Keeping WordPress Working As It Should
Keeping your WordPress website up to date has never been more important. With some of the worlds largest companies using WordPress, people are naturally going to try and find weak spots and exploit them where they can. Luckily, the WordPress community are incredibly active on keeping their services secured and offering updates when they are needed.
Security
What Risks Are There?
The simplest way to mitigate risks is to keep all areas of WordPress up to date. Whilst this may not remove all risks associated with running a website, it is the most effective first line of defence. If something does go wrong, my daily malware and health checks on all websites that I host will pick these up and we can get them dealt as soon as possible.
Data Theft
Data is arguably one of the most valuable commodities in our modern world, and people will try their hardest to gain this illicitly.
Bad Actors
If the wrong people get a hold of the back end of your website, they can upload all sorts of explicit links and blogs to your pages.
Ransom Attacks
Leaving WordPress core and plugins outdated can leave a back door open for hackers to hold your site and its contents to ransom.
Malware Uploads
Updates can help patch new doors that open allowing people to upload potentially dangerous files without your knowledge.
Visual Inconsistency
This can range from a small spacing issue to a completely broken page layout. It often looks unprofessional and turns the user elsewhere.
WordPress Errors
Sometimes plugins cause fatal errors when updated and sometimes when left alone! These are disconcerting to users and potential customers.
Load Times
Studies have shown an 11% bounce rate increase for websites that take an extra second to load. These potential customers go elsewhere.
Site performance
Websites that get left out of date will start to become sluggish, sluggish websites loose customers and cause them to have a bad experience.
Pricing
What Plans Do I Offer
I offer a range of services to help your existing website perform as it should and stay secure. Take a look at my support plans to see how I can support you, your business and its digital assets.
Essential Plan
- Performance checks and optimisation suggestions.
- Separate WordPress staging environment on which updates are tested before going live.
- Up to 1 hour of bug and issue fixes per month
- Priority fixes over ad-hoc reported bugs and issues.
- Rolling 30 days database and file backups
Upgraded Plan
- Performance checks and optimisation suggestions.
- Separate WordPress staging environment on which updates are tested before going live.
- Up to 2 hours of bug and issue fixes per month
- Priority fixes over ad-hoc reported bugs and issues.
- Rolling 30 days database and recoverable file system backups
- Monthly security checklist and website/user report.
Elite Plan
- Performance checks and optimisation suggestions.
- Separate WordPress staging environment on which updates are tested before going live.
- Up to 4 hours of bug and issue fixes per month
- Priority fixes over ad-hoc reported bugs and issues.
- Rolling 30 days recoverable file system backups
- Upgraded 60 days database backup
- Monthly security checklist and website/user report.
Inquire
Ready To Get Started?
Get in touch and we can organise an initial conversation, or answer any questions you may have.
FAQ
Some Questions You May Have
You certainly can. The process of updating WordPress plugins and themes is very simple. The hard bit is knowing what to do if something goes wrong and getting into the habit of updating them regularly. One of WordPress’ strongest points is the ability for anyone to develop a plugin for it. With this however it does mean that its not uncommon for an update to a plugin can cause a significant issue or a conflict with another plugin. Having had years of experience updating, maintaining and building WordPress plugins, I know the correct precautions to take to make sure that if something goes wrong, it can be easily reverted and the cause of the issue identified for remedial action to be taken.
Why Do WordPress Websites Need Updating So Often?
WordPress is the most widely used content management system on the internet. This title comes with many things like a huge library of free and paid plugin solutions as well as dedicated and optimised platforms specifically for WordPress. It does also mean that people to try and find its weak spots. Luckily the WordPress core and plugin developers are 99 times out of 100 ahead of such exploits and push an update to render the bad actors efforts fruitless. This is the main reason that it is so important to keep your WordPress websites up to date.
I Can See An ‘Auto Update’ Button, What Is This?
WordPress does indeed come with an auto update feature for its core functionality and most plugins. However this is in most cases to be avoided. As updates start coming regularly, and you’ve not overseen the update yourself, functions may break and visual elements may not look right and you won’t have noticed. Not being there to witness the plugin cause an issue makes it all that much harder to revert back and fix the issue.
Can You Support My Website If You Don’t Host It?
Yes I can! I would require an initial call with you to discuss your website and its setup but I will very likely be able to support it. The only caveat with supporting websites I do not host is a risk of time being spent debugging with limited diagnostics and not being able to fully diagnose problems due to a lack of platform access. Luckily I offer a competitive hosting plans with migration services that will get you set up on my servers in no time if you want to get the most out of your support plan.
How Long Do I Need To Sign Up For?
I have a minimum enrolment term of 3 months. This is to enable me to review your websites performance over a longer period and make suitable suggestions where required based on my longer analysis.