WordPress Maintenance Tasks You Should Be Doing Regularly

WordPress Maintenance Tasks You Should Be Doing Regularly

by | 26 Jul 2024 | Web services, Website Care

For many business owners who have WordPress websites, the maintenance of their site is very much an afterthought. They’ll only think about maintenance when they experience an issue, rather than carry out tasks on a regular basis. This makes them reactive rather than proactive. If your website processes personal information or transactional data, maintaining it is crucial. Reacting to data loss can be a costly strategy, both in terms of money and reputation.

Regular maintenance ensures your website runs smoothly, stays secure, and provides the best user experience. Below are some key maintenance tasks you should be performing regularly to keep your WordPress website in top shape.

1. WordPress Updates

WordPress, its plugins, and themes receive regular updates. These updates can include new features, performance improvements, and vital security patches. Neglecting these updates can leave your site vulnerable to attacks. Aim to update your WordPress core files, plugins, and themes at least once a week. Before running any updates, always ensure you have a recent backup of your site.

2. Backups

Your website is a valuable asset, and having a robust backup strategy is essential. Relying solely on your hosting provider for backups is risky. Use backup plugins like UpdraftPlus to automate the backup process and store backups externally. Check weekly to ensure backups are being taken, and test restoring from a backup monthly to verify its integrity. At Winch Websites, if your site is hosted with us you have the comfort of knowing that your site is backed up every hour, and separately every day.

3. Testing Functionality

Regularly test your website’s functionality to ensure everything is working as expected. Weekly checks should include testing contact forms, checking email deliverability, and, for e-commerce sites, making test purchases to confirm that orders are processed correctly. This is especially important before peak times like sales or promotions.

4. Uptime Monitoring

Uptime refers to the time your website is accessible and operational. Frequent downtime can indicate poor hosting quality and negatively impact your business. Use tools like Uptime Robot to monitor your site’s uptime. Set it to check your site at least every 15 minutes, ideally every 5 minutes, and receive notifications if your site goes down.

5. Security Scans

No website is immune to attacks, but regular security scans can mitigate risks. Tools like Wordfence and Sucuri can help identify vulnerabilities and potential threats. Conduct weekly security scans and address any issues promptly. If a significant threat is detected, seeking professional help is advisable. Host your website with Winch Websites and your site is protected by significantly enhanced security in a WordPress-specific environment – and if you’re on a Website Care plan, we can step things up even further for high-priority/high-sensitivity websites.

6. Speed Optimization

A slow website can frustrate users and affect your search engine rankings. While speed optimization might not need to be as frequent as other tasks, performing a weekly speed test is beneficial. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix can help you identify areas for improvement. Pay attention to Core Web Vitals metrics, which are crucial for user experience and SEO. Our hosting has a particular focus on speed, with Website Care plans implementing measures to make a noticeable difference. World-class speed optimisation is available for sites that demand it.

7. Database Optimisation

Over time, your WordPress database can become cluttered with unnecessary data, slowing down your site. Regularly optimising your database can improve performance. Plugins like WP-Optimize can help clean up your database by removing spam comments, post revisions, and other unnecessary data. Our Website Care plan clients enjoy automated database optimisation on a weekly basis.

8. Broken Link Checks

Broken links can harm your site's user experience and SEO. Use tools like Broken Link Checker to identify and fix broken links on your site. Aim to perform this check monthly to ensure all links are functioning correctly.

9. Content Updates

Keep your content fresh and relevant by regularly updating your posts and pages. This can help improve your SEO rankings and keep visitors engaged. Schedule a review of your content every few months to ensure it remains accurate and up-to-date.

Wrap-up

Maintaining a WordPress website involves a variety of tasks that need to be performed regularly. While these tasks are crucial for the health and performance of your site, they can be time-consuming and complex. That’s where Winch Websites comes in. With our Care Plans, we handle all these maintenance tasks and more, ensuring your website remains secure, fast, and reliable.

If you’re interested in a hassle-free way to keep your website in peak condition, consider signing up for our Care Plan services. Let us take care of the technical details, so you can focus on running your business.

Remember, regular maintenance is not just about preventing problems but also about ensuring your website continues to support your business effectively. Contact me today to learn more about how I can help you maintain a healthy WordPress website.

When a password isn’t enough…

When a password isn’t enough…

by | 16 Oct 2019 | Take Care, Web services

We live in an age where passwords and PIN-codes are everywhere. Phones, computers, email accounts, government services, bills and utilities, apps, bank accounts and dozens more. All need and expect some form of password. Here’s a cautionary tale for what might happen if you forget one.

Since the year dot, many many aeons ago (back in the 1980’s, I mean), passwords were invented for electronic ‘stuff’ to keep out people who shouldn’t get in. Keeping private things private. Keeping national secrets secret. Keeping unique technologies unique.

We'll never guess her password cartoon

There are a few password strategies around on how to create and manage strong (ie. unguessable) passwords. Very often, you will find that these strategies can be challenged or even come unstuck in the face of Password Rules. Every system, every organisation, can create their own Password Rule and it’s highly likely you’ve encountered them – for example, your password must contain at least 8 characters, and in those 8 there must be both letters and numbers and at least one capital letter. Some password rules require one or more “special characters” such as $, & or %.

So we end up with a grab-bag of different passwords whether we like it or not.

What happens when we forget one? A classic example is the password to a GMail account. You created an email account using Google’s free GMail service years ago, put in a password that matched their Password Rule at the time. You added that email into your smartphone and tablet, using their quick-and-easy tools to do so. Then you happily started using the email account.

Of course, you never had to put in that password again. Your computer, your phone, your tablet all remember it for you. Or better yet, if you’re like me you have a password manager app that remembers on your behalf, so you can have a ridiculous password that you don’t even know anyway (and couldn’t reveal even under torture or hypnosis!).

Then you get a new gadget, or more likely try to sign in to your email account on someone else’s computer (let’s say while you are travelling). You are asked what your password is. You simply don’t know or can’t recall.

Now you enter Verification Twilight Zone. You need to prove you are who you say you are, that you should be allowed in even though you don’t know the password. GMail do this verification thing sometimes when you DO know the correct password, but are signing in on some device you haven’t signed in on before. They might even do it on your normal device, for some reason.

How do you verify yourself? Well. It all depends…. but it depends on what you did when you created the account.

  • Were you asked a few special questions to which you had to give your own answers? For example, “Where were you born?” or “Mother’s maiden name”. You’ll need to remember the exact answer you initially gave.
  • Did you have to provide your mobile phone number? You’ll be sent a one-off code to your phone which you’ll need to copy back into the sign-in.
  • Did you provide an alternative email address, belonging to yourself or someone else you can trust? A one-off code will be sent to that email address which you’ll need to copy back into the sign-in. You’ll be shown only part of that alternative email address to jog your memory eg. joe***@big****.com, so you’ll need to remember which one you initially gave.

Here’s the thing. If you can’t successfully navigate through the Verification Twilight Zone, you can find yourself going round and round in circles trying to guess the correct answers. If you are unable to provide what is requested – you simply cannot get in. Short and sweet, you have lost access.

For some services (such as online banking), there may be someone you can call so you can prove to them that you are the right person, and they can maybe reset your account password. But don’t count on it in these days of identity theft, fraud, and privacy laws.

As for GMail? It’s too bad. You need to register a brand new email address and tell everyone you’ve had to change. A real pain. You’ve lost access to everything that was in that email account unless you can work through the Verification Twilight Zone somehow.

So the moral of the story is to make sure you have an excellent memory, or more practically to make a secure note of not only your password, but also your verification answers. And keep them updated (once a year or so should do it). Dead alternative email addresses and expired phone numbers are of no use at all.

Beware the Verification Twilight Zone!

How low are YOUR barriers to entry?

How low are YOUR barriers to entry?

by | 2 Sep 2019 | Outsourcing, Take Care, Web services, Webhosting, Website Building, Website Care, Website Design, Websites

Let’s focus on my business for a bit. Usually, I’m all about my client’s business (the “if they do well, I do well” perspective), but we’ll flip it around for a change.

The websites/web-marketing industry is undergoing huge changes. Has been for years, of course, along with technology in general. Ask a website designer/builder to go back 5 years and recall how websites were built, and compare to today’s tools and techniques. It’s chalk and cheese.

  • faster
  • easier
  • slicker
  • more effective.

And cheaper. Like most technology (except iPhones, it seems…!).

In the last couple of years, there have been 2 major developments that have led to a massive surge in the number of people who say they are available to build you a fabulous website. “Page builders” which greatly reduce or even eliminate the technical knowledge needed. And “Software as a Service” which lets you subscribe to functions & tools & facilities that you need, when you need them, without having any hassles with installation, maintenance, upgrades or backups.

You may have seen the Wix ads, or Squarespace, or GoDaddy. Yes, you can DIY – build a website right now, and it will indeed look good, at low cost (to start with). Get up and running in an hour or two. They don’t lie.

So we have a huge number of ‘experts’ out there now. The web industry has such low barriers to entry that it has become an enticing side-gig, a part-time activity that fits in with the full-time job or study. All you need is a reasonable internet connection.

The result is apparently a reverse hourglass effect. Squeeze at the bottom of the market (lots and lots of competition for low-priced projects), squeeze at the top of the market (high-ticket projects attracting increased attention from mid-range players who can easily access more advanced capabilities).

In the middle, though, there seems to be a more positive effect for business such as Winch Websites. A project can now include functions and facilities that would have been financially out of reach to small and micro businesses or non-profits. It’s here that clients typically already have experience with owning a website, and recognise the skills, expertise and benefits that a professional brings to play. Websites are no longer about the technology – it’s about what they are there to achieve for the organisation. More sales? More signups? More donations? More enquiries or leads? The focus is on the outcome, not the tool. Find out what the outcome is first, then find the best tool to make that happen. Then fine-tune and optimise, forever. Something worth investing in, in other words.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that although the website and web-marketing industries have very low barriers to entry (and therefore many, many participants), it doesn’t mean that getting something good is easy and cheap as chips. A decent investment really should pay dividends.

However, riding shotgun with the low barriers to entry is the lack of regulation and control. If you haven’t come across outrageous claims already, you won’t have to go far to find some. Think “website in a day”, “Google page 1”, “10x your sales”.

How about your own industry? How easy is it for a newcomer to come along and think “Hmm, that looks like an easy way to earn money. I’ll say I can do it and then work it out from there!”?

If you too have low barriers to entry, you’ll be familiar with all of the above. And like as not, you too will have had customers who’ve tried the cheap and the quick, been burned, and are now looking for experience and knowledge.

When you go looking for website and web-marketing services, please bear in mind that there’s little to stop people saying what they like in internet-land. Take claims with a small pinch of cynicism and maybe do a bit of due diligence. Ask or look for evidence that your chosen service provider has done this sort of thing, and that it’s worked. Be ever-so-slightly distrustful of reviews and testimonials unless there’s evidence to back them up as genuine customers.

At Winch Websites, I’m well aware that the competition for your web-marketing dollars is global, huge, and a minefield of options, technicalities, capabilities and playing with the truth. I aim to provide honest and accurate advice, and if we aren’t a good fit for each other in terms of outcomes and objectives, I’ll happily refer you to services or businesses that are.

I want to take care of your website so that you can take care of your business – over the long term, ongoing. That’s not going to happen unless you get great value from Winch Websites. So next time you’re looking for website design & build, website care or email automation services, please get in touch. At the very least, you’ll get something to compare against. And I’d love to hear what you think when you do compare, business feedback is so hard to come by!

Good luck in your business, and may low barriers to entry be no barriers to your success!!

Interested in working with us?

Get In Touch Now

WordPress Updates – Distracting But Essential

WordPress Updates – Distracting But Essential

by | 21 Dec 2017 | Web services, Website Care

WordPress is a software package that makes it easy (well, easiER) to build, manage and maintain a website. About a quarter of the world’s websites are powered by WordPress. If your website is powered by its own independent WordPress package, then someone needs to make sure that software is kept up-to-date. Some frequently-asked-questions (FAQs) about all this;

How Do I Know If My Website Uses WordPress?

Ask whoever built your website for you – “what content management system does my website use?”. This is something you ought to know, as a bit of background info. There are lots of other systems around, of course – some are for building ‘independent’ websites where you are free to do as you please with it eg. add whatever bells & whistles you like – some are ‘umbrella’ systems, where you get a set of facilities and tools but can’t add your own eg. Wix, Weebly, Shopify, Squarespace and many more.

One clue though is what you see when you login to manage/administer your website (and if you don’t login, then either someone else is looking after your site for you OR you aren’t maintaining it at all. Get in touch if it’s the latter, because someone needs to. Read on!). The typical WordPress Dashboard looks something like this;

What’s an “Update”?

There is a very high chance that your WordPress-powered website has more than just the base WordPress system installed. The WordPress package by itself definitely provides all you need to build and launch a website – but you really, really shouldn’t. It’s a bit like buying a new computer with the latest version of Windows or Mac OS and no other software packages installed. You just need more tools and facilities for it to be really useful. For WordPress, essential extras include things like security (much like a PC has to have internet-security software), search-engine-optimisation boosters, webpage speeder-uppers (nobody will wait 10 seconds for your images to load). These extras are called “plugins”.  There are THOUSANDS of plugins to choose from. If you want your website to do it, there is bound to be a plugin to make it happen!

So we have this WordPress software package (the “content management system”). And we have these extras on top of it (the plugins). Like any software, the developers that created them are constantly improving things – fixing errors or bugs, adding new or better features, preventing the bad guys from doing bad things. So an “update” is simply a newer version of WordPress or a WordPress plugin that has been improved in some way.

How Do I ‘Do’ An Update?

Nowadays, you can set your WordPress to automatically update itself to the latest version of the package whenever a new one comes out (every couple of months or so). Alternatively, when you login to your website as an Administrator, you can click a button or two and make it upgrade. It’s really that easy.

Likewise the plugins – when a newer version is available for your website to retrieve and install – click a link or button, and it gets done. Easy. You will probably find updates for your various plugins several times a week.

Do I Have To?

Of course not. You don’t have to have internet-security software for your computer. You don’t have to have home insurance. You don’t have to put petrol in the car. But if you want to avoid potentially BIG trouble, you should. Really should. A website that gets built and published and then left is a website that;

  1. will sooner or later stop working – reflecting badly on your business and you as its owner
  2. could well be abused by hackers, to attack other computers and/or websites, spread spam, or publish nasty stuff on your website
  3. threatens the other websites that share your webserver (you are very unlikely to be the only website on a webserver) – because the many blocking services protecting people from bad websites will block the entire webserver
  4. will cost you an arm and a leg to fix when things do eventually go wrong, and you’re in an emergency-repair situation

What A Pain…

It is. Looking after WordPress updates is probably not what you regard as a core activity for your business. Luckily, it IS a core activity for Winch Websites. We will not only make sure that your WordPress system and its plugins are all kept up-to-date, we do a few more things too (like take backups every day, perform security scans, monitor your site 24/7, and more). Get in touch to find out more, or see our Websites Care page.

Interested in working with us?

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SAAS – Perfect for Small Businesses

SAAS – Perfect for Small Businesses

by | 6 Dec 2017 | Web services

First – What is SAAS??

SAAS is huge, and it IS changing what you do and how you do it. SAAS is Software As A Service, a collective term for anything that you can do online where you used to have to buy, install and manage software packages on your computer(s). If you made the move from Outlook to GMail/YahooMail/Hotmail, you started using SAAS. If you moved your accounting from MYOB or Reckon to Xero, you started using SAAS.

Second – Why SAAS?

Software As A Service provides you with the tools, facilities, functions that you need via the internet – while someone else does all the maintenance, management, backups, security, etc etc etc. You’ll nearly always pay a monthly fee for the privilege, although there are other charging models of course.

SAAS can give you exactly what you need to run an efficient, effective, low-cost business where you can start small and grow as you need to. Take up the lowest-cost plan, and as you need more, you simply change to the next plan up (and pay a bit more). Perfect for systems to grow as you grow.

What Can SAAS Do For Me?

Well, the world is your oyster. There are literally thousands of SAAS providers covering an immense array of tools and functions. Just a few examples that might pique your interest;

  • Accounting – see Xero for a completely-online small business accounting system. Invoices (including automated followups of unpaid ones), payroll, superannuation, bank-account feeds & reconciliations, BAS reports, contacts.
  • Webmail – if you are still using Outlook on a desktop to do your email, it’s time to think again. Yes, the transition is a pain. But switch to an online-only email system like the business version of GMail and you open up possibilities that allow you to integrate with all sorts of other things. Plus you have easy access from anywhere on anything (internet-connected, of course!). And usually better anti-spam, anti-virus protection.
  • Contact Management – looking for somewhere that keeps track of your customers and potential customers? CRM (Customer Relationship Managment) services store the usual info (name, address, email, phone) but also notes about each conversation, you can automatically store any emails to/from them too, and even classify as Leads (possibly interested), Prospects (actively interested) and Customers (purchased) then add auto-reminders to prompt you to get in touch at appropriate times. Lots more to CRM… Insightly is a great example.
  • Image & Video Editing – save on graphic design costs with DIY online tools that make it easy AND look good! For example, Stencil for fast & effective social-media graphics, Rocketium to make short attention-grabbing videos for your website or social media outlets.
  • Surveys – find out what your customers ACTUALLY think or want! Survey services are not only easy-access for the people you want to survey, but they help guide you to get meaningful results. SurveyMonkey is a popular one, but upcomers like SparkChart are pushing the boundaries.
  • Webpage Customiser – so you have a website already. What if you could easily make it adapt your webpages according to who is looking at them,  when, and why? Without changing the webpages… So you send an email out to a selected group of potential customers, and when they click that email to visit your website, it greets them with “Good Morning Sally!” This is what Unless does.
  • Email Campaigns – you’ll have seen a lot about growing your email list so you can market to them. There are quite a few services that make this easy and automate in fabulous ways to save you time AND make you more effective. Automatic personalisation (“Hi Bob…”), automatic removal of invalid emails, automatic recording of who opened what when and clicked on what. Automatic grouping of contacts into whatever categories you choose (customers-who-bought-x, customers-who-visited-website-did-not-buy, etc).

These just scratch the surface of what you could do in your business to grow it and manage it – the old ‘doing more with less’. SAAS offers you great potential to extend what you do, save you time, save you costs, and scale up as your business needs more. Keep your eyes peeled, there’s a good chance that there are tools out there now that could make a big difference to your business!

Interested in working with us?

Get In Touch Now

Just quickly send us your contact info and what you’re looking for – eg. why you want a website (starting from scratch, remaking an existing one, etc) and any particular features or questions you have in mind.

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