What’s in the package?
A WordPress Website is actually a collection of complicated items all working together? It can be extremely dynamic, and constantly vulnerable to hackers and programming discrepancies without a proper backup, recovery or maintenance solution.
WordPress Website Services
We’re big fans of WordPress because it gives clients the most control even after we launch the website. You get to make changes to your site with just a little guidance so you don’t solely depend on any specific web professional or company to keep your website going.
Here’s a list of all the things you should be doing on a regular basis to maintain the back-end of your WordPress Website.
Backups
A WordPress Website is a collection of objects all working together. Backing up a WordPress Website is not just a simple matter of copying one or two files. Each piece of your site, including the database associated with your site, need to be backed up in the appropriate manner and location.
Updates
A WordPress Website is a collection of objects created by different vendors. When your site was first created, each of these separate vendor objects was set up and tested. As the month’s pass, new versions of these vendor objects are released. By design, your Website does not automatically update with the newer vendor objects. It’s imperative that before doing any updates to these vendor objects that you have a recent full backup of your Website. Then, once you update the vendor object, you must test the functionality of your Website to make sure the new version of the vendor object not only works on your site, but it doesn’t cause conflicts with other vendor objects on your site.
Speed Tests
Potential customers have little patience for a slow-loading Website. And, Google uses page load times in their SEO algorithms. It’s imperative that you continually test your Website page load times and then optimize or correct the things slowing down your site.
Up-Time Monitoring
Has it ever happened to you that an existing client lets you know that your Website isn’t working? You notice I said “existing client”. Potential clients don’t contact you because they’ve moved on to the next company’s Website, and are doing business with them. Obviously it’s imperative that you have a method of making sure your Website is always up and running, and you have a solution in place for quickly getting it back running if it’s down.
Expiration Notifications
As a business owner, the worst thing you can do is let your Website domain name or hosting expire. Once these items expire, depending on how long they’ve been expired, they can be difficult to get back. Or worse, before you get around to renewing them, someone else buys them out from under you. You need a systematic plan for being notified of critical Website related expiration dates.
Hacker Protection
Websites are almost always under attack from malicious sources. It’s important that you have the right security plug-ins in place, and then monitor any malicious security efforts against your site. While it’s impossible to stop 100 percent of all attacks, it is possible to greatly reduce your site’s vulnerability through a regular schedule of Website updates and constant monitoring of security threats.
Secure User Audits
One of the most important hacker protection steps a business owner can take with their WordPress Website is to manage user access to the back-end of the Website. KC Web Specialists will perform an initial audit of all Website users, their permission levels, and then provide a user management report to the business owner.
Database Optimization
In general, databases operate more efficiently when the amount of storage space between posts, pages and other database objects are compressed and optimized. Furthermore, optimization significantly reduces the risk of database and data corruption.
Are you spending 1 to 2 hours every month maintaining the back-end of your WordPress business Website?
If not, you could significantly damage the amount of traffic coming to your Website, and the reputation of your business.