In recent years the popularity of WordPress has exploded but what many people don’t realise is that both the WordPress system and all of the WordPress plug ins are subject to hacking, and need to be monitored and kept up to date on a regular basis. Keeping your website up to date will help safeguard and eliminate uninvited intruders or bugs on your site.

Many clients think they are pretty clever if they’ve managed to secure themselves a domain and hosting package before they rock up for a website build with us, and to date we’ve always offered our clients maximum flexibility. If they wish to host their website elsewhere, we let them go right ahead and do it, though we do let them know that they do so at their own risk, and naturally we can’t be responsible for their site if issues occur if they’re choosing to host elsewhere.

Similarly, many clients fail to keep their ‘versions’ of software and plugins up to date, again causing possible opportunities for hacking. The lack of updates, coupled with poor hosting environments can leave a website wide-open for security threats.

But here’s the kicker. Time and time again, clients come running back to us crying ‘Woe for me!’ and pleading for us to help them out of the horrible hosting mess or to run updates when their site gets hacked, goes down, or we politely point out that their website is having a few problems, given every site we install we add Google Webmaster Tools which tell us when there are outages, which they are often unaware of.

The fact of the matter is, yes WordPress is a popular CMS (content management system). Yes you can source your own reasonably cheap hosting and save on some costs here. Yes you can enjoy a beautiful new site, but you must maintain updates. But where there are numbers, there are hackers, and over time we’ve seen an increasing number of hacking and malware on WordPress sites, and we predict there’s a whole lot more to come. And not only this but WordPress is an open source software which means that an online community constantly innovate the WordPress system and all of its associated plug ins, which means they need regular updates and maintenance. If you don’t have a plan in place to action this, things, well, they go wrong!

So what should you do to secure your wordpress website?

The bottom line is, having a host for your WordPress website is not enough. You need to have a security and maintenance plan in place also. You should be taking regular backups of your website without fail. How regular? Well the question is rather how much are you prepared to lose?

And you should be aware of important updates your site requires, and actioning these in the best way possible, and sites with customisations of any kind need to be careful in that regard. It’s not just as simple as hitting the ‘update’ button in your WordPress back end. You can completely break your site in the process if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Website insurance for piece of mind

Starting this week, as always, we’re taking a common problem facing our industry — both for clients and on agency side, and we’re innovating. We’ve come up with a solution to all these common problems — websites that have been hacked, websites which have gone down, websites with a broken plugin, clients not knowing whether to update the system or plug ins or not, and we’re solving all these issues in one foul swoop. With something we’re calling ‘web insurance’.

Consider this: how valuable is your website?

Let’s stop and consider for a moment just how valuable your website is. Many of you may think of it as just a ‘thing’ you ‘have to have’, a ‘means to an end’ type thing, but not necessarily something that you couldn’t live without… until it’s taken away from you.

The fact of the matter is that any business that is serious about succeeding in today’s market will generally have a website at the heart of its operation. Sure you can have a physical store and maybe even a Facebook page you rely on too, but a website is your online presence. You can transact volume on it. Generate leads, and scale up and market to a global audience quickly and easily. Take enquiries via phone or email during working hours, or receive web forms all night long while you sleep. The choice is yours.

How does web insurance work?

We’re taking a problem, that to date, has only had a reactive solution; fixing websites after a security breach or hack. We’re flipping that to provide a proactive service, which should prevent the likelihood of a hack or security breach. We’re talking about a monthly WordPress maintenance package where we take care of EVERYTHING so you don’t have to, leaving you to continue on with what you do best – run your business – with a fully functional website you can rely on.

Let us give you three more REALLY good reasons why you need this service:

1) It’s not your thing: Maintaining websites is tedious and technical so let us do it for you.

2) Secure your security: The Internet is an increasingly dangerous place, so let us protect your site from renegades and cowboys (as well as hackers).

3) Peace of Mind: Staying on top of the latest updates and security warnings is not something you want to be thinking about while you lay in bed at night. Real-time monitoring means that we know about an issue and can resolve it before you can even get out of bed.

4) Sometimes it’s tricky: Not every site or plug in is the same as it was when it came out of the box. Many websites have customisations which mean that updates are not straightforward. You need a deep technical knowledge to be able to run updates when customisations have been made.

Sleep well and know this is a job for a professional and it is totally handled, all because you signed up for one of our amazing new web insurance packages.

Pay a little bit more than standard hosting, sure, but it’s really a very small investment for the ability to keep your wordpress dashboard up to date, your website fully functional, and to know that if anything goes wrong, we’re there for you.

Ever heard the phrase that ‘when you need insurance, you don’t have it. When you have insurance, you never need it?’ This rings so true – this service is all about protecting your site to limit the likelihood of it requiring a major repair.

From less than $5 per week, we’re revolutionising the industry with our new web insurance packages.

Jump on a webinar on Wed 19 August to find out more or jump on board today, and be one of the clever ones that take a proactive step towards website maintenance.

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