One of the reasons WordPress grew to become the most popular content management system in the world is because of how easy it is to get started. You can install WordPress manually using their famous 5 minute installation or use a commercial script library such as Fantastico to install WordPress at the click of a button. The process is simple.
After 20 minutes navigating the admin area, most users have a basic understanding of how you publish content on the WordPress platform. Additionally, the inclusion of the WordPress visual editor and availability of WordPress themes and drag and drop page builders means that anyone can create a professional looking website without knowing any HTML.
Whilst WordPress is easy to get started, many underestimate what is involved in maintaining a WordPress website. It can be very time-consuming and is fairly tedious too.
That is why many people use WordPress support services such as Fix MY WP. These maintenance support companies provide a range of services and ensure that your website is safe and running efficiently.
Before we look at why someone would pay a company to maintain their WordPress websites, let's first look at what is involved in maintaining a WordPress website.
I have been working with WordPress since it was first launched and I truly believe that anyone can learn how to administrate a WordPress website correctly.
Whilst there are many products and services that help you maintain your WordPress websites, you still need to spend time ensuring that everything is ticking over.
Below is a list of essential tasks that every WordPress user should make a priority.
When it comes to updates, WordPress is miles ahead of its competition. The platform supports automatic background updates so that minor and major core updates can be processed behind the scenes.
Whilst theme and plugin updates can also be updated in the background, it is better to perform updates manually through the WordPress admin area so that you can check that the upgrades went ahead with no problems. A simple error in an updated WordPress theme or plugin can be enough to crash your website, which makes updating them automatically risky.
Keeping WordPress up to date is one of the simplest administrative tasks for a WordPress user, however it is also one of the most important.
WordPress has an intuitive update system.
The longer a website remains offline, the more traffic and revenue your business will lose. You therefore want to be informed about any downtime immediately.
There are a number of uptime monitoring services available online that will inform you when your website goes offline so that you can investigate an error on your website as soon as possible.
Uptime Monitoring services such as Uptime Robot will inform you when your website goes offline.
As a WordPress website owner, you need to stay vigilant and ensure that WordPress is always up to date. You also need to ensure that your themes and plugins are up to date and do not have any security holes or vulnerabilities.
WordPress websites are constantly under threat from hackers who want to steal information or install malware on your website. Failure to be proactive about the security of your website is guaranteed to increase your risk of an attack.
Helps prevent brute force attacks by limiting the number of permitted login attempts from an IP address.
Do not become complacent and assume that nothing will go wrong. It can and it will.
Even experienced WordPress website owners need to revert to external backups to restore their website from time to time. This may be necessary due to your hosting company's server going down, your website being hacked, or simply because you made a mistake when administrating your website.
Backup your website regularly to ensure that anything goes wrong, you do not lose all of your data.
VaultPress is a premium WordPress backup and restore service from Automattic.
Spam is a major problem for all websites. Even if you disable registration in WordPress, adopt a strict commenting policy, and use a good anti-spam WordPress plugin, a lot of spam is still going to get through.
Spam cleaning is a boring unrewarding task, but it is something that unfortunately needs to be done.
Spam Comments Cleaner is an effective solution for removing unwanted spam.
A slow loading website will make people click the back button on their browser. Since website speed is a ranking factor, poor performance will also affect your search engine ranking and reduce the amount of organic traffic your website receives.
It is therefore imperative that you optimize your WordPress websites
You can optimize your website in a number of ways. This includes database optimization (e.g. less revisions), page caching, and utilizing a content delivery network.
Cache Enabler generates static HTML pages of your website in order to drastically improve performance.
Things can go wrong and things will go wrong.
Even when your WordPress websites have been set up correctly and optimized, you still need to regularly check your website to ensure that everything is OK.
WordPress maintenance is an ongoing job.
If maintaining a WordPress website is not technically difficult, why do people use WordPress support services?
There are many benefits to using a WordPress Support Service, but in my opinion there are three main reasons website owners would outsource WordPress Maintenance work.
Maintaining a WordPress website and ensuring that it remains secure and optimized can be time consuming. Hiring a support company to take responsibility of maintaining your WordPress websites means that you can focus your time and energy on more important tasks.
By paying a small fee to a support company you can free up hours of your time every week and increase your bottom line.
Fix My WP perform a wide range of maintenance tasks for a small monthly fee.
The peace of mind that a WordPress Support Company can provide cannot be underestimated.
WordPress support companies pay close attention to current security issues which means that there is less risk of security and performance issues cropping up.
If any problem does arise on your website, you are safe in the knowledge that you have a team of experienced WordPress users working on fixing the issue.
Those of you who have spent hours trying to recover data or find out which WordPress plugin is crashing their website will appreciate how stressful maintaining a WordPress website can be.
Website maintenance is also quite boring and repetitive so being able to hand over this work to someone else is incredibly convenient.
Ensuring your WordPress websites are up to date, secure, and efficient, is an essential part of running a WordPress website. For many people, handing over this responsiblity to an experienced team of WordPress users makes sense as it frees up a lot of their time and gives them the peace of mind that their website is always operating correctly.
WordPress support companies also provide technical support. Fix My WP, for example, offer 24 hour email support to their customers. Being able to get technical help on such short notice is great for non-technical users and WordPress users who are short on time.
Whether a WordPress support service is worth the money depends on the person and how important their WordPress websites are to them.
For example, a personal blogger who publishes content once a month may prefer a more hands on approach if their website is not making money.
In contrast, someone who runs a profitable WordPress website does not want to spend a lot of time doing administrative tasks, therefore having a company do this work for them gives them back a lot of their time and ensures their website does not go offline.
What do you think about WordPress support companies? Let us know in the comment area below.
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