Key facts
- Craft CMS 5 needs PHP 8.2 or newer
- MySQL or MariaDB databases, with phpMyAdmin in Plesk
- Craft's queue run by a cron job rather than on page loads
- Document root set to the web/ folder
- Imagick or GD for image transforms, memory_limit set to suit
- Your Craft licence stays yours; we only host it
- £1 a day + VAT with daily backups and free SSL
Why agencies and in-house teams like Craft
Craft CMS is popular with design-led agencies because it gives editors clean, structured fields instead of a page builder, and gives developers full control of the templates with Twig. It's also more demanding on the server than a basic brochure site, so the hosting has to be set up with care.
Craft sites tend to be bespoke builds for businesses that care about their brand: architects, design studios, hospitality groups and professional firms. That usually means lots of large images, carefully built templates and an agency or freelance developer who deploys changes. Our job is to give that developer a predictable server and give you, the site owner, someone in the UK to call when they're not around.
How we configure Craft on dijitul hosting
- PHP: Craft 5 needs PHP 8.2 or newer, set per site in Plesk. Craft 4 runs on PHP 8.0.2 and later.
- Extensions: intl, mbstring, cURL, zip, PDO MySQL, and Imagick or GD for image transforms.
- Memory: memory_limit set to at least 256M, raised if the site generates large image transforms.
- Document root: the web/ folder, so .env, config and vendor files stay private.
- Queue: runQueueAutomatically switched off, with a cron job running php craft queue/run every minute. That keeps image transforms, search indexing and emails off visitors' page loads.
- Deployment: Git and Composer in Plesk, so your developer can run composer install and php craft up on deploy.
Moving a Craft site
We copy the project, database and asset volumes, set the .env values for the new database and site URL, and run php craft up to apply any pending migrations. Then we check that asset transforms regenerate, forms send and the control panel loads quickly. Testing happens on a temporary address before DNS changes. See website migration.
If your assets currently sit on Amazon S3 or another cloud volume, they can stay there; only the site moves.
Licences and updates
Craft Pro and plugin licences are tied to your account with Craft, not to your host, so moving to dijitul doesn't affect them. We look after the server, PHP and security. Craft and plugin updates are part of your site and should be done by your developer, ideally locally first and deployed through Git. Daily backups cover you if an update goes wrong.
For agencies hosting several Craft sites
If you're an agency with a portfolio of Craft builds, a single plan per site works, but you may prefer one place to manage them all. See agency white-label hosting, which is quoted. For a single site, order dijitul Complete Hosting.
Keeping a Craft site quick
Craft is fast when it's set up well and slow when it isn't. Beyond the server settings above, these make the biggest difference:
- Pre-generated transforms: setting generateTransformsBeforePageLoad, or warming transforms through the queue, avoids visitors waiting while images resize.
- Template caching: Twig {% cache %} tags around heavy navigation and listing blocks cut database queries sharply.
- Cloudflare for assets: images, CSS and JavaScript are cached at the edge, so the server only builds the HTML.
- devMode off in production: it's easy to leave on after a deploy, and it slows every request and exposes error detail.
If your site is slow today, we'll look at these during the migration and tell you what we changed.
Frequently asked questions
What hosting does Craft CMS need?
Craft CMS 5 needs PHP 8.2 or newer, MySQL or MariaDB (or PostgreSQL), common PHP extensions such as intl and mbstring, and Imagick or GD for images. It also benefits from a cron job running its queue. dijitul sets all of this up on UK Plesk hosting for £1 a day + VAT.
Why is my Craft CMS control panel slow?
Common causes are the queue running on web requests, heavy image transforms generated on the fly, a low PHP memory_limit and an old PHP version. Running the queue from cron, raising memory and using current PHP 8.x usually helps a lot. dijitul configures Craft this way by default.
Does moving hosts affect my Craft licence?
No. Craft and plugin licences belong to your Craft account and the site's licence key, not to the server. After a move the licence is still valid. If the domain changes, you may need to update the licence's domain in your Craft account.
How do I run the Craft queue with cron?
Set runQueueAutomatically to false in your general config, then add a scheduled task that runs php craft queue/run every minute from the project folder. In Plesk this is a Scheduled Task on the site. dijitul sets it up for you as part of hosting.
Can you host a Craft 3 site?
Yes. Craft 3 runs on older PHP 7.x versions, which we can run per site in isolation where our platform supports it. Craft 3 is no longer maintained, so we'd recommend planning an upgrade to Craft 5, which dijitul can quote for.
Related
Set it up and forget about it
Managed hosting, Plesk, Cloudflare DNS, daily backups and your domain for £1 a day + VAT. We move your site for you.