WordPress Website Support

We used to support Joomla! and other CMS' but now we only work exclusively with WordPress so that we can offer a better level and consistent product for our clients. (If your website is not on WordPress and are looking to upgrade to this robust, powerful platform. Then fear not, we can help migrate your site.)

After all, it powers over 35% of the web and it can be used for so much more than just blogging.

Here's another fun fact, it is also the fastest website platform and Forbes, Spotify, The New York Times are just some of the most visited websites built on WordPress as well as over 25% of all eCommerce websites.

We are here to help you resolve a multitude of issues on your website, we can also add new features, improve the website's performance, even fix it if it gets hacked, and so much more.

Once we have onboarded your company's website we can then offer you one of our care plan packages (and like car insurance) it will cover most of the items you would be looking for.

Not sure. Let's take a look!

But, generally, if it's on WordPress and it passes our diagnostic testing process to ensure we can successfully onboard it to one of our WordPress website support care plans, we'd be happy to.

Give us a call on 01795 704 999 or drop us a note.

The short answer would be yes, a care plan is essential for a healthy, up to date, secure WordPress website.

It covers all of the main items like regular backups (even if you don't add pages or other content), it needs security and performance scans running daily, plugin updates and malware protection, and more. So because of these fundamental tasks before we work on any new website we need to ensure that it is 100% stable prior to taking it on.

When onboarding your website to our care plan, we would first various diagnostic test (like an MOT for your car) to ensure it has properly licensed software and a bunch of other techie stuff I don't want to bore you with - but if you want to know you only need to ask and Martin will gladly go into full details, and if you ask nicely he can record it in case you need help sleeping!

Joking aside, it is because of the needing to know everything about your website, why we DO NOT provide ad-hoc support of any kind for broken sites or feature requests for any website that are not on one of our care plans.

The only thing we can do is offer you some "ad-hoc" consultancy advice based on an agreed fee and set of conditions that would need to be signed for and approved by the top-level management.

Yes, we pride ourselves on transparent open communication and this doesn't stop at support.

We don't like email ping pong, we like ticketing systems that log everything we do and the feedback you give. This is for the benefit of both parties.

Even though we give you the ability to open your own support request, We generally would raise a ticket on your behalf if you email us directly, if you call us or if you used the chat facility that we install on your website.

In most cases, our services would be covered under one of our monthly care plans.

Although any additional work that falls outside the scope of one of our set plans, our hourly rate is £125

We bill in quarter-hour increments and provide detailed invoicing.

Our Service Level Agreement for our support team to respond back to you would be within 2 business hours on any support requests.

We'll also provide an estimated time and get your approval before commencing any work.

For any hosting-related issues or services, these are covered by your care plan. and we would typically resolve these items as they arise.

When we start our onboarding process to get your website onto your care plan, a lot of effort goes into making sure that it's all set up properly, all of the software is updated, stable, and secure, and that there are no skeletons in the closet.

We also have a transitional process that equally takes time and effort. Because of this, we would require at least a 3-month commitment from you for either of our care plans to cover the time and effort we would spend getting you up and running.

After that, you are free to cancel at any time before the end of your billing cycle.

If your website is built with WordPress (or pretty much any other Content Management system such as Joomla for example, then yes.

It really isn't WordPress's fault or any other software for that matter...As various server-side software gets an upgrade the platforms' core functionality may also change slightly and WordPress has just grown so fast. There are over 55,000 WordPress add-ons (known as plugins) and it also powers 35% of the web.

For this reason, it's the biggest hacker target on the planet along with Joomla.

All websites require some form of maintenance and upkeep, they are just like cars. You must change the oil, rotate the tires, change wiper blades, and put in any other required repairs if you want to be able to reliably get from A to B.

In our experience, a solid WordPress Care Plan must include at the very minimum.

• Weekly Plugin updates
• 24/7 Uptime monitoring
• Security scans
• Performance scans
• Daily Backups

Plugin updates are generally a roll of the dice thing. We've had to emergency patch about 4 plugins in a week to a website manually that had a "zero-day" security vulnerability issue.

There have been other times where there have only been 5 security issues per year on certain websites.

Barring security patches in mind (of which there are many), there are mainly 2 factors as to how often one or more of your website plugins may need to be updated.

1. The number of plugins that you have installed on your website. The more plugins you have = The more chances of potential security patches that need to be applied.
2. And the type of plugins you have installed. Certain plugins are better than others. They're well maintained and well coded.

It is very common that a business website may have between 15 - 30 plugins installed (sometimes more) and they can require up to 10 - 20 individual updates per month.

There are over 55,000 plugins to choose from in WordPress and some need to be updated on a weekly basis.

Saying that it's not all bad news...within the last year or so since we've started providing weekly plugin updates for our clients. We've had two security issues that got through. The good news with those issues was they used the same plugin and both websites where fixed within less than 4 hours with no data loss.

It is not uncommon for conflicts to happen between your website's theme, plugins, and WordPress itself.

These conflicts can take down your website, causing "THE WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH" which is usually a server error and may require a restoration of your website or maybe replacement of a plugin.

If your website is no longer working because of a plugin update, fear not just contact us and we'll take a look.

Note: Any clients on any of our monthly Care Plans should not be updating plugins themselves. Because, well, that's our job 🙂

Absolutely!

We offer three different care plans and we are more than willing to accommodate any other future growth needs of any of our clients'. You can either contact us to discuss or simply start off small and upgrade as needed.

Everything you see listed above is included in our Care Plans. We realise that some of this is going to sound like techno-babel mumbo jumbo.

We don't do hidden costs, Admin fees, credit card fees, etc.

We believe in trust and transparency and any additional costs would be made clear from the get-go.

We are here to help. And if there is anything that you are unclear of, now or in the future of our working relationship, then please feel free to email us at [email protected] and we'll be happy to clear things up.

We partner with various hosting companies such as Cloudways, SiteGround and Kinsta, and are in the top 2 managed WordPress hosting companies in the world.

Other companies such as HeartInternet, LCN, GoDaddy, Hostgator, Bluehost, etc aren't even in the same league when it comes to performance, security, and support.

And with almost all of our clients based in the United Kingdom, and more importantly, so are their customers. We will always select a datacenter that is closest to your target audience (for speed) and can enable CDN for a major performance increase.

Yes we can, and is included, However, hosting your email with a web design agency is so 1999...don't you know.

We would recommend hosting your email with an enterprise solution such as Microsoft Office 365 or G Suite (Google's Business Email).

Your email always needs to end in your company name (no Hotmail or Gmail) and we can assist you with your G Suite emails. However, you will be paying them directly so that you get their enterprise-level support.

Once we have gathered the relevant details, We can usually get you set up within 2-3 business days.

Yes, again we would like to discuss the needs and run an audit but we are familiar with WooCommerce and we would gladly support it and the extra care plan activities would only be £50 additional per month.

We recommend our clients should always take ownership and make payment of their domain name.

As your domain name is by far the most important point of access to your website and more valuable that the website itself (if the website is obviously backed up somewhere that is).

Since a domain name typically costs £15 or less per year we would recommend that you should renew your domain name for up to 5 years at a time as well as putting several alerts in your calendar.

It really is THAT important.