Tag: plugins

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Why you need to have a monitoring program set up for your website.

screens showing website monitoring graphs

After your WordPress website goes live, you may think the website work is finished. Not so.

WordPress is the most popular content management platform in use today and is constantly evolving. With its popularity comes security risks. This means that the core version of WordPress is constantly being updated as well as the plugins that are used to develop a site.

It’s important to regularly update these since many of them are security safety fixes. Think hackers getting into the back end of your website.

However, updating plugins can sometimes cause conflicts…. which might cause downtime.

When to update plugins.

We recommend waiting a little while to update plugins because bugs can cause your site to go down. If you wait a few days, the plugin creator should have ample time to fix any unexpected issues that arise.

Ongoing WordPress website monitoring is important to make sure that when plugins are updated they won’t cause your website to go down. And if it does, it can be fixed quickly.

It’s also important to monitor website uptime in case something happens with the web host.

Occasionally, we’ve had instances where either the hosting or SSL certificate was not renewed because the credit card on file had either expired or the account number had changed.

Unless someone is monitoring your site, this can go unnoticed. Which means you may be losing business!

These are only a few reasons we include six months of website monitoring and maintenance for all websites we build. After that, our clients can purchase ongoing monitoring for a very reasonable fee ….which most of them do.

It’s a small price to pay for knowing your online store or business is always open.

if your website is dated and no longer filling your business needs, we’re happy to chat. The start of a new year is the perfect time for a website revamp.

Read more about keeping your business functional and secure.

 

 

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Is your website ready (and healthy enough) for Google’s algorithm update?

a stethoscope laying on a laptop keyboard

Earth Day is April 22nd. Yes, we relegate one day to focus on keeping our planet healthy.

Anyone else think this deserves an ongoing commitment? Or at least a month?

Here’s a link to Earth Day Live which runs from April 20 -22nd. Learn about some events you can participate in and get involved.

But we digress…..back to your website.

What Makes A Healthy Website?

A healthy website performs well. It doesn’t just look good.

It works well. It loads fast. Fonts are legible. You don’t have to squint to read the copy. Papers and pdfs download quickly. Finding information is easy and intuitive.

Links work….both external and internal. And the site is responsive. It looks good on any size screen — mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop. It’s also secure and uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). More about that here.   

The health of your website should never be negotiable. A healthy well-run business has healthy procedures in place. And that includes your website, your face to the world.

Here are 6 things you can do right now to make sure your website is indeed healthy.    

  1. Don’t fall behind.
    Make sure that platform updates and plugins are up-to-date. Staying current is important to keep your site functioning properly and securely. New releases generally take care of any pesky issues that developers have found since the last update.
    Note:  we manage and monitor all client websites and send monthly reports. Your web team should handle this for you. If not, find one that will.
  2. Get rid of old plugins.
    A bloated website doesn’t perform well. Outdated or no longer used plugins can slow down your site. We once inherited  one with 62 plugins, most of which were not being used. The site was super slow to load, something you do not want.
  3.  Fix sluggish load speeds.
    According to Google, people will abandon a website if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds. Don’t be a Google fail. Here are 20 free tools to test your website’s speed.
  4. Make sure you’ve addressed any ADA (American Disability Act) issues. Google will punish you if your site isn’t accessible for people with sight or hearing disabilities. Learn what you need to do in this Business News Daily article titled Is Your Website ADA Compliant?
  5. Update content.
    If your copy hasn’t been updated in a while, it probably needs a refresh. If you cite a lot of statistics or references, they’re probably dated. Maybe you’ve added new products or services that never made it onto the site (yes, we’ve seen that)!
    Ideally you update your site on a weekly or monthly basis. But we know that sometimes stuff gets in the way. So do it now.
  6.  Make sure your website is easy for visitors to navigate.
    A healthy website allows people to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for. Referred to as UX (user experience), ideally this is a factor that was built into your website in the design phase. But if you have a do-it-yourself site, it’s likely that navigational ease is not a feature.

Why NOW is the time to make sure your website is healthy.

Google has a new and highly anticipated algorithm launching in May of this year. It will include something called Page Experience which addresses what we’ve talked about above. If you have a business website, you need to know about it.

Search Engine Watch explains it clearly in this post titled Google Page Experience update is all set to launch in May 2021 – Webmasters, hang in there!

Hopefully, we’ve given you some tips you can use to make sure your website is healthy and working efficiently. So you won’t be blindsided when May comes around.

As always, we’re happy to answer any questions you might have. Shoot us an email info@whatagreatwebsite.net and we’ll help you out.

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