Keep Your Website Secure with These Areas of Website Maintenance

Website maintenance is critical to the security of your website. Consider these

 scary stats:

• 43 percent of cyber attacks target small business.
• 64% of companies have experienced web-based attacks.  
• 62% experienced phishing & social engineering attacks.
• 59% of companies experienced malicious code and botnets and 51% experienced denial of service attacks.

 Maintaining your site can save you money, too, and not just the cost of losing data. Here are the ways Print and Web Designer can help you maintain a secure website:

Plugins/Components -In both Wordpress and Joomla you have the option to add specific features to your site called plugins (Wordpress) and components (Joomla). These features give you the power to do various things. Each website doesn’t need every single feature, so it makes sense to add only those you need, a la carte. However, these plugins and components are created by many different developers, all with different levels of coding skill. Plus, coding standards are always changing, and hackers are also finding holes. Good plugin developers will update their code and send you these updates to close loopholes and fix problems. The thing is, you have to see that it needs an update (you’ll see a small alert on the back end of your site) and take care of it as soon as possible.

New plugins and components and their updates can also break a site or cause problems. (Related: What to do if your website is hacked.) If something is wonky on your website, you can check the components to see if that’s the reason. Of course, if you’re a busy business owner (most of us are!), you might not have time for this, which is why we help.

Other Security Features - Wordpress and Joomla themselves are software programs that need updates for security. We also wrote not long ago about the SSL Certificate and how that’s essential. New stuff like that is always popping up, and you must remain aware of these changes. Print and Web Designer has a license for Joomla components making it far cheaper for us to update and make these changes than it would be for you to manage it.  

Other Website Maintenance

Websites come with a lot more maintenance you might not consider. Here is a checklist of things to review on your website at least once a year, if not more.

• Copyright year in the footer - Though you can code this to change on its own, many people don’t. Be sure to update yours.
• Privacy policy - If you don’t have one, you’re overdue! Add one and link it in your footer. Then, make sure to check it annually for any needed changes based on how your website has changed.
• URL - You may have purchased your domain name for one year. Be sure you log in and confirm you’re all set; losing a domain name is such a headache for business owners. We recommend you purchase it for longer than a year and set it to auto-renew if possible.
• SSL - Once you set it up, you have to update/check it each year.
• Blog Posts - Sites that update old content fare far better in search results and generate more leads. Make sure to revisit your oldest posts every so often and tweak anything that’s out of date.
• Website Page Content - You might have new team members to add or someone has left. Maybe you want to tweak your “about us” story or you have a new phone number. Don’t ignore the value of these little text changes that keep you current. It’s also a good idea to swap out photos once a year for a refresh.

 If you don’t have time to manage your website, contact us for help.