Uptime control

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You would expect a website to be available 24/7. However, that is not always the case, as there are various issues that can cause your website to go down!

Some problems we occasionally encounter include:
– Using shared web hosting.
– Outdated/unreliable hardware of the web host.
– The data center is located abroad (e.g., GoDaddy).
– DDoS attacks targeting the server.
– The website has become too heavy with all the plugins for the hosting package.
– A loop/error causing server overload.
– Sudden spikes in website traffic.

These are not all problems; sometimes, your website is simply successful, and you need to upgrade to a larger hosting package.

Regardless of the reason, when your website experiences frequent outages, it costs you visitors and customers. In the worst case, it can even harm your Google reputation when the search engine bot repeatedly encounters a non-loading website.

It is essential to prevent your website from becoming unreachable.

That’s why we use an uptime monitor to ensure that your website is accessible day and night. The monitoring measurements show if there are any interruptions in accessibility or if there is a recurring issue. It’s crucial to know this in a timely manner since visitors often won’t bother reporting such issues; they will simply move on to another website! And you certainly don’t want that.

Uptime monitoring and notification during downtime are standard services we provide with our ongoing security packages.

 

Pagespeed monitoring

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We monitor the speed of your website. We do this automatically and daily, allowing us to continuously keep an eye on your website’s speed.

It is common for a website to become slower over time.

Some reasons why a website can slow down:
– The success of the website leads to increased visitors, which requires more server capacity.
– The cache becomes filled up and needs to be cleared.
– Large images are added to the website without lazy loading.
– The server is shared with others (shared server) and more users are added to it.
– Adding plugins increases the server load.
– Code errors cause delays.
– Missing files (404 errors) result in long loading times.
– Outdated PHP versions load websites slower compared to newer versions.

As you can see, there are various reasons why a website can slow down. This can happen gradually, making it difficult for you to notice it yourself.

The pitfall of a fast fiber connection

We often see websites being tested with a fiber connection, which can lead to the website size increasing significantly in megabytes, resulting in long loading times on mobile devices. Mobile devices account for 25-35% of all visitors!

Speed and your Google indexing

Keep in mind that Google measures both desktop and mobile speed when categorizing a website in the Google index. Slow websites on mobile networks will appear lower in search results for mobile searches.

What is considered fast?
The speed of a website should also be considered relative to the size and type of the website. An e-commerce store with product pages naturally loads more data and attracts more visitors.

We know how fast a website should be, how your competition is doing, and often, we can identify the causes of the slowdown.

Pagespeed monitoring is important for serving and retaining your visitors, as well as essential for websites that need to maintain a good ranking on Google.

We provide standard pagespeed monitoring with our security packages.

Reputation monitoring

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Did you know that Google scans websites in search results for malware on a daily basis? This is to provide visitors with the best and secure search results.

Google looks for:

  • Phishing – scripts attempting to steal payment information
  • Malware – scripts giving unwanted commands to visitors
  • Spam/unwanted advertising – for questionable products or services
  • URL redirects – redirecting visitors
  • And more..!

When Google detects any of the above issues on a website, it will display a warning in the search results:

This site may be hacked

Google notice
You can imagine that visitors think twice before clicking on your website in such cases.

The Chrome web browser
If a website visitor uses the Chrome web browser (by Google), it goes a step further:

They will see a red screen indicating that the website is unsafe when opening it

Antivirus programs
Many antivirus programs have a similar feature, where they block visitors if they consider a website to be unsafe.

SafeSearch, Phishing protection, or similar services.
It goes without saying that it is not good if visitors are prevented from accessing your website.

Reputation monitoring prevents ignorance
What if you don’t know that your website is considered unsafe by major entities like Google and other antivirus programs (Eset, Norton, McAfee)? You could potentially lose visitors, customers, or buyers for weeks or even months, and they often won’t return.

We monitor your website’s reputation with the top 10 leading companies, such as Google, Norton, Eset, and more!

We do this daily and automated to ensure that visitors are not blocked.

What if your website is flagged as unsafe?
If we discover that your website is blocked or has a bad reputation and is blacklisted, we resolve the issue as quickly as possible and request a re-evaluation from the service until the website is considered safe again and visitors can access it without any problems.

And you know what? This service won’t cost you a fortune!
We provide this service as a standard feature with our security packages.

Checked updates

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Why do we perform periodic and controlled updates while many others let the system automatically install updates or perform updates every day?

Updating plugins, themes, and WordPress often causes problems, so we want to be present when updates are applied and take the time to verify them. This cannot be done if updates are automated and unsupervised by the system.

We, therefore, perform periodic updates, which also reduce the number of risk moments since continuously applying updates creates more opportunities for risks. Additionally, we can easily identify unseen problems related to a specific date and address them more efficiently or revert changes if necessary.

We update plugins with known security vulnerabilities immediately outside of the regular update schedule.

What can go wrong during updates?

  1. Updates are deployed too quickly. Plugins and themes are sometimes updated too hastily without extensive testing, which may cause code errors to go unnoticed.
  2. Server issues – If the server cannot handle the peak load during updates – meaning the processes are not processed quickly enough – the files may not be fully or properly updated. This can cause the plugins to freeze, and often the entire website crashes.
  3. Htaccess modifications – Plugins sometimes modify the Htaccess file, where much of the shared code from plugins and WordPress itself resides. It happens that the permalink structure gets lost and all subpages stop loading, or the caching rules are removed, or the security settings are lost.
  4. Multiple developers – Plugins are created by different companies, and therefore, many different programmers work on the plugins. Sometimes, multiple programmers within one company work on a single plugin. You can imagine that all these people use different techniques, which do not always align.
  5. Same Ajax calls – Sometimes, plugin programmers, without knowing it, use the same code, Ajax calls, library, or functions that conflict with each other or with the theme. Javascript often breaks after changes, causing interactive functions to suddenly stop working.

And more…

Over the years, it has become evident that many things can go wrong during updates. I won’t bore you with the details of everything that can go wrong.
The key lesson learned here is control, and not relying on daily automated updates performed by the system without anyone checking if they were successful.

Once again, for emphasis: we promptly update plugins, themes, or WordPress versions with known security vulnerabilities. We don’t wait for the regular update schedule to address those issues.

Controlled updates are a standard practice and service provided with all our security packages.

Uptime monitoring

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In this post, we wrote about Uptime Monitoring, a standard service included in all our security packages. But what good is it if we only monitor if the website is still online… while the website is currently offline?

That’s where Uptime Assistance comes in!

If we receive a notification that your website is offline/unreachable, we investigate the cause. If it’s due to an error, we attempt to resolve it. We simply enable debug mode and try to bring the website back online and visible.

This may involve certain actions:

  • Updating a plugin causing an error
  • Temporarily deactivating a plugin causing an error
  • Manually re-uploading the WordPress Core
  • Notifying you that a plugin is no longer functioning correctly and you may need an alternative (e.g., plugins no longer supported by their creators)
  • Sometimes assisting with finding an alternative, although we generally do not interfere with the plugins you choose to use

If it turns out that the issue is caused by the web host, we inform you so that you can notify your web host about the problem on your website.

How do we know it’s the web host’s fault?

  • We see typical server errors (blank pages with error messages)
  • Even a txt file is no longer accessible (license.txt)
  • Txt files are accessible, but PHP is no longer executed (Apache error)
  • We see an error 500
  • And more… there are many indicators!

Note: Web hosts sometimes experience brief outages. That’s why we sometimes wait before notifying you. Sometimes it’s just a matter of waiting until the web host gets their service back up and running.

What Uptime Assistance is NOT

It is not intended as support for someone actively making changes to the website. If you have messed up the website yourself, we can help by restoring a backup, but we won’t fix the mistakes (unless you pay us extra).

Uptime Assistance in recent years

Our Uptime Assistance has prevented a lot of worries for website owners in recent years. In many situations, we have resolved the issue before the website owner even notices.

Through experience, we usually quickly determine what’s wrong (sometimes a hosting outage) and what steps need to be taken to get the website back online.

This is crucial for websites, especially for online shops!

Uptime Assistance is included as standard in our security packages.

WordPress Monitoring with Screenshots

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We have great news! We are expanding our comprehensive management and update service package with screenshots!

We now take a daily screenshot of your entire homepage, which we store and can review at any time in a timeline.

Why Daily Screenshots are Important

  1. Screenshots provide literal “insight” into changes that can occur during updates
    By taking a daily screenshot of your homepage and saving it, we have a valuable archive of your website at different points in time. These screenshots show how your website looked on that specific day. This allows us to identify and correct any changes.
  2. Convenience during discussions
    If changes occur, we can refer to the screenshots, and you can point out any potential differences.
  3. No need for photographic memory
    While you, as a website owner, may know your website very well, you don’t have a photographic memory. We, of course, are familiar with your website, but we mainly focus on the technical side and also lack a photographic memory. But now, with the screenshots, we do!

Convenience and Assurance

With the new daily screenshots, we offer an additional level of convenience and assurance in managing your website. It’s our way of ensuring that we can always refer back to a previous state of your website if needed.

Daily Screenshots Now Included in All Our Maintenance and Security Packages

Best of all, this service is now included as a standard feature in all our existing maintenance and security packages, at no additional cost to you!

Would you like to enjoy security and peace of mind? Have us continuously maintain and secure your website!

Click here for a maintenance and security package

Daily backups

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We automatically create a complete backup of your website every day, which is stored in a secure external data vault. Both the files and the database, which includes all users, pages, and news articles, are backed up to ensure that you never lose any data!

Why a daily up-to-date backup is necessary:
– When you post daily news articles
– For a WooCommerce online store with daily orders
– The web host may experience a malfunction
– Data loss can occur due to a plugin
– Data loss can result from an administrative error

Not just a single backup:
What if you accidentally deleted something last week, such as an account or an important message? Or what if you realize one month later that you lost some data? That’s why we store backups in the data vault for 90 days, which is much longer than what most web hosts offer.

The importance of control:
It happens to others that a backup is not available when it is needed!
This can be due to:
– Incorrect storage on the server
– A directory suddenly becoming non-writable
– Server storage running out
– Expiration of a license
– Misconfiguration of the backup plugin

We prevent these problems:
We receive immediate notifications if a backup fails, and we take action to ensure that backups are created daily.

We provide this comprehensive backup service as a standard feature for everyone with an ongoing security package.