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If you are the owner of a website, manage a site on behalf of your company, site monitoring and maintenance is vital; it’s do or die.
By now, you are well aware things can go wrong under the hood and go unnoticed long before there are visual signs.
In this article, we’ll cover essential website monitoring and maintenance and just a little beyond.
Bear with me a little. I need to make a case for my industry.
At least most of us drive cars fly on an aeroplane from time to time. If I were to ask you, What is a turbocharger, and how do they work? While we may know what it is, we know much less about repairing them or how they work. Most cars have a turbocharged engine. According to Federal Aviation Regulations, all commercial flight flying above 12.500 ft must be equipped with them. Your life depends on it.
So, What’s the Point? A dedicated professional can be your best friend when it comes to site monitoring and maintenance. Do you have a Doctor? A Mechanic? A Lawyer? A Plumber? They are necessary because somethings got beyond DIY.
The internet is a communications highway. Your website is your vehicle on it. Your website has to be fast to keep up. Secure. Visible to the naked eye and unseen eyes (Google Search Engines and others) and Up to date.
Some of what I mentioned here goes beyond the basics, and it’s essential to keep pace. Since Covid 19, more eyes are to the internet for solutions. The highway is only getting busier.
Case Made. Your car has a frame, and buildings have foundations. Websites aren’t any different. Here are some elements to improve the structure.
Security is a serious and extensive subject, and I’ll consider it more within upcoming articles.
Website security starts with your choice of hosting companies. In my opinion, these features shouldn’t be an upsell. Safety should be part of the package. Hosting provides should make it safe for you to do business on their servers, which you rent from them.
Many hosting companies like Siteground offer free SSL certificates if you use them, a must-have to do any business on the internet.
Here are some things you should do personally use strong passwords. Use a password manager, which can generate incredibly strong passwords for you that can be changed by a click of a button, making it nearly impossible for hackers to decipher them. Often these password managers even monitor if websites you’ve signed up for have been compromised.
Many operating systems have built-in password managers, and they are available as extensions on reputable browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
Use Two-Factor-Authentication; it allows your website or app to send you a one time code or link through a text message or email. It’s like having one more lock on your door that only you have a key to, thus making you much more secure than using a password alone.
Frequent site virus scans are also vital.
I can’t tell you how much daily site backups have saved my day. In my opinion, it’s a must-have. You may have installed a plugin that disagreed with your theme or other plugins, and uninstalling wouldn’t bring things back to normal. Here is where your trusted backup comes in.
A site backup is your hero; it’ll save your day. It’s like having a time machine at your fingertips! You can essentially have your site go back in time to a point before installing the incompatible plugin and bringing it back to the present. Go to your backup, pick a date and time, and press restore and Voila! Your files are restored just as you had it before.
Getting hacked is another reason. Daily backups are essential for restoring your hacked site to normal. It allows you to patch the hole the attackers used to get in, in the first place.
Here again, as soon as updates are available, you should update while keeping an eye on other factors on your site.
Updates can be security patches or site enhancements. If you use WordPress, you know what I mean; they are regularly sending updates and for good reasons.
Good plugin developers are always quick to update their code to suit; others could lag in updating their plugin code, leaving security holes in your site installation. Site monitoring and maintenance should catch these plugins deficiencies and offer recommendations, depending on your agreement, and make necessary changes.
You can refer to Google Search Console as looking under your internet vehicle’s hood, your website. It gives you the ability to see if anything is preventing you from picking up speed on the internet or downright broken. It’s a must-have in my books.
I highly recommend installing Google Analytics. I don’t personally know any business folks who are not interested in how well their site performs and what their online marketing efforts are yielding.
GA is a must-have from the get-go. It gives you the ability to know how many are visiting your site, like, right now! as we speak, in the past and helps you gauge the future.
Here is where science and technology meet and a steep learning curve. Let me know if you need assistance with Google Analytics.
The internet is a communication highway. Keeping an eye on your performance gauges are essential. Monitoring and maintenance are vital. The bare minimum is Site security, Daily Backups, Updates, Google Search Console, Google Analytics.
I hope this was helpful.
