Integrate the Top 5 WordPress Speed Optimization Strategies

WordPress speed optimization has become a hot topic in both web development and marketing circles lately. More and more, companies are looking to optimize their site load speeds as they work to make sure their sites load well on a diverse array of devices that just gets more diverse by the day. Understanding both how to increase those speeds and why load speed is so important means having the advantage when it comes to your company’s online marketing and delivery of services.

 

Why Is Your Site Load Speed Important?

First and foremost, response and loading speeds are benchmark measurements of user experience. Speed optimization tips focus on this, because less users stay on your site and stay engaged with your content if you are loading slowly or experiencing other performance issues. This is also why Google recently started considering site speed in its rankings. While the company does emphasize that site speed is just one of many considerations when it comes to site ranking, SEO is a process-based art. That means that adding this measurement as a flag for ranking creates the ability for optimization, and any company that fails to optimize chooses to pass up the opportunity to rank more highly. Make sure your site is loading as quickly as possible with these five WordPress speed optimization tips and tricks.

 

1. Image Optimization

The first and sometimes biggest change you can make is by ensuring all your images are optimized for WordPress. This means knowing the difference between rasterized images and vector images, and it also means using both appropriately.

• A rasterized image is one that is made up of a rectangular grid of pixels. Its file types tend to be familiar, because most image files are this type. Your .jpeg, .png, and .gif files are all rasterized.
• A vector image is a computer-generated image, and the file is generally the set of instructions for drawing the image on screen.

Since vector graphics are sets of instructions for drawing the image, their file sizes are much smaller, they scale more easily, and they are much more compatible with non-destructive editing. They also load faster for all these reasons.

 

Optimizing rasterized images, which will be the majority of your images for the time being, involves editing them to ensure they are the optimal size and quality for web devices. Most images are saved for reprinting in high-quality 300 DPI resolutions, and scaling them down to size takes time and processing power. By uploading images that are the right size and level of detail, you make sure load speeds get a lot faster.

 

2. WordPress Caching

Alongside control over your images to keep bloat out of your loading times, caching makes up the backbone of most WordPress speed optimization strategies. WordPress Caching involves setting up a plugin or application that generates the HTML page from WordPress’s PHP formula and saves it, increasing the load speed for the site by serving that page to visitors. You can set up caching for yourself in WordPress, but server-side caching handled by an expert like our staff at Team WP Sekure can deliver the edge that helps you provide your customers with top-notch loading times.

 

3. Content Delivery Networks

By accessing a network of global edge servers, you can speed up access to your site by ensuring that users around the world are able to load it quickly. Without a CDN for your site, you run the risk that distance from your primary server will increase the odds of your having load speed problems, because global distance increases the lag users experience. When you have a CDN set up, users access the satellite server closest to them instead of automatically being routed to the main server your site is hosted on. This allows them to load it more quickly. It might seem like you would need a lot of traffic before this would become important, but the fact is that a CDN is one of the most effective and easiest WordPress speed optimization tips you will find.

 

4. CloudFlare

While there are many places to go for CDN and caching services, no one company has become synonymous with loading speed, efficiency, and reliability like CloudFlare. At this point, the service has become a must-have for any site that gets an appreciable amount of traffic, because it provides robust DDoS protection and other key services that reduce a variety of risks, including hacking and other malware-related risks as well as denial of service attacks.

 

5. Clean Up Your Site

Finally, keep your site clean! WordPress sites don’t tend to have the clutter in their HTML that traditional web sites have because the script that manages the content produces the most efficient HTML code possible, and your caching should take care of serving that page to everyone. Still, there are ways your page can wind up bloated. If you neglect to optimize your images, for instance. Or, as is most likely if you’ve already learned about image optimization, you could be choked with extra plugins.

 

To keep your site as simple and fast as possible, you will want to make sure you also disable any plugins that are outdated or unused. It’s also a good idea to uninstall them completely unless you are simply waiting for an updated version before re-enabling them. Getting rid of these unused plugins minimizes the loading time by keeping the scripts on your site as elegant as possible. While you’re at it, removing old post revisions, drafts, and spam comments will help too.

 

Speed Up Your Site Today

Managing your site and keeping it optimized for both visibility and speed means having help. Contact us today to learn more about WordPress speed optimization for your site.

The post Integrate the Top 5 WordPress Speed Optimization Strategies appeared first on Team WP Sekure.

5 Benefits of Optimizing Websites With WordPress Support Services

It takes some people years to fully understand how to use WordPress. In the interim, it is highly advantageous to utilize professional WordPress support. Having a team or individual to turn to instead of Google is always preferable. By actually having someone teach you about WordPress, and managing your WordPress site, you are more likely to retain the knowledge and become an expert in your own right.

 

1. You Understand the Basic Functionality of Your Site

While there are numerous WordPress support services to use, it helps if you know some of the basics of WordPress yourself, it is an advantage that you can communicate with other people in your organization. Here are some questions you should ask yourself.

• Why did you select WordPress over other hosting services?
• Who exactly is your host provider?
• Does a developer own the hosting account, or do you?
• What security measures do you have to prevent hacking?
• What is the primary purpose of your website? Is it informational or are you trying to sell something?
• How often do you need to update your plugins?

In the event a subordinate comes to you with one of these questions, you want to be able to answer it right then and there. You do not want to leave the person hanging, waiting to hear a response.

 

2. You Can Ask More Informed Questions

Naturally, there is nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it. After all, that is why WordPress support is there in the first place. It is understandable if you do not know as much about WordPress as the experts, but you still want to be capable of carrying on a conversation.

 

As an example, say you wanted to add social media icons onto your website that links to your company’s Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts. A WordPress beginner may ask something along the lines of, “Where do I put social media icons on my website?” There is a lot to unpack with this inquiry. First, there are plenty of places to put the icons themselves. Additionally, the answer depends on what widgets you are already using on your site.

 

A more detailed question would be, “Can I put a social media widget on the sidebar of my site?” The sidebar is a specific area and is a lot more informative than simply the side of the site. You will get a much better answer from website maintenance professionals with a more detailed question.

 

3. You Learn How to Keep Your WordPress Site Secure and Clean

There are plenty of articles out there about how to fix a hacked website. However, the best security measures will focus on preventing hacks rather than only responding to them. One part of this is always ensuring your site is up-to-date. You also want to check to see if any plugins or themes you install are secure and not vulnerable to any breaches. One potential strategy to implement is a login lockdown. This stops a specific IP address from trying to log into your WordPress account after a certain number of failed attempts. This is an effective measure against brute force password discover, and it is a useful defense that is merely one component of an overall plan.

4. You Learn When to Update Your Site, Themes and Plugins

Periodically, WordPress offers updates to make your website run more efficiently. You can set it up so that these updates start automatically. However, you also want to pay careful attention to how these new site updates will interact with any plugins or themes you have running on your website. Even if you establish automatic updates, it is still good to have WordPress support professionals run manual updates to make sure everything is still optimal. Ensuring everything is up-to-date prevents total site crashes.

 

5. You Recognize the Importance of Backing Up and Restoring

Many first-time WordPress users fail to adequately back up their websites. This is an extreme security flaw that puts you at a significant risk in the event you end up losing all your data. There are a number of reasons why data can become lost, including a simple administrative error or your organization’s servers going down. Without a backup, it could take days or even weeks to get a website back up-and-running, and during that time, you may lose out on a ton of business. Do not put your livelihood in any jeopardy. Part of effective WordPress support services is automatic website restoring.

If you are not currently benefitting from professional WordPress support services, then now is as good of a time as ever to start. Team WP Sekure has a number of plans and services available, and our professionals will take care of all the tedious tasks of maintaining a website you do not want to do yourself. Get started by requesting a backup or asking a question by filling out and submitting our online contact form.

The post 5 Benefits of Optimizing Websites With WordPress Support Services appeared first on Team WP Sekure.

Master Guide on Image Optimization for WordPress

WordPress is a versatile platform that helps you develop interactive websites with minimal hassle. You still need to have a little technical savvy to make the most of your data. Image optimization is becoming an increasingly critical issue.

Information displayed in graphics are now as important as your text. Your graphics must resonate with visitors. Making goofs with the design of your visual content slows the load times of your pages and damages your SEO page rankings.

At Team WP Sekure, we want to help you out. Here is your guide to image optimization for WordPress:

Always Use Smaller File Sizes for Faster Speeds

High-speed internet has made web developers lazy. In recent years, the temptation is to just throw any old photos on your website you like. The servers and ISPs should be able to handle them.

The problem is that the driving force behind web development right now is not the trusty old desktop computer. Websites must optimize for portable devices. Bandwidth and processing power are issues again.

Consumers demand fast and responsive web sites and applications. If they must wait too long to view your content, they move on. Any site that takes more than three seconds to load loses business. Ideally, your site should load in as little as one second.

Start off right by choosing the correct image file format for the job. JPEG, GIF, and PNG files are common formats supported by most browsers. They each have their advantages and disadvantages:

• JPEGs are great for large photos but lack support for transparency
• GIFs are a simple format for icons, thumbnails, and background trim
• PNG files are high-quality replacements for GIFs but take up too much space to replace JPEGs

A JPEG can hand a greater range of colors and details, but they often large files. Use them for the most important images on your site.

GIFs and PNG files have excellent transparency properties. Instead of using a background image, try setting the basic color using color codes in your cascading style sheets. Partially transparent images have smaller file sizes, but they still display well when combined with a favorable background color.

Regardless of the format, an e-commerce site with hundreds of product photos must take every opportunity to shrink file sizes. These three simple techniques are your first best bet:

• Resize the files to a fit just the display size
• Crop unnecessary image area to highlight the significant portions
• Compress files using file compression software

Compressing files removes some of the redundant information. Minute details may not be visible to the human eye, and there are often colors that are redundant. Compressing a file is often easier said than done, just like with WordPress website caching. When things go wrong, anomalies distort the colors and features.

For the best load times, try to keep your main image file sizes to 70 kb. Your trim, background, and icon images should be even smaller.

Try Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

Manually controlling your files with basic programs like Microsoft Paint is initially cost effective, but time-consuming and the results are dubious.  Even with professional software like Adobe’s Photoshop, you could spend hours reshaping and compressing images.

Kraken.io is an image optimizer plugin for WordPress that does the work for you on-the-fly. It can resize and compress media uploaded to your site the moment they are called to display. It functions on JPEG, GIF and PNG files up to 32 Mb. This program is incredibly convenient and gives you back your time to spend on other important tasks.

Imagify.io is a similar on-the-fly optimizer plugin, but with fewer settings and knobs to twist. It also frees you from the chores of image resizing, cropping, and compressing but it is more accessible for average users. It also features retina images optimization. The retina formats are becoming important for future web image displays.

Use a Content Delivery Network

You’ve shrunk your file sizes, and your page is still slow to load. WordPress users can turn to content delivery networks. CDNs host your media for you and supply images whenever a user calls up the page. This strategy improves the load time of your site by diversifying the processing load across more servers.

Amazon S3 is a simple storage system for large files. It’s easy to use and scalable. Amazon servers power the company’s global network, and subscribers receive the same benefit of stability. To hook up your WordPress site with Amazon S3, the developers over at Delicious Brains offer their WP Offload S3 plugin to connect your WordPress website with Amazon S3 cloud storage to help speed up your site. In addition to handling images, it reduces requests to your server for CSS, JS, fonts, and other file formats.

MaxCDN is another provider. It is designed to integrate with WordPress and has one of the most reliable and responsive networks.

Optimizing File Names for SEO

Search engines need to be able to find your images as well, but they can’t look at the pictures. They need useful descriptions instead. The generic name of your photos won’t get the job done.

Rename your image files following these conventional rules:

• State plainly what the picture file shows
• Separate words with dashes to distinguish searchable terms
• Add a suffix to the label describing the camera angle of the shot

To ramp up your search engine results, do a little research before naming your image files. Find out what keyword terms your customers are looking up. Use these phrases to create your file names. The keywords in the image file names improve your page ranks.

Proper Use of the ALT Tag

The ALT tag is also important for SEO purposes. These tags are text that displays when the image cannot. The image might not be available because of a loading error or when a user is browsing your site in a text-only application. Readers look at the ALT tags and get an idea of what the image is supposed to be.

Search engines look at the ALT tags when indexing a site. The file names take priority, but ALT tags are another clue about what you are trying to communicate. They are an important factor in your page rank that many developers overlook.

Like your file name, try using some keywords in the ALT tag. These lines of text are for human readers instead of machines, so avoid overdoing it. Stuffing keywords in nonsensical sequences set flags for spamming. It could penalize your results.

As a rule, build the site for a human audience. Provide meaningful ALT tags for product photos and large images only. Omit them from thumbnails, backgrounds, and icons.

<img src="adorable-kitty-cat-playing-with-yarn.jpg" alt="Adorable Kitty Cat Playing with Yarn"/>

Reach out for Help with Image Optimization for WordPress

Team WP Sekure is ready to assist you with image optimization for the web. If you are having trouble with your load times, we might know a few tricks. Send us a message and tell us about your situation and check out our WordPress website speed optimization service. If we don’t already have the exact fix you need, we may suggest a few adjustments that might make the difference.

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Complete Guide on How to Manage Your WordPress Site

WordPress is a powerful content management system many websites use to organize and share information. It has all the features you need to start and run a successful blog or internet business. This flexibility is useful but also a bit complex. Design problems with your site create functionality issues that drive visitors away, and security mistakes leave you open to attack.

The technology that powers WordPress is intertwined with the user experience. There are many little things that can go wrong, but they all boil down to common and avoidable mistakes:

• Poor web page design and organization
• Use of risky software
• Failure to observe proper safety measures
• Inability to recover due to lack of backups and support
• Lack of goals and direction

Resolving these issues is often wasteful, and it can be frustrating when you want to focus on your business or blog. Team WP Sekure is here to help.

Avoid Design and Setup Problems

Part of the WordPress platform’s strength is how easy it is to customize. After installing the core program, you can modify it with a new web theme or plugin. An entire industry exists to build these individual extra features. Just because they exist does not mean that they are all suitable for your site.

Common website maintenance problems irritate your site’s users:

• Poor navigation structure – Lack of internal links or missing menu items
• Mislabeled categories – No organization of blog posts
• Too many broken links – References to other sites lead to errors
• Slow loading times – Visitors give up waiting for your content to become available

Avoid slowing down your site with too many features. Only install the themes and plugins that you need, and delete old code. You can also save space by hosting videos on YouTube and providing links to your WordPress pages. Directly providing videos requires a tremendous amount of server resources.

Plan the structure of your website before you start writing pages. Use a simple menu bar whenever possible, and test your menus to make sure they work. Try using a set of index cards with your menu titles written on them to experiment with your navigation structure.

Make sure that pages have links to get users back to your homepage from all other pages on your site. Avoid using the default category for your blog posts. This generic descriptor does not tell users or search engines enough about your site’s information.

Run Reliable and Current Software

The core WordPress code is open-source. This is the platform’s great strength and what makes it so popular. Anyone can contribute and use it for free.

Hackers are constantly looking for ways to muck things up, but the WordPress community actively fights against this nuisance. As soon as a flaw is discovered, new code is written to prevent exploitation.

These updates typically include:

• Fixes for known bugs
• Security patches that improve reliability
• New features and functions

Updates for WordPress are automatically installed, but this is only true for series updates of the core program. Each version requires authorization to install. The same is true for your themes and plugins. Manage these updates from your dashboard whenever a notice appears informing you of a newer version.

The number one reason why a site gets hacked is due to outdated software, but some sites are hacked because the code installed was malicious, to begin with. You should only install WordPress from a trusted site. The same is true for plugins and themes. Avoid trying programs offered by unknown developers.

After installing an update or new software, test your site to make sure that your plugins are activated and functioning like they should be. Sometimes changes in the way a plugin works can upset your site. This is especially true if you were using the plugin for something it was not intended for.

Improve Security to Discourage Attacks

Mistakes and faulty code are not the only dangers you face online. Cyberattacks can take down your site or cause other harm. There are many ways that hackers might disrupt your website, and their methods are constantly changing.

Common techniques include:

• Brute force attacks – repeated failed attempts to login slows your server
• Break Ins – An unauthorized user gains access to your administrator rights
• Spamming – Multiple garbage messages clog discussion boards

It is impossible to anticipate every possible way that hackers might attack you. Protecting against these malicious activities is time-consuming and costly, but putting measures in place to slow down attacks reduces your risk of becoming a victim.

Set up message filters to automatically weed out spam. Install a login attempt limiter to frustrate brute force attacks. If a hacker does access your site, changing the administrator password and login provides an extra layer of protection against unauthorized modifications.

A WordPress caching system can help to improve speed & performance while also reducing the risk of cyber attacks. These services act as a third-party buffer that filter information between users and your site’s server. When a user accesses your website, information passes through the caching server first. If the caching server detects unauthorized activity, it stops allocating resources to that user. They also help to process high volumes of requests.

Always Backup Your Data

Sooner or later, everyone experiences a catastrophic failure. It might not be malicious code that triggers the event. You could make a mistake experimenting with new features or settings and lose your data.

Backing up your site is critical. In fact, implementing a backup system is the first thing you should do after your site is created. Some common options for saving your data include:

• Have your backup files emailed to you in an attachment
• Allow your data to be stored for you on your web host’s server
• Set up storage on another independent provider like Dropbox
• Hire a WordPress management service to manage your backup files for you

Regardless of the method you choose, make sure that restoring your site is easy. You want your site back up and running so you can get back to work.

Many web hosting services claim to backup your data for you. While this is often true, these backups are usually infrequent or inadequate. You may need a file you just lost, but your backup data is weeks old. Generally, you should schedule your site backup to take place as often as your site is updated with new information.

Focus More on Your Conversion Rates

It is likely that you already have a strategy for your SEO content on your website, but driving traffic to your site isn’t the same thing as making sales. You must understand what your customers are after and how they react to different content.

These typical conversion rate strategies improve the performance of your internet business as a whole:

• Perform A/B Split testing to discover the content with the most appeal
• Refine your calls to action to be meaningful for your users
• Develop landing pages with attractive features and useful information
• Remove items that distract visitors from your site’s focus

Conversion rate optimization plugins also help you to track results and provide analytics that goes beyond basic SEO strategy. These tools help you to focus your efforts on capturing attention before other websites do. This gives you more opportunities to transforms site visitors into customers.

Team WP Sekure Helps You Manage Your WordPress Site

Partner with trusted WordPress experts. At Team WP Sekure, we help you to optimize your site for speed and performance. Our advanced security plugins harden your site against attacks. We also keep your software up-to-date and protect your data with regular backups.

We know that you want to focus on your business instead of worrying about the technical details of managing your site. We answer your questions and provide you with the solutions you need to easily maintain and improve your WordPress site. Connect with us today.

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The Complete Guide to WordPress Caching

Nearly 80 percent of Americans now shop online. Even those who plan to shop in the store tend to research products and services on the internet before purchasing anything. For this reason, it is essential that every business owner operates a website. Nearly 75 billion business websites, personal websites and blogs use the WordPress platform, but because it is highly reliant on database queries and PHP, sites that run it may become slow. Luckily, there is a fix known as WordPress caching.

What Is Caching?

Simply put, WordPress caching is a process that makes your WordPress-based website load much faster. Each time someone visits a WordPress website, the core queries the database, which then provides the data the visitor requested. The core combines the data it retrieved and executes a PHP code that generates the HTML page. The visitor then sees the HTML page. WordPress caches the HTML websites and saves them to the server’s memory. From there, anyone who requests the page will receive the cached version. Because the site won’t need to query databases or execute PHP code, it will load much faster.

What Happens if the Page Information Changes?

Of course, websites don’t stay the same forever. Designs change, new articles get posted and readers comment. For this reason, certain activities trigger a purge of the cache. This means the previously saved page is deleted and replaced with a new version of the cache. Purging usually occurs each time the author publishes a new post or updates an old one as well as each time a reader leaves a comment.

Why Is Caching Important?

One of the most important reasons to cache your WordPress website is because of the benefits you’ll see on Google. The search engine loves fast websites and the faster yours is, the higher it will rank. Caching helps to determine the overall performance of your website and is a fundamental ranking factor regardless of how large your website is.

How Does Caching Work?

WordPress caching has two primary protocols available: client-side caching and server-side caching. When your site reuses cached data from your server, it is known as client-side caching. Most modern websites use this method because every browser supports it. Caching from the client’s side prevents the website from downloading the same data repeatedly, thereby saving time and server resources.

Server-side caching is a bit more complicated and involves four protocols: page caching, object-based caching, database query caching and opcode caching. Page caching is the simplest protocol and saves the dynamically generated HTML directly onto a server’s hard disk. Databases use a lot of resources and WordPress relies heavily on databases to operate. By saving the results of database queries and only updating when the website updates, precious resources remain available. Opcode caching is similar to database caching in that its goal is to reduce the number of database queries. However, this method saves the PHP code between requests rather than the database requests. Finally, there is object caching. This method is advanced and not used by most everyday users. It involves WordPress’ internal caching system and subsystems, which are controlled by plugins.

What Is the Most Effective Method of WordPress Caching?

Effective WordPress caching typically falls into the categories of time-based caching, action-based caching and manual caching. Time-based caching saves the website every few seconds, regardless of whether the website has been updated. However, this may negatively impact your website’s performance since most cache deletions would be unnecessary and lead to unnecessary database queries. You could alternatively set the time-based cache to occur every few minutes, hours or even once per week, but that means users would sometimes not see the most updated version of your website. Even so, caching every 24 hours is still a good option for sites that don’t use time-sensitive pages.

Most WordPress users choose to use action-based caching. This means your website would only purge and re-cache when you upload a new post, edit an old one, have a reader comment or something else on your site changes. This method is typically considered the most useful because it only queries databases when necessary and doesn’t pose the hazard of a visitor seeing an old version of the website.

Finally, you do have the option to clear your cache manually if necessary. However, this is rarely needed and typically not useful for everyday WordPress users.

How Do I Set Up Caching in WordPress?

If you are the type who prefers the do-it-yourself method, you can go into your WordPress settings and use a plugin to begin caching your site. However, if you aren’t very tech-savvy, the advanced settings can easily become confusing and you could end up doing more bad than good for your website. For this reason, most business owners decide to hire a professional company to help them optimize the speed of their website.

In addition to setting up WordPress caching, our website speed specialists offer a complete WordPress speed optimization service. Common options include the optimization of your databases, Google Fonts optimization, compacting and reducing your HTML and CSS files and tweaking the way your images load so that the initial website load is faster. If you use a shopping cart platform, these businesses can also help you improve their load times.

Should you decide to hire a WordPress specialist to help you keep your website up to speed, it is important to find one with experience and that offers a wide range of services. Check out Team WP Sekure to learn more about managing your WordPress website.

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7 Advantages WordPress Management Services Give Your Business & Brand

Your website is the key source of information your business provides to the world. It’s vital to have a site that’s frequently updated with a strong, intuitive design that provides what your customers are looking for and what your team need. So, whether you’re a blogger, a business or an individual who values your web presence, Team WP Sekure can help you reach your business and branding goals with our WordPress management service.

Here are the top seven things to love about WP management for your site.

1. More Features

One of the biggest advantages you get from a WordPress management service is access to a host of features for your website. You can add plugins to your site that make your site more interactive and engaging to visitors or readers. Our expert team can help you choose the features that work best for your site and give you more capabilities with your web page.

2. Increased Visibility

A WordPress maintenance plan with our company can also help your company climb up higher in the search engine rankings. We do this by focusing on website performance, optimizing your loading speed, and spreading the word about your content. You can also opt to have us record your top keywords and analyze how to improve your ability to be found online. This way, you’ll be able to increase the number of site visitors to your place on the web each month.

3. Improved Ease of Use

Partnering with us to help manage your site also makes things much easier for you and your staff. There’s no need to learn complex web development tools or HTML language to get your site to do what you want it to. We can upgrade your user experience and give you an intuitive dashboard tool easily accessed from any web browser. Our team goes further than the basic WordPress navigation and customizes it to reflect your needs, industry, and preferences for your site.

4. Better Time Management

Time management is another big issue that many business owners, freelancers, and other busy people struggle with. Starting a business and running it takes many steps and countless numbers of hours to make it successful and profitable. Whatever your specialty is, you don’t have to waste those precious hours on coding, troubleshooting and updating your website by yourself anymore. Letting an experienced website management partner like us take over helps give you back your time. This way, you and your team can focus on building a new business or dreaming up innovative ideas.

5. Top Data Security

Data security is an increasingly big problem in the online world. As criminals come up with new ways to steal sensitive information online, it’s up to the experts to develop stronger protections. With a WordPress maintenance service, you don’t have to worry anymore about being vulnerable. You get the latest defense features and rock solid security from malware, hackers or breaches.

6. Effortless Update Process

Another way you can benefit from this type of service is with a more streamlined update process. It’s time-consuming and tedious to update WordPress features each day. Some site owners opt to skip these updates and leave their pages open to potential problems, such as bugs, malfunctions or broken links, due to time constraints. A company that manages your site maintenance can take over the updating duties for you, giving you more peace of mind about your functionality.

7. Problem-Free Backups

The last way you can take advantage of a management service for your site is related to data loss. More than half of all businesses are not prepared for a catastrophic loss of data. In many cases, this is because more users than ever don’t backup their data. This means if a hard drive fails or a system goes down, the data goes along with it. This can be a costly mistake. Instead of risking data loss, you can relax and let your hosting service set you up for an ideal schedule of regular backups.

Get in Touch With Us for Your Custom WordPress Management Solution

If you want to improve the way your site looks, performs and works for your needs, contact our staff at Team WP Sekure today. We can work together to create a custom package that gets you the results you’re looking for from your site.

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Top 7 Website Maintenance Tips for Beginners

You might think you are done with your website once it is up and running. However, routine maintenance is vital to ensure your company’s website is always operational and can be accessed by visitors. Website maintenance should regularly be undertaken because you do not want to wait until an actual issue comes up that hinders your website’s capabilities. Instead, follow these tips to always ensure your website is in fine working condition.

WordPress Maintenance Tips for Beginners

 

1. Check for WordPress Updates

The most common way for entrepreneurs to create new websites is with WordPress. While it is convenient, WordPress also offers updates regularly that you need to stay up to date on. For instance, if your website has a lot of out of date plugins or themes, then they may be slowing down your website. Most of the time, visitors simply leave websites that are taking too long to load. You need to do some WordPress maintenance every so often to see what updates are available and resolve any incompatibilities. You do not want to go more than a month or two without an update.

 

2. Test After an Update

After you have updated your website, you want to be certain it performs all desired functions. Before you leave it alone, you will want to run the site on your computer and make sure all the links go to the proper pages. You also want to test your website on more than one device. You should look up the website on your smartphone and a tablet if you have one to make sure everything is perfectly readable. If something is not right, then you want to fix it immediately instead of hearing about the problem from one of your site’s visitors.

 

3. Update Security Measures

Sensitive data might be running across your website, so you need to be sure no one has access to it who is not supposed to. In the event you are not sure what to look for, you might want to hire an outside company to run tests to see if anything is compromised. It might be best to have another company do it for you because a lot of hacking can simply look like a technical problem to the untrained eye. You want to run security tests somewhat frequently so that your website is always up to date with the latest security measures.

 

4. Find and Repair Broken Links

Broken links can develop after you have updated your website, especially if certain pages were lost or no longer viable. You want to routinely check all the links on your site to ensure they go to the correct places. An abundance of broken links can make your website unusable, and you will lose a lot of traffic. You may also be penalized by search engines if your website cannot send people to the proper page. You might need to fix the link itself or create a whole new page.

 

5. Delete Spam Comments

Allowing people to comment on your website pages is an excellent way to promote engagement and make visitors active participants. However, you need to check your website’s comments once in a while to make sure they are not getting filled up with spam. Spam comments can make it so that real people do not want to bother communicating.

Another thing to be mindful of is to respond to comments. No one is going to bother leaving a comment if they are not going to get an answer. Check in on message boards several times a week so that visitors get timely responses.

 

6. Tidy Up Your Database

Everything you host on your website gets stored in a database. If too much data gets stored, then it could lead to your website running more slowly than normal. Once a month or so, you should go through your website in WordPress and delete pages that are not necessary. Deleting spam comments is a great way to free up space because there is no reason for those comments to be saved. Even if you are only able to delete a few things, it could make all the difference in how efficiently your website runs.

7. Analyze Your Website’s Traffic Stats

There is no point in having a website if you are not going to analyze the amount of traffic you are getting. Free tools are available that allow you to see how many visitors you are getting and how they are interacting with your site. Although there is a litany of ways to analyze this data, the most basic way to use it is to see if there are any areas of improvement. For example, if you are not getting as much traffic as you would like, then it might be time to hire an outside company to handle your online marketing strategies for you. From enhancing SEO to increasing the number of links your website has, there are a lot of ways you can enhance subpar stats.

 

Maintenance of your WordPress Website is Key to Ultimate Performance

This might seem like a lot, but there is a lot more you can do to ensure your website is fully optimized. If you are unsure if you have the time to dedicate to regular website maintenance, then you definitely do not want to ignore it. Instead, you should hire a professional maintenance company such as Team WP Sekure. They can do virtually everything for your website, including everything from enhancing your site’s firewall to optimizing the download speed. Be proactive about your website, so you continue putting your company’s best foot forward.

The post Top 7 Website Maintenance Tips for Beginners appeared first on Team WP Sekure.

5 Reasons to Always Use the Latest Version of WordPress

One message that’s almost certain to elicit a groan from CMS users is this:

Update Available. Worse yet, for some, is the announcement that the system is “updating.”

Can system and software updates be annoyances? Sure. Is it worth it, in the long run, to put them off or completely ignore them?

Absolutely not. Even putting off an update for a short period of time can potentially cause long-term headaches.

You can avoid these headaches by always making sure you have the latest WordPress updates. Let’s look at the top five reasons for regularly updating WordPress.

• Fresh Features
• Consistent Compatibility
• Perfect Performance
• Obliterate Bugs
• Strengthen Security

Fresh Features

If you’re looking for a reason to look forward to updates, new features may be the most fun. Everyone loves new “toys” that could enhance their website even more or, even better, make it easier to use. What website security business doesn’t love the latest bells and whistles that may set one website apart from the rest?

Here are few examples of previous feature updates for WordPress:

WordPress Version 4.1: Inline image editing for mobile users
WordPress Version 4.2: Faster plugin installation
WordPress Version 4.3: Ability to format shortcuts in Visual Editor

These are just a few examples of improved features that were only accessible by uploading the latest versions of WordPress. Because WordPress is open source, new and improved features that increase the user-friendliness, as well as the capabilities of the platform, are always becoming available.

Consistent Compatibility

When it comes to ensuring compatibility between the latest version of WordPress and existing plugins, there are two rules to follow:

1. ALWAYS backup your site before updating WordPress
2. ALWAYS get your plugins from reputable developers who keep their plugins current.

Installing the latest version of WordPress will sometimes trigger an update of some plugins to ensure their compatibility with new versions and the new features they may contain. In some cases, plugins don’t require any updates at all, but in other cases. an update to a plugin or to WordPress itself may lead to compatibility problems. When you have backed up your site and have gotten your plugins from reputable developers, the compatibility issues are simply much less of an issue.

Perfect Performance

Who hasn’t sat in front of the computer screen, tapping their fingers and humming the Jeopardy theme while waiting for a slow page to finally load? Well, that’s another reason to make sure you install the latest WordPress updates. WordPress developers work hard to increase the speed and efficiency of this CMS. Past versions have included better navigation menu function through improved JavaScript performance and made processing complex queries easier to facilitate better site performance. People want websites that load almost instantaneously and the latest versions of WordPress strive to satisfy that need, not to mention that improved performance also works to your advantage by boosting SEO for Google search results.

Obliterate Bugs

It is an unfortunate fact that, in the rush to get the newest product versions on the market, many software updates come with a few bugs, WordPress included. However, as odd it may sound, this is actually a good thing. The more widespread the use of the product, the more quickly these bugs can be identified and the faster a fix can be issued. This is the reason that after a major WordPress update (one with an X.X version number) is released, it is often followed by a minor release (one with an X.X.X version number) tailored specifically to exterminate these little bugs before they can become bigger ones. Of course, this only works if you actually perform the latest WordPress updates.

Strengthen Security

The number one benefit of installing the latest version of WordPress is increased security. In the internet age, hackers and cyber attacks are an unfortunate reality. A reality that can pose a serious threat to a CMS that powers nearly a quarter of the internet, which WordPress does.

What kind of threats? Here are just a few:

• Malware
• Data Theft
• Site Takedown

The good news is that the large size that makes WordPress vulnerable is also what makes it more difficult for attacks to succeed. A huge community of developers and users are constantly working to shore up any vulnerabilities in the platform. The open source format means anyone can locate a potential problem and report it to the core WordPress team or to plugin developers. Of course, this protection against data theft, malicious code insertions, and total site take-down only benefits those who are updating WordPress regularly (hint, hint).

Some Final Advice

When you fail to install the latest version of WordPress, you open your website to a variety of problems that can lead to loss of time, loss of information and loss of revenue. The easy answer is to take the few minutes necessary to install the latest WordPress updates. You’re only hurting yourself if you don’t.

The post 5 Reasons to Always Use the Latest Version of WordPress appeared first on Team WP Sekure.

The Best WordPress Security Tips You Can Ask The Internet For

You all know how much WordPress development is popular in the industry since its inception. Millions of websites; small as well as large-scale are built using WordPress because of the unconventional feature it offers to provide user-friendliness. But securities is the biggest drawback of the website, and trust me, I know what kind of blunders it creates. I have spent so many years working on the WordPress, that by this time I am quite confident about helping you out with a good number of Security tips while building your next WP site.

My team and I have used these tips for many projects and we have received a positive feedback from our clients. Here’s the list of guidelines that will help you too.

Secure WordPress Hosting

• Always try to use secure and trusted host server for your WordPress site and also try to use trusted domain.

Latest Version

• Always use the latest version of your WordPress version, Themes, and plugin.
• Delete unused plugins, theme, and users.
• Always on automatic updates for a theme, plugin, and WordPress version. You could add below code in a wp-confiq.php file.

Read more on... The Best WordPress Security Tips You Can Ask The Internet For.

Author: Akash Wagh