Bottom Top line: Never, ever host a public website on your personal or business network. Pardon the mild profanity in the screenshot but this video by network engineer Serena from @serenashenetworks explains why very well.

The explanation might be a little more technical than you’re used to, but basically she’s describing the computer equivalent of someone breaking into a minor bank employee’s garage and finding the combination to the bank’s main vault. It would be a bad idea to keep such important information in an easily-accessed office, right? Turns out It’s just as bad an idea to keep important information on the same network as a public website.

(We won’t even talk about the perils of someone getting into your public website and, oh, say, infecting your entire home or corporate infrastructure with ransomware.)

LinkedIn was breached because an employee had an easily hacked website on a home computer. Similarly, the infamous “Panama Papers” scandal happened because a bank that provided secret offshore money-laundering accounts hosted its website on the same network as their internal financial documents.

Please don’t get me wrong — a well-maintained WordPress website on a credible provider’s server is going to be pretty darn secure. The problem is that do-it-yourselfers rarely take all the routine steps needed to keep their servers and websites secure, monitored, and up to date.

A public website is just that, a public website! A private network can have multiple, interlocking layers controlling who can access what and when. A website has to be visible to the world, and as a result it can be accessed continuously not only from actual people but bots, hackers, “researchers,” and other questionable actors.

Call your website the “front desk” your business. You wouldn’t keep the combination to your vault behind the front desk, and for the same reasons you shouldn’t keep your website inside your network.

If you or someone you care about is still hosting their website on a home computer or business network, have a talk with them about moving it out of their network and into a credible, off-site hosting company. There are hundreds of affordable, secure, and actively maintained companies out there — SiteGround, MDDHosting, HostWinds, Cloudways are all great, affordable offerings for smaller companies, and Pantheon, Pagely, ServeBolt, and others are awesome for large, mission-critical hosting.

But here’s the deal: even really, really bad hosting is still infinitely more secure than running your website on your personal or business networks.

Of course we’d be happy to help you chose the right hosting, help you move your site far away from of your personal or business network, and help make sure your WordPress website stays updated, backed up, and locked down tight. But there are plenty of other web professionals who can also help. It’s the right thing to do.