Sexy? Maybe not, but keeping your website secure should be a priority.
I love announcing awards and showing off finished projects. But another thing I’m very proud of is how many clients stick with us for years and years. One reason may be our robust approach to maintaining websites.
The WordPress revolution brought a sophisticated Content Management System, or CMS, approach to web building. With its open-source approach to sharing code, it enabled us to create site functions that might have previously cost 10 or 100 times as much. A giant community of developers stays busy at work adding features and functions as well as patching security issues.
So you’re in good shape as long as — ready for the catch? — you keep your site updated.
Left to sit on its own, a WordPress build becomes increasingly out of date and vulnerable to malware. Because it’s the most popular CMS right now, there are a dedicated group of hackers and evil bots looking for ways to cause mischief. Fortunately the WordPress community keeps on top of it, plugging security issues quickly and doing frequent updates.
Demand from clients with legacy websites
We always include site maintenance support with our projects, but started hearing from lots of people who had a pro build them a lovely WordPress site… and then sent them on their way. So we offer site maintenance for many WordPress sites we did not design or build, and support over 100 sites.
Once we bring a website up to speed — WordPress and the plugins updated, optimized, and hardened — we can then set up our automated monitoring system, which scans for malware, downtime, or important security updates. It pings us whenever there’s an issue and we’re able to update sites before problems happen. It provides clients with a monthly report on the status of their site, and every plugin running on it. In the rare cases of problems, our regular cloud backups provide a method for recovery.
So three cheers for the unglamorous but vital work of keeping things running! If you want to learn more, read about our WordPress Maintenance plan, or get in touch!