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.

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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PHP – What it is (and why you care!)

PHP – What it is (and why you care!)

by | 24 Nov 2017 | Webhosting, Website Care

PHP is a bit like the petrol in a car engine. Without petrol, it stops. Dirty petrol, it stutters and stops. Stale old petrol, it stutters.

For another way to look at it, PHP is like the interpreter between your website's coding and your webserver. The webserver actually carries out the gruntwork for your website, receiving requests from your visitors ("send me the Home page again") and doing what's necessary to retrieve everything that your website says makes up the 'Home page', then sending it all back to the visitor's device. Your website is highly likely to be a software package that assembles pages and carries out functions as and when requested. It will be passing instructions to the webserver computer ("get me that logo image"). However, the webserver needs something in between that understands website-speak on the one hand, and webserver-speak on the other. Enter PHP.

Your website has a webhosting account, like its own apartment in the overall skyscraper that is the webserver. It shares many resources with all the other occupants - PHP is one of those resources. So your PHP translator is also being used by other websites simultaneously. PHP is a busy bee.

Now as is always the case with any software, new versions keep coming out. PHP Version 5 has been around for a long time, gradually moving from 5.1 to 5.2 to 5.4 to 5.6... Well, there's a big jump happening at the moment, up to PHP Version 7. Does this matter to you? Absolutely!!

PHP 7 is twice as fast as PHP 5. That by itself is plenty good enough reason to make the move. However, just as importantly, at the end of 2017, PHP 5 is no longer supported (in other words, won't be fixed if the bad guys find a hole or if it stops working in certain situations). Odds are, PHP 5 will keep going for a bit longer, BUT it is definitely a good idea to move to PHP 7 as soon as opportunity permits.

How easy is changing to PHP 7? Sorry, but it's that old chestnut, "it depends". It can be very easy if you have up-to-date webhosting, and your website is up-to-date. Simply change a setting in your webhosting, and you're done!

  • If your webhosting is a bit behind or restrictive, you will probably need to change webhosting service (it's worth asking them if you can be upgraded, you never know).
  • If your site is a bit behind, there's a good chance it will stop working when you move to PHP 7. A test is definitely on the cards. At least it is usually easy to immediately change back to PHP 5 and carry on as normal.

So to summarise, your website is highly likely to be using PHP, and you will need to change to PHP 7 in 2018 or risk a broken website and a panicked reaction to fix it. The good news is changing to PHP 7 gives you a more secure and noticeably faster website. Look into it sooner rather than later. If you need any help, Winch Websites is here.

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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Website maintenance – Why & What

Website maintenance – Why & What

by | 15 Nov 2017 | Website Care

Keeping Your Website Going

Websites need care & attention if they are to continue providing value to you (the website owner). Just like owning a car, a house, a computer - if you don't maintain it, gradually things degrade. Small problems become big problems. And sooner or later there will be a failure, which of course is bound to happen at the worst possible time...

So the question is, what needs doing and why? (NB. the "how" very much depends on what you're website has been built with, and can vary hugely).

1. The 'Content Management System'

It is a rare website these days that is not powered by a content management system (CMS) of some sort. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Shopify and on and on. They are all basically a software package that assists you in creating and managing a website without having to do coding or computer programming. Some of them allow you to run your own independent system (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal), some of them are large umbrella systems managed on your behalf (Wix, Weebly, Shopify, Squarespace).

So you need to know if you are responsible for keeping this underlying software package up-to-date, or if someone else is. If it's someone else, all good - just make sure they're are doing what they said they would. If it's your job - make sure you are checking for updates on at least a weekly basis. The content management system is like the engine for your website, it powers it and drives it and makes it work. A stuttery engine will give you stuttery website performance.

Why update the core CMS? Because there are frequent fixes and updates that address security issues (people breaking into or abusing your site), bugs (things that don't work properly) and improvements (making things work better and more smoothly).

Website maintenance

2. The Add-Ons & Extensions

You are quite unlikely to be using the base-level CMS. For a website to be useful to you and what you want to do with it, you are going to add extra functions to the site - called 'add-ons' or 'extensions', or maybe 'options' in the big shared systems. For an independent website, these add-ons also need the same upkeep as the underlying website system. Again, is that your job or is someone else doing it? You need to know or you could wake up one morning to a day that is going to be wasted on fixing a broken website (not to mention the potential loss of business while it's down, and the cost of repair).

Why update the add-ons? Because there are fixes and updates that address security issues (people breaking into or abusing your site), bugs (things that don't work properly) and improvements (making things work better and more smoothly).

3. The Webhosting Account

Often overlooked, the webhosting is where the website 'lives'. Think of it as renting office space in an office block - there are multiple businesses not connected to you all sharing the same office block, and you have rented one corner of one floor. Your rented space is your own webhosting account, and the other businesses are other independent websites.

What if the owner of the office block never did any maintenance? And worse, you can't do it yourself even if you wanted to because your contract forbids it? Now you've got a beautiful office in a shabby building with poor security. Not good.

So it's important to know if the webserver that manages your webhosting is being maintained and managed for you. Once more, there are always ongoing changes, fixes, updates to the webserver software - and you are nearly always not allowed to do anything to the webserver (because you would affect all the other inhabitants too). Ask the question of your webhosting provider - "do you managed and maintain the webserver, and keep it up-to-date?"

Why update the webserver? Because there are frequent fixes and updates that address security issues (people breaking into or abusing the entire system), bugs (things that don't work properly) and improvements (making things work better and more smoothly).

Effective and ongoing website maintenance is as optional as business insurance. You might not want it or have it, but you are exposed to serious business and financial risks without it. Prevention is definitely better than cure in this situation.

Winch Websites manages its own webservers and definitely keeps them up-to-date with the latest recommended systems and software, and follows industry best-practice to provide high-functioning, roomy webhosting with lots of bells & whistles.

We also offer a 'Website Care' service - you have a website, we'll look after it. Updates, backups, monitoring, security and more - and we'll even make changes to the pages for you. Saving you time, hassle and mental energy so you can get on with your business and leave the web stuff to someone else.

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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