agencies lose power. So we launched xCloud with NGINX, and then we have seen the demand with OpenLiteSpeed stack. We brought that now in xCloud. We have also Docker stack. So we started with xCloud, like, you know, on top of NGINX.
[00:46:53.440] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Our, our core structure, like our company, like the whole xCloud architecture is fully customized. And now we have NGINX, OLS, and also Docker. So anything can be hosted in xCloud. So we are, you know, our vision is much, much bigger than the competitors we have addressed. So recently, like, we have shipped 100 OpenClick applications in xCloud. So we’ll be adding more. So any self-hosted applications can be hosted inside xCloud too with a click. So that’s how, like, Big, we dream, we want to be, you know, a hosting platform who would like, who, with which you can host anything reliably. And, and the, and obviously like you get the powers because you will always have root access. You will always have the controls of your servers. Regular users don’t need that. We understand. So it’s there. So it’s up to them if they want to use it. So xCloud gives you the power so you can host anything like you want. The agencies have different criteria. They can host WordPress and how the industry is moving. Like people love Astro too. So anything they can host inside xCloud, so they don’t need to move to any other place for mailbox card.
[00:48:31.410] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Maybe we, we have tons of like, we got a very good European client, so they are a huge provider of mailbox. So inside xCloud, like without using our hosting, you can use our mailbox without hosting our, like without taking our server, you can enjoy Cloudflare Enterprise. So these are kind of like separate products inside xCloud. Even if you don’t take a server from us, host does not host any sites, you can take these benefits from xCloud. So then again, like, so yeah, we want to help all the agencies just like, come, what do you need? Let’s talk and let’s build together.
[00:49:19.450] – Jonathan Denwood
So, yeah, so I think what you’re saying is, you know, WordPress is really important, but you’re also building out a much larger vision, a much larger platform. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:49:37.090] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, looking at the time and looking at our questions, I think I’ll jump to the last one, and that’s our patented question, Shifat. If you could go back to the beginning of your career, like if you had your own time machine, your own TARDIS, if you watch Doctor Who, if you could go back to the beginning of your career, what’s the piece of advice you would give yourself?
[00:50:02.520] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So, my wish was that, if there was an opportunity, I could connect with users more quickly. So that was like my, you know, kind of thing. Like, I think I should have connected with our users faster than ever. That’s what we are doing in xCloud every day. My job hours and times, like I spend most of the day talking with our clients. Finding out their pain points, like what is bothering them or what they need, like what we are missing and how we can make their life easier so that we don’t make any wrong decisions. And I’m so blessed and glad that we didn’t build a feature in xCloud that we had to forfeit. And that was a total loss. Nobody used it. So recently, we’ve been giving client reports in xCloud. We have all the agencies, and they need to generate client reports for their clients. So I’m just saying that these kinds of features- like we don’t need to do R&D when we are so connected with our users. So xCloud has grown, you know, 200 times faster, I can say, but I wish I was connected with users long ago, so I think I could have generated this faster than ever.
[00:51:43.190] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
So yeah, we want to ship really quickly, but we also want to stay close to the problems that customers are actually facing. So we want to build, test, listen, and change our minds when the evidence tells us. So the bigger lesson is probably simple: stay curious, stay close to users, and don’t build in isolation.
[00:52:13.830] – Speaker 5
Yeah.
[00:52:14.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Nice.
[00:52:14.510] – Kurt von Ahnen
Thank you.
[00:52:16.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s been great—I’m going to wrap it up now. Shivat, you’ve been a great guest. What’s the best way for people to contact you and find out more about you and what you’re up to, Shivat?
[00:52:30.120] – Mohammad Shifat Hossain
Yeah, like I’m very reachable; my email is very easy. It’s [email protected]. And yeah, I have an open meeting link that I share everywhere. If you want to discuss something or join a podcast, I’m always available. I have a short meeting link, where you can schedule a meeting with me directly and talk to us. And talk to me, like, I, I, I will, I, I, I won’t say like I will make your website fast, but I can diagnose like what’s killing it. And I think that will be really helpful if we connect. Yeah.
[00:53:14.290] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll make sure that’s in the show notes. So thanks for that, Shivet. Um, so Kurt, what’s the best way to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:53:25.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m on LinkedIn, baby. I’m still pimping LinkedIn. I’m the only, uh, Kurt Von Ahnen on LinkedIn. Makes me easy to find. So, uh, hit the connect button, uh, and we’ll connect. We’ll have a short conversation. We’ll see how we can help each other.
[00:53:38.670] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Um, if you want to really support the show, folks, and we’re totally independent, the best way is to leave us a review— if you’re listening on your mobile. If you’re listening on iTunes or Spotify, it’s really easy. If you could leave us a review, we’d both really appreciate it. We will be back next week. We’ll see you soon, folks.
[00:54:03.700] – Speaker 5
Bye.
[00:54:04.290] – Speaker 6
Hey, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? And also, to keep up with the latest news, click wp-tonic.com/newsletter. We’ll see you next time.
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