After your WordPress website is published, whether it is brand new or a few years old, you need to be sure it stays healthy. Most website owners don’t log into the dashboard very often, especially if they aren’t writing posts. And It is understandable that most business owners don’t want to spend the time to check on a weekly basis. But, If you care about your website and your business, hiring someone to look after it for you is critical for it to run smoothly and avoid big problems. With those big problems come big fees. Listed below are the most common problems you will have with a website:
SECURITY: Weekly updating of your software, WordPress, Theme, and Plugins, will help keep up with security assaults. You may not realize that malware and spam is an ongoing problem for small websites too. The robots sweep through looking for vulnerabilities without discretion to find a place to insert their bad code. Your site becomes the conduit through which the virus spreads. WordPress itself updates over twelve times a year, then the Themes and Plugins follow suit. Perugi Design uses state of the art software to approve these updates each week or more often, if prompted. If there is a problem, it is hunted down and addressed.
BACKUPS: Your site can go down for various reasons. Sometimes, it gets infected, sometimes the code or php software is outdated. Perugi backups your website once a month, so that it can be restored to a previous, uncontaminated version. If you blog often or have an e-commerce site, you may want to back up once a week. Knowing that you have a safe version of your website that can be immediately restored is reassuring. Each week, I look to make sure your site has been backing up, so you have a fresh version for a possible restore.
CONFLICTS: I will know when the software is not updating. There can be several reasons. It was not updated automatically and the plugin or theme must be downloaded from the developer and reinstalled manually. The plugin is not being updated and was abandoned by the developer. This happens more often than I would like. And the reason I recommend only well established plugins with good ongoing support. There are also plugins that conflict with each other, with the theme or with other software. I will let you know when this is an issue before changing any plugins running on your website.
UPDATING PHP: PHP is the back end scripting language that is used by WordPress, offers a lot of resources, such as commands, functions and codes, which can easily be rewritten and used without incurring any cost. The PHP software does not always get updated by the hosting company and will need to be updated manually or by calling the host company. This is something we look for in our updating process.
NOTE: Necessary changes made that require extra time are billable. It may take up to an hour or more to rectify the problem on your hosting dashboard or calling and speaking with a hosting representative. Only the weekly updating “Manage WP” process is covered by the $10 monthly fee.