What’s the difference between building a website (development) and designing a website? Designers are visual communicators. They create graphic solutions to communication problems. They layout coherent and usuable user interfaces. They speak the language of visual communication.
Website development on the other hand is all about the underpinnings of the site. I take the basics of a WordPress site and mold it to fit the combined vision of the site owner and the designer. Building a WordPress site requires knowing code, how servers work and how WordPress integrates with third party sites and services. It’s about making sure that what you have in mind comes to fruition and then actually works the way it’s supposed to work. It isn’t glamorous, and most of the time people have almost no idea what it is we’re doing. But when done right, the result is a smoothly running website that you know will always be there for you and your business.
Security is difficult to focus on for the small business owner. But with cyber-crime on the rise, ignoring security could result in exposing you and your company to risks that can easily sink your business. Your reputation is tightly wrapped up in your website, so you need to know that your site is as safe from hackers as it can be. I’ll show you how security works without making your eyes glaze over after five minutes.
I audit everything from your business’s internet connection, to your email provider, your passwords and your payments systems. I’ll develop and implement a complete security plan that will leave your business more secure and help keep the bad actors at bay.
Unfortunately, the popularity that WordPress enjoys also makes it a target for hackers. The team that is responsible for WordPress security is top notch and WordPress’s itself has very good security. But plugins and third party add-ons to WordPress open up windows for hackers to exploit. Staying on top of that and keeping you safe is part of our maintenance plan.
If you think you may have been hacked, contact me right away. The sooner we determine if you’ve been hacked or not the sooner we can get the situation under control, your site cleaned up and back online. I know this is a stressful time for any business, but I’ve helped businesses through it before and I can help you as well.
One question I hear a lot is “Why is my WordPress site so slow?”
Here’s a secret, your website is slow because you’re using an overloaded
hosting company. My largest client went through 3 other “highly rated”
hosts and several server configurations at each before we finally found a
hosting company that has the same priorities as we do, speed and
security. Smaller sites can take advantage of our basic hosting plan.
For busier sites, we’ll help you transition to our host and setup your
own hosting agreement.
Once your WordPress site is safely on our host, I’ll look at how your
website is loading and identify any remaining bottlenecks. This may be
as simple as tweaking a setting or two, finding a different plugin that
is more efficient or it might be more complex. Regardless of the
problem, I’ll bring you the facts and work with you to fix the problems
in order of best return for your budget. As we fix these issues. we run
simulations for load as well to make sure that what we do stands up
under pressure.
When we’re done, you can rest easy that when a story or product on
your website goes viral, your site will keep on serving pages to
visitors instead of slowing or stopping altogether.
I also offer Google Adsense optimization and SEO setup and integration.
WordPress can be difficult to maintain, there’s a lot to learn and keep track of. Why bother with the technical side of things when you can outsource that worry to me. My maintenance plans make sure your site is kept up to date and backed up. I’ll take care of updating your plugins, theme and WordPress core. Our annual maintenance plans also include modest changes or troubleshooting. Let us focus on keeping your WordPress site up and running so you can focus on the content.
As part of your maintenance agreement, I use tools to watch what’s happening in real time on your site. These alert me if there is an attack in progress or if it is suffering from a problem. I also monitor threats to WordPress core, WordPress plugins and other more generalized security risks that could affect your business. And I monitor the health of your site, including uptime, overall speed and your web core vitals score.