WordPress Maintenance
I offer WordPress Maintenance
After you have been handed your bright and shiny new WordPress website the work doesn’t stop there, a WordPress site needs to be actively maintained, keeping everything updated to ensure it’s not vulnerable to being hacked. This takes valuable time out of a working day. It’s obvious from my years of experience that many of my clients hope to manage a lot of WordPress website maintenance tasks themselves, which in theory is great, but often they require technical knowledge, a decent amount of time and a certain level of experience that most people simply do not have. I offer this service for a monthly fee if a client doesn’t feel they have the time or ability to carry it out.
When it comes to building a website, WordPress remained the leading Content Management System amongst all website designers, however, the platform is not suitable for everyone. Before I commit my clients to a WordPress website, I always make it clear that the site’s security, needs time and maintenance.
I offer WordPress Maintenance
After you have been handed your bright and shiny new WordPress website the work doesn’t stop there, a WordPress site needs to be actively maintained, keeping everything updated to ensure it’s not vulnerable to being hacked. This takes valuable time out of a working day. It’s obvious from my years of experience that many of my clients hope to manage a lot of WordPress website maintenance tasks themselves, which in theory is great, but often they require technical knowledge, a decent amount of time and a certain level of experience that most people simply do not have. I offer this service for a monthly fee if a client doesn’t feel they have the time or ability to carry it out.
When it comes to building a website, WordPress remained the leading Content Management System amongst all website designers, however, the platform is not suitable for everyone. Before I commit my clients to a WordPress website, I always make it clear that the site’s security, needs time and maintenance.
Why choose
What About a website?
My WordPress Maintenance service includes:
– Monitoring your site’s security
Ensuring that your site remains clean and free of malware or spam and lessening the chance of being hacked, which has become a big problem across the internet. I run security scans daily using either good free or premium security plugins to ensure that your site doesn’t fall prey to these malicious threats. I keep up with the latest news so I’m alerted to any new threats. I monitor my clients Google Search Central accounts for any malware reports ensuring that I fix any security loopholes immediately. I deploy ReCaptcha v3, antivirus and firewall technology in addition to the security scans to keep your site clean and secure.
When accessing your website, I only use very secure usernames and passwords with additional 2-step verification on a separate device.
– Checking Page Speed and Loading Time
Website page speed is an important factor for ranking on website searches, therefore, monitoring it regularly is essential. A slow website speed and load time can harm your site’s traffic as no one wants to wait for a page to load. I regularly clean out old posts, pages, and revisions stored in the database which drags down a site’s speed.
Keeping your site’s speed optimal, within the bounds of your hosting company is one of the most important tasks.
– Updating WordPress Plugins and Themes
A factor in a slow website and load time is old out of date plugins and themes. Apart from taking up a lot of database space, these redundant or unused plugins and themes can also compromise your site’s security.
As such, updating all WordPress plugins and themes is the most important factor in protecting your website along with removing any that are no longer useful.
I monitor all my websites from a central dashboard, the moment a new update is released for either a theme or a plugin, I ensure my sites are updated. I also monitor security reports which release information on any newly discovered vulnerabilities, to ensure this is either patched with an update or the offending plugin is removed.
After any updates, I check the site to see that it has not affected the website or its loading. If there is a problem, I will alert my client and then work with the plugin or theme developer to get the site working again.
– Taking regular backups
One of the major website maintenance tasks that need to be done is taking regular site’s backups to ensure that your website is safe and secure in the event that your site crashes or is hacked.
Backups are downloaded and stored on my separate server, away from the client’s host, so that in the event of the hack having originated from an infected hosting company, there is a clean backup ready to be restored. I also keep all my clients’ backups for up to a year as some malware can lie dormant on a site for up to 3 months, thus meaning that the past 3 months of backups could still contain the malicious code.
Backups are also useful in the event of a hosing company going bust, leaving a client without a functioning website. With a copy of all the website files, I can have it back up and running within a few hours on a new host.
– I Optimise website images
I keep an eye on the media folder where my clients update their own sites to ensure huge images are not uploaded to the website. Unoptimised images and media files are another major reason for sluggish website speed. I also add an additional plugin to reduce the image further. Where I run and update the content, every image is reduced in file size before it is uploaded.
– Carry out regular checks for broken links
I scan for broken links regularly. Broken links lead to 404 errors which are frowned upon by Google. Too many broken or dead links can get your site downgraded to a lower search ranking as this leads to a poor user experience, it also reflects badly on the site, giving the impression of a lack of care.
– Monitor domain, hosting and SSL Certificate renewal
As part of my update service, I will ensure that my client’s website hosting is up and running, reminding clients when the hosting, domain name or SSL certificate is due for renewal. Important renewal emails can easily be missed by busy clients who may not understand the implications, leading to the website being taken offline until payment or required confirmations are actioned.
– Peace of mind
My clients are able to get on with their job or even take a holiday, knowing that their website is in safe hands and being looked after.
Why do you need to maintain a WordPress website?
To keep your website safe from an attacker
The overwhelming reason to maintain a WordPress site is to keep it safe and secure. Without regular updates, a good firewall and security scans to monitor your website it can easily become vulnerable and fall prey to a hacker or become infected with malware.
A properly maintained website leads to a good user experience
Poorly maintained sites with broken links, errors and warnings, or slow loading times, will push the patience of visitors, leading them to click away from your site. Customers will be less trusting of your website and less likely to interact with your business if your site appears unprofessional or unsafe. WordPress sites utilise plugins (like apps) that are produced and maintained by third-party sellers. sometimes these become abandoned by their developers leading to compatibility issues that can break a website or at the very least slow it down.
Why would a hacker want your website?
Clients very often misunderstand why someone would want to hack their website. One misconception is that the hacker wishes to steal credit card data, so if they don’t have an e-commerce site, they feel that their website is safe. Hackers are in fact after a collection of resources that they can steal or exploit.
Wordfence lists the following reasons why an attacker is after a vulnerable website:
- It’s backed by a server that they can use to run their own programs
- It’s connected to the internet and likely has a squeaky-clean reputation
- It might include interesting user data
- It probably has traffic coming to it
- It is likely important to you
Hackers find creative ways to hack a website, with the main motive being that they want to make money out of exploiting your website’s resources. Once malicious code has been injected, an infected site can be used for:
- Cryptocurrency mining
- Hosting phishing pages to steal sensitive information
- Stealing data
- Ransomware
- Host spam pages and links to dodgy sites
- Redirect visitors to a spam site
- Sending out spam email
- attacking other sites
- hosting malicious content
- Distributing malware to a visitors computer
Hackers are also very clever, often the site appears normal to a site owner only logging in to update their site, but looks very different to a visitor who has arrived through a Google search. Malicious code can lay dormant for many months before becoming active in the hope that the owner hasn’t got a clean backup to restore the website.
Having a hacked website not only leads to loss of business but more importantly, the company’s reputation. Visitors may no longer trust the website and what the company stands for, moving on to a competitor. Search engines also take a very dim view and will downgrade or even delist a website that has been compromised.
What
About A
Website
– getting you noticed
– part of your team
– reliable & there when needed
Visit
Dartmoor
Yelverton
Devon
UK
Contact
07533 142 140
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