Website Care

Instead of hosting your website on a single server like traditional hosting, cloud hosting serves your website from multiple servers. This has the benefits of increased reliability, security and performance.

All websites are hosted in the cloud with our hosting partners Cloudways.

Our hosting packages include generous disk space and bandwidth plus daily backups providing all your hosting needs.

Losing your website as a result of server failure, hackers or even an accident caused by yourself is a horrible experience, not to mention costly.

We perform daily offsite backups to the cloud keeping several days of backups of your WordPress website. This enables us to rapidly restore a previous version if anything happens to your website.

Hackers look to exploit vulnerabilities in outdated software. This includes old versions of WordPress and plugins, therefore it is extremely important that your WordPress website is kept up-to-date.

WordPress Updates

WordPress usually releases major updates 2 or 3 times a year, with minor updates rolled out throughout the year with enhancements, bug fixes and any security issues addressed. We will update your website so that you always have the latest version of WordPress.

Plugin Updates

Plugins extend the functionality of WordPress and typical sites we build will use between 15 and 25 plugins. Plugins in the main are updated frequently by the authors to fix bugs, make improvements or for compatibility with the latest version of WordPress. We will update your plugins when new versions are released.

There can be a number of reasons why a website could go offline. Network connectivity issues, hardware malfunction, server overload.

Your website going offline could also be the first sign that your website has come under attack.

Our website monitoring immediately alerts us to any problems via email and SMS, allowing us to take the necessary action and try and fix the problem before your customers notice.

Our performance optimisation comprises of adding a premium plugin on your site that will make your site load faster. A faster loading website is not only good for your visitors but also for search engines and your business.

We also will keep your site trim and performing at its best by removing spam, post revisions and database overhead. Database optimisation reduces the chance of data corruption, condenses the size of the database and improves load time.

There are 3 major benefits to having a faster website.

1. Speed is a crucial factor in creating a great first impression and user experience for your customers.
2. Speed will help retain your visitors and improve your chances of more conversions (conversely a slow website will result in lost visitors and therefore lost business).
3. Speed is a ranking factor in Google's search engine algorithm to rank pages. Faster website pages will aid SEO, helping your site to rank higher in the search results page.

Our performance plan includes a premium caching plugin that will help improve page loading times on your website. Our Lightning plan goes further and includes a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which will deliver your content even faster around the globe.

For those who are interested in the techy stuff, here are just some of the techniques that might be used to make your site load quicker depending which care plan you are on.

• Global CDN
• Image optimisation
• CSS, HTML, JS Compression and Minification
• Caching

The support time covers content updates and small design improvements.

It could be a content update like adding a new blog post, a testimonial or a new staff member for example. You would just need to email us the content with clear instructions and we can do the changes for you.

Requests for new features will most likely result in a formal quote as these usually go over the monthly dedicated time.

The monthly support time is reserved for you every month. If you don't use it that month, like most retainers it doesn't roll over to the next month.

If you have a task that is going to exceed your dedicated support time for that month, then we will inform you and provide you with a separate quote for you to approve.

SSL (secure sockets layer) encrypts information sent between your website and a visitors web browser so that it cannot be read as it is sent across the Internet.

Traditionally it has been used on websites that request sensitive information such as e-commerce websites to encrypt credit card details and customer information. Today it is recommended that all sites have an SSL certificate.

You may have noticed the green padlock that displays on web browsers. The padlock shows that the site is secure and the address bar will change from showing http to https. This is an example of a website using an SSL certificate.

Google's search engines algorithm also favours websites that are served over https, giving those sites a small boost in the rankings. In the future Google have said they may strengthen this factor so your site would receive a bigger boost.

The main benefits of an SSL certificate on your website

• Encrypting data and information
• Building trust with your visitors showing you take security seriously
• Possibly a higher ranking in Google's search engine.

All our care plans include an SSL certificate.

A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of servers distributed around the world. Each server stores a cached copy of the files and media (html, javascript, css, images) that are needed to display your website.

When a visitor loads a page on your website, the server nearest to them delivers the content. Your visitors will experience faster loading times, which means they will be more likely to stay on your website as visitors are inclined to leave a slow loading website.

A CDN is included on our Lightning care plan.

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) helps to protect your website by monitoring for malicious traffic. It helps protect your website from cross-site-scripting (XSS) and SQL injection attacks as well as other types of attacks.

The WAF acts as a shield between your website and the Internet. Traffic reaches the WAF first before reaching your website, allowing the WAF to block malicious traffic.

A WAF is available on our Lightning plan.

Yes! Although these plans are generally for sites we build, we welcome clients who are looking for ongoing support and a long term relationship.

We first like to do a Website Evaluation to become familiar with your site, how it was built and highlight any potential issues that can arise.

We will first take a full backup of your site and then perform any WordPress updates, performance optimisation and scan your site for malware.

Most importantly we will make a list of issues to fix and suggestions for improvement needed in order to proceed with the website on a monthly plan.

One of the main purposes of our client plans is preventative care, so we work hard to prevent anything bad happening to your website.

However, in the case something does happen and your website needs emergency care, we will be there to communicate with you and keep you informed of what needs to happen.

We cannot promise your website will not be hacked but can promise we will do everything in our power to prevent it, as well as assist in the restoration and cleanup of the website with one of our backups.

Yes you can. Of course we wouldn't want to see you go as we value our relationship with you and hope that you would see the benefits and great value our care plans offer.

If you do want to cancel then just send us an email with a request to cancel and we will immediately stop the next payment.