The websites will be moved behind the scenes and you will receive more storage, faster load times and maximum security. My monthly fee for hosting will only go up enough to help pay for these improvements. It will be $16 per month instead of $12, a small hike for optimum hosting.

I also have some clients using shared hosting with Bluehost. I encourage these clients to take advantage of this great discount on improved security and speed. Bluehost will handle the move for a reduced fee. This will be easier for you, as I will be doing the billing instead of Bluehost and I can handle all of your questions.

More and more, security is a key issue with websites and I’m looking forward to offering a product my clients can trust. I will be in touch with more information and you can call me at any time.

For a limited time, free to current clients who pay for regular Web Care, I am offering to print a data driven report of your website upon request. This will include Security Checks, SEO / Analytics, and Broken Links, as analyzed by the software that has been handling your web updates.

By appointment, over a cup of coffee, we will sit and go over your website together, maybe something we haven’t done in awhile. Let me help you make a plan for updating your site’s outdated theme or layout, and improve content and user experience. We can discuss what is still working and what is broken or if your website is becoming “stale”.

Your company has grown and your website needs to mirror that. Let’s meet to discuss goals for 2020 and beyond! Email me to request your report and set up a meeting by phone or in person. I look forward to it!

In order to serve you better and improve my services I am creating and sending you a check-box survey in the next week. I hope that you can find time to answer a few questions and add a comment. Perhaps I can offer a new service that you need or more options. Your input will be very valuable and I welcome your suggestions. Again, thanks for your trust in Perugi Design and have a Healthy and Happy New Year!

Owners of these businesses have busy schedules and sometimes the attention to their website is stop and go. We travel, get ill, have sick relatives and generally just get overwhelmed with too much to do. That’s ok. It allows me to juggle the work and attend to emergencies that sometimes come up from time to time.

A few weeks ago three of our sites went down because of a needed php upgrade which is done on the server. The php 7.1 is a large update that came after a big update to WordPress. All three website’s php were updated and the sites came back immediately. Then, another site was in need of repair and down due to old coding and software. I spent hours on the phone with two Buehost technicians testing and figuring out how to repair a broken website that had been updated to php 7.1. We reverted the php to 5.6 but it was still broken. That particular site was set up by an associate over three years ago, and she came out of retirement to the rescue by reverting it back to php 5.4. It’s theme had been dropped by the developer and could not be updated. Needless to say I am remaking that website into one that can be updated without errors.

I make weekly software updates to all websites that subscribe to the Web Care Plan (see Services page). I also back up your site monthly, or more often at your request. These backups are in addition to ones you may (or may not be) getting through your hosting company. Folks at Bluehost recommend having more than one backup of your website on hand. I use these backups to restore your website if something brings it down, such as malware or unusual circumstances such as those I discussed above.

I understand that your website is important to you and your business and I work hard when you need it most, to get your site back up and running fast!

1. 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.
2. 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 at least 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 restore.
3. 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. There are plugins that conflict with each other, with the theme or with my software. I will let you know when this is an issue before changing any plugins running on your website.

If you run into a problem and you don’t have professional help, give us a call at 617-365-3418. Find plans on the Services Page of my website for more information and to sign up.

On the first day… you are notified that your domain will expire in 6o days. The domain was purchased years ago and the registrar is a place you never heard of before. Worst case scenario: You ignore the message and your site goes down. The domain goes public and someone buys it. He asks for $6,000…. Best case scenario: We transfer the domain to our host and update it for you without you having to worry about it again.

On the second day… your WordPress website gets hacked because you followed a scam email. Worst case scenario: you never made a back up and you have to hire a security company to clean your website. It takes a month and you have to take your site offline. Best case: Luckily, you signed up for a maintenance plan with us so there is a backup of your website that we restore for you. But no worries, our maintenance plan should prevent it in the first place.

On the third day… you are having problems with your website made by an acquaintance who is now too busy to help you update it. We find out your custom hand-built theme has never had security updates and it has malware. We recreate your site using our module based theme that gets regular security updates.

On the fourth day… the free plugin on your site is abandoned by the developer and is no longer working correctly. We replace the plugin with one that is similar but supported. When using free plugins we like to contribute to the developer so they can continue working, but they are still a good value.

On the fifth day… the Paypal Donation button stopped working on your website. It could be a number of reasons including someone changed your pp password. We reset the code and fix the problem.

On the sixth day… your company is moving and you need the addresses and Google maps to be changed. We also help you by creating an announcement on the website prior to the move.

On the seventh day… you have been adding images to your blog posts but forgot to reduce their size. Your site slows down because each image is over one megabyte. We reduce the sizes of your images and recheck the performance of your site.

On the eighth day… you want to highlight a new service or product but don’t know the best way to do it. We make recommendations and make the changes for you.

On the ninth day… You want to send your clients a holiday email card but don’t have an image to use. We find a great inexpensive image from a stock agency and send the samples for you to choose. We set it up for you.

On the tenth day… You forgot how to add a photo to a newsletter, so you call us and we help you by walking you though it over the phone.

On the eleventh day… One of the plugins on your WordPress website won’t update in the dashboard. You call us and we download a new version from the developers website and replace it.

On the twelfth day… You have text and pdfs to add on a new web  page and you want help organizing the material to fit your design and brand. We are happy to assist.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Perhaps you made a major marketing effort the previous month and want to see how that affected your website’s SEO. You can see here that visits were doubled in the period from October 11 to October 22. I made some home page edits and wrote a few blog posts. I was surprised to see the change. The chart on the right side lists my top competitors in the area.

This tool also allows you to track specific key words

Let me give you an example. The keywords I wanted to track are “web design” and the also towns where I do the most business, such as Framingham, Natick and Boston. One of the ten keywords I chose is “Framingham Web Design” and another “Boston Web Design”.

How did I do?

I am on the first page of Google for the keywords “boston divi theme”, “framingham website design”, “natick web maintenance” and wellesley web maintenance.” Perugi Design is number 12 for “natick website design” and number 14 for “boston wordpress websites”. I think that’s quite good considering the number 12 spot is located on  the second page of the orgainic area on Google.

Part of the work is figuring out the best keywords for the audience you are trying to attract. There are other tools we use for that too.

The softeare creates a pdf booklet that itemizes everything that is updated on a weekly basis. such as number and dates of backups saved, plugins that have been updated, security checks, spam comments that have been removed and if and when and how long your website was offline.

Only clients on the monthly web maintenance plan gets these reports, either monthly or quarterly. (It cannot be accessed via the dashboard.) The pdf report is great for presentation purposes, too. If you are an existing or new client thinking about taking advantage of this service, message me. I’d be happy to talk to you about it!

Perugi Design has several Web Care Plans to fit your goals and budget. We can update your website software (WordPress, themes and plugins) on a weekly basis and schedule backups as often as you need. We also keep in touch with your hosting company when issues arise as part of all three bundled Web Care Plans.

Here is a list of the tasks a website typically needs on a weekly and monthly basis. We do most of these for you for only $10 per month.

1. Backing up your website
Your website should be backed up at least monthly and stored on several servers. Don’t depend on your hosting company. Some backup and some do not. If your site gets damaged from malware or gets hacked, you will need to restore your entire website and you will need a clean backup to do it. We use Amazon Web Services for our backups.

2. Installing updates
WordPress Software gets updated at least 12 times a year in order to add new features or to for important security reasons. I usually wait a week or two before updating the WP software, to allow the other third party plugins and themes to catch up. Updating the plugins is also important, as they may interfere or stop working after any new WordPress updates.

3. Processing comments
You may receive comments if you use the default settings on your blog. Sometimes they are welcome, but other times, you get spam. Going through the dashboard, you can find these and approve or trash as you see fit. If you don’t check in on a regular basis, the spam comments can add up. But, we can use a plugin to regulate comments or turn it off. Spam can come through the forms as well. Always use a Captcha to prevent this from happening.

4. Setting up security
Receiving spam comments leads to security concerns. There are several good plugins or hosting add-ons you can use to secure your site from being hacked. This is a major concern for many people and should be. When a site gets hacked, our hosting company detects it and will shut it down to protect the other sites on a shared hosting plan. Uptime Security is another feature to consider. You and your web manager find out when your site goes down so that you can attend to the situation immediately.

5. Optimizing your database and checking performance
If you have a busy site with tons of content continually being uploaded, your database will probably need cleaning out. By maintaining your database it will help to improve your loading speeds and reduce the frequency of database errors. There are several free plugins to help you with this.

6. Checking Google Analytics
This is more about marketing, but some clients ask for help setting up analytics. It is useful to help you determine if an ad or blog post was popular. Use this information when planning your next campaign.

Remember, updating your website’s software is vital to reaching your customers in a positive way.