WordPress Maintenance and Hosting 101

A WordPress website is an Open Source CMS.
What does that mean? Let's break it down!

 

WordPress is a website framework used for creating hosted websites. In a way it's like a Christmas tree. Freshly cut from the forest, it has a raw beauty and is attractive just as it is.

But most people aren't satisfied with a plain Christmas tree. A Christmas tree needs a good base to support it and fresh water  to maintain it. Lights can be added and decorations hung. Some people create theme trees. My all time favorite tree was by a friend who loved cats. The whole tree was adorned with creative cat decorations.

Following the metaphor, WordPress provides their framework with several free themes to get you started. A WordPress website needs secure hosting to provide a good homebase. Beyond the initial themes offerred from WordPress there are many theme styles available and custom designs can be made to order.

Using the Open Source framework of WordpPress, plugins are created to take payments, create forms, add style, create backups, chat and connect to social and email. In fact there are over 21,000 plug-ins currently in the the WordPress repository. These plugins are built by the WordPress community using the open source structure of WordPress.

WordPress is a CMS or a Content Managed System. What this means is that with permission using their username and password a person can login and make changes to the website.

So here are the 4 main pieces of a WordPress Website.

WordPress - Website core FrameWork.
Website - A collection of content with a domain name published on a web server.
Open source - The permission to use WordPress’ source code. This let’s anyone build additional functionality into WordPress websites with plugins and themes
CMS - A Content Managed website is a website were changes are made by logging into the website and using a dashboard to make updates and changes.

This should give you an understanding of how a WordPress website works. It will help you understand why it's so important to have good maintenance and hosting for your website.

The Benefits of website maintenance

It attracts visitors and improves engagement

Keeping your website up to date with your business or organization gives people a reason to return to your website which turns into more visitors and better engagement. Having a team that supports that effort helps you get the most out of your site.

Improves security

There are several critical areas of your website that need to be monitored and updated regularly. A good maintenance plan helps to prevent Malware attacks (hacks) to your site.

Boosts traffic and SEO

A well maintained site benefits from better search ranking and more organic traffic to the site

Improves your brand's competitiveness

Staying ahead of your competition means keeping your message fresh and on target. It's also important to come in on top in search.

What's included in our maintenance and hosting package

Hosting

Having a dedicated hosting team that specializes in WordPress and manages security with a terrific support staff is critical to the success of a website. We are extremely proud to offer Premium Flywheel hosting to our clients. All of our websites are migrating to a new faster more secure Google Cloud platform and in addition to providing SSL, 30 days of easy restore, Free security and Malware removal, all of our sites will have the added benefit of running through a CDN network.

Software Updates

A WordPress website is made up of a series of Software pieces and all of these pieces of software are constantly going through changes that require updates. A maintenance Contract takes care of Software updates for WordPress, the Theme and the plugins used on the website.

Theme and Plugin Management

Not all plugins and themes are equal. It's important that only quality themes and plugins are used. Some themes and plugins are premium and require a yearly license to use and update. These fees can be part of your service contract or extra.

Security

As I mentioned previously,  there are a lot of moving parts in an open source CMS and a lot of players. WordPress, Themes and plugins need to be updated regularly to avoid security vulnerabilities.

Design

Keeping your website up to date is important. As your business or organization grows and adds new services it's important to get this infomation on your site and WordPress let's you make these changes. But things don't always go as planned and we are here to support you and to fine tune the design and maximize the effectiveness of the updates. We also provide video tutorials for training your team.

Backups

Part of any security plan is to have a backup strategy in place. Our websites are backed up daily with 30 days of easy restore and we archive weekly or monthly backups depending on the needs of our clients.

Our Service

Pricing for Hosting with site security and updates as well as ongoing site maintenance varies from $50-$450 per month based on the type of website that is being hosted and managed.

If you have a WordPress website and are interested in a hosting and maintenance plan contact us.