Why do I need WordPress Maintenance?
We think WordPress is awesome, its open source and free to use. Just like any other software however, WordPress is prone to bugs and problems over time if the software is not maintained. WordPress needs a health plan to keep it working properly. At Net Solutions we are experts in WordPress and know how to look after it so you don't have any trouble down the track.
We have developed our own methods, processes and tools making sure your site continues to operate in tip top shape around the clock. We manage and maintain our own servers where security and performance are at the top of the list.We also perform regular backups should anything go wrong.
If you’re finding the task of updating your WordPress software too complicated or arduous and not given the right priority, then your best option is to outsource these tasks to professionals. Getting your WordPress site hosted and maintained by Net Solutions makes sense.
You can, as long as you have competence, time and inclination to do so.
In a perfect world your site may appear to be running fine. When it comes to software however, things are far from perfect. WordPress sites use Plugins and additional software from third party authors. Software developers come from all walks of life and so the quality of their work varies anywhere from from good to poor. It means that something will break at some point in time.
When things do break or you site does not behave correctly, you need to be prepared with correct processes tools and above all skills to restore your site.
All too often we get inquiries from clients along the lines of "My wed designer is really good, he built me this website and said as long as you don't touch anything you don't need to do anything more to it and it will run forever.
This is just not true and blatantly ignorant. Once you site has been built the risk of anything going wrong may be small, but over time risks of things going wrong and having your site compromised will increase every day. When your site does get compromised, and when you do notice things not working,you will most likely need to reach out to a developer to get your site fixed.
Don't be surprised to find that the costs of getting your site fixed will be significantly more than the annual cost of WordPress Maintenance.
When WordPress was first released the need to keep your software updated was not of a high priority. Software updates were generally only required when things broke. WordPress has evolved over time has rapidly become the leading content-management system today.
At the same time Hackers have quickly learned that there is a great deal of money to be made from hacking web sites with very low risk of being caught.
The importance of protecting your site from hackers has never been greater and software updates are released more frequently. We introduced the WordPress Maintenance Packages to keep you site operating in in tip-top shape.
As of 2017 over 80 million people use WordPress to power their website, making it one of the most popular open-source content management systems (CMS) available.
The software is complex, fully featured and frequent updates make it a dynamic, easy-to-use solution with on-going improvements, upgrades. We continue to advise that WordPress is a great solution for our clients that want to have a modern, easy-to-update website that can grow with their business.
No we can’t. We cannot guarantee that any software will be 100% error free. WordPress software is free, it was written by humans who do make mistakes.
WordPress also uses plugins and themes. This is software that is written by third parties and again, we cannot guarantee that their software will be 100% error free. We will use best practices to make sure your site is protected as much as possible.
Backups are great, if you have the time to do them, and they are performed regularly. All too often though this activity gets low priority until something hits the fan and the situation becomes critical.
The other issue is that simply restoring a backup will often not resolve the issue. If your site was hacked though a vulnerability, and you restore from your last backups, the hackers will simply return and gain access again. So backups are great but you have to update all the software, plugins and themes regularly
What do you do as part of WordPress Maintenance?
Daily Offsite Backups
Backups are the cornerstone of our WordPress maintenance service. If an update fails, or your website crashes, it’s imperative to have an up-to-date backup of your website. Our automated backup service takes the load of your mind by running scheduled backups and making sure that up-to-date backup is always ready.
Our backups are incremental and run off-site. Depending on your plan backups are stored for 30 -90 days.
Its everything you need from a great backup service
24x7 Uptime Monitoring
Uptime Monitor saves you time worrying about what your website is up to, it instantaneously notifies our support team if your website goes down, giving us a good chance to fix the problem before it becomes serious.
Your website is checked every minute from multiple geographically displaced locations
Daily Security Scans
We perform daily security scans on your site to make sure it is clean and free of any malware, viruses or trojans. We use Sucuri which scans the pages on your website and compares the code against known malware knowledge bases.
We also perform a blacklist check with a number of services, like Google Safe Browsing, Norton Safe Web, ESET, etc.
The results of each scan are stored in an archive and are included in our maintenance reports
Core Updates
WordPress is in active development so software patches and updates are periodically released to address security issues, bugs and functionality updates. These need to be updated as soon as possible once they are released.
For major software releases to the core software we also undertake backups before implementing any major updates. This is in case the update somehow breaks the site we can revert back to the position it was in before the attempted update
Plugin Updates
Net Solutions will update Plugins as they become available via the official WordPress.org repository. Premium Plugins are updated as part of the package if the update process is automated via API.
Premium Plugins that are not automated will only be updated where Net Solutions manages license for that plugin on your behalf. In such a case, please arrange for Net Solutions to purchase and manage the license for your plugin. Our plugin management fees are billed separate and are based on the annual plugin cost, plus currency conversion (if applicable) and a handling fee of 20%
Theme Updates
No we can’t. We cannot guarantee that any software will be 100% error free. WordPress software is free, it was written by humans who do make mistakes.
WordPress also uses plugins and themes. This is software that is written by third parties and again, we cannot guarantee that their software will be 100% error free. We will use best practices to make sure your site is protected as much as possible.
Maintenance Reports
Our Maintenance Reports are designed to give clients a baseline and awareness of what's taking place on their website.
Reports are emailed in PDF format and depending on your package, include details on, core, theme and plugin updates, backups, site optimization, google analytics tracking, security scans, performance monitoring, uptime monitoring, WooCommerce statistics and SEO keyword tracking.
Almost all activities happen behind the scenes so our aim is to keep you in the loop so you can get a good understanding of what do.
Site Optimisation
Our site optimisation process helps tidy up your website by removing and purging obsolete post revisions and spam comments. We also perform database cleanups to remove overheads. Having too many post revisions, spam comments and database overhead, can increase the load on your database which will slow down your website over time.
Daily Performance Monitoring
How your website performs The Performance Reporting feature benchmarks the performance of your site against some basic standards. It shows you if your site has any bottlenecks and if its loading Fast, Standard or Slow.
We run daily website speed tests from multiple locations around the globe using real browsers (Firefox, IE and Chrome) and at real consumer connection speeds. Our results will provide rich diagnostic information including site load time, resource loading waterfall charts, page speed checks.
Daily SEO Rank Tracking
Our SEO Rank Tracking helps keep track of your keywords ranking performance over time. It helps find out who your competitors are and how you stack up against them.
This service is aimed at providing you a quick snapshot. For a more advanced and comprehensive service, please see our SEO Reporting
WooCommerce Reporting
If you have a WooCommerce site we can include WooCommerce statistics into you reports. We collect the reports from WooCommerce plugin directly. Its give you a high level view of number of orders received, items purchased, and items shipped, gross and net sales and coupon usage
It means that you don't need login to your site to generate and send separate WooCommerce reports.
Support (Anything WordPress)
If your package includes support, you will have direct access to our WordPress experts who can assist with anything 'WordPress'. We allocate a fixed number of minutes per month which is included in your package. If you exceed the number of included support minutes, we only bill the remainder.
If your package does not include support you can still request support and we will bill for our time.
Simply raise a service request via our Client Area and your request will be given priority support. Whatever your WordPress needs, let our team take care of it.
WordPress Maintenance and Support Packages
Basic
WordPress Maintenance
Only
- Daily Offsite Backups (Stored for 30 days, Maximum size 8GB)
- 24x7 Uptime Monitoring
- Daily Security Scans
- Monthly Core Updates
- Monthly Plugin Updates
- Monthly Theme Updates
- Monthly Site Optimisation
- Monthly Maintenance Report
- Daily Performance Monitoring
- Daily SEO Rank Tracking
- WooCommerce Reporting
- Support (billable)
Standard
WordPress Maintenance
Only
- Daily Offsite Backups (Stored for 60 days, Maximum size 16GB)
- 24x7 Uptime Monitoring
- Daily Security Scans
- Fortnightly Core Updates
- Fortnightly Plugin Updates
- Fortnightly Theme Updates
- Fortnightly Site Optimisation
- Monthly Maintenance Report
- Daily Performance Monitoring
- Daily SEO Rank Tracking
- WooCommerce Reporting
- Support (billable)
Premium
WordPress Maintenance & Support
- Daily Offsite Backups (Stored for 90 days, Maximum size 32GB)
- 24x7 Uptime Monitoring
- Daily Security Scans
- Fortnightly Core Updates
- Fortnightly Plugin Updates
- Fortnightly Theme Updates
- Fortnightly Site Optimisation
- Weekly Maintenance Report
- Daily Performance Monitoring
- Daily SEO Rank Tracking
- WooCommerce Reporting
- Support (30 min/month)
Enterprise
WordPress Maintenance & Support
- Daily Offsite Backups (Stored for 90 days, Maximum size 32GB)
- 24x7 Uptime Monitoring
- Daily Security Scans
- Weekly Core Updates
- Weekly Plugin Updates
- Weekly Theme Updates
- Weekly Site Optimisation
- Weekly Maintenance Report
- Daily Performance Monitoring
- Daily SEO Rank Tracking
- WooCommerce Reporting
- Support (60 min*/month)
All packages are billed annually and only available on sites which are hosted on Net Solutions servers. Please see our Terms and Conditions for more information.
Is your WordPress site hacked, or not behaving correctly?
Is your WordPress site is not behaving correctly? it may have been compromised. It is not uncommon and often you wont even know it has happened. Once you have been hacked, data and identity theft is inevitable
If you don't have a Maintenance and Support package, you can still get Support using the form. We are WordPress experts and we are sure to have the right advice for you