Perhaps your friend or an agency designed your website awhile ago and now there are problems because it hasn’t been maintained. But, do you have time or the inclination to do it yourself? The best way to stay on top of things is to use a web care plan run by a professional, who will make sure that it’s handled on a regular basis.
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.
Services for Web Care