GLOUCESTERSHIRE WEB DESIGNS
If You Have Questions We Have Answers
Sometimes the most complex problem has a simple solution
GLOUCESTERSHIRE WEB DESIGNS
If You Have Questions We Have Answers
Sometimes the most complex problem has a simple solution
If you're building a website from scratch, you'll need a domain name. You may already have a domain name that is unused or pointing to another website. We'll cover these options later.
To buy a domain name you need to go to a registrar. We use and recommend LCN.com - a UK company that provides good reliable service without too many unwanted trimmings. A domain is like a user friendly name plate you use to find and navigate your website.
If you already have a domain name and want to use it for your new website, we can login to your existing registrar and redirect the domain to connect with the new site, once it is built.
It's not essential for your website to connect to an email account, but 99% of times you'll want at least one email account for us to communicate with you, as well as receive notifications from the website you are running.
You can use any email account you want, providing it's active and reliable.
We generally do NOT publish email address on the website, as this is an invitation for spammers. Instead we provide an online contact form(s) that automatically sends the details from the form to your email address. No one can see the email address it's being sent to, not even by reading the source code. We also use anti-spam mechanisms to reduce 'bot email' and other rubbish in your inbox.
Many domain name registrars provide at least one free email account per domain name. Our preferred registrar LCN.com will do this. We undertake to setup this one account for you at the registrar, when we login to connect your domain to the website, but you will need to configure your local email client such as outlook express, in order to read and write emails. Free email accounts may have limited storage space, so be cautious about leaving old emails in your archive of read items, especially if they have image attachments. They take up space VERY quickly.
Because we maintain and update the software, your website will last many years. That's not to say it won't need a major rebuild, or overhaul at some point in the future. Most clients want a refresh after a period of time and we're happy to engage with this. Because we do regular software updates and maintenance, the actual core codebase will never become obsolete or unusable. It's a flexible evolving system, but it does need maintaining. In some rare instances, old themes are no longer supported and we will need to rebuild your site.
We offer a full range of social media services. These range from adding share and follow icons to your site's pages and posts, to full social media management and training.
We have a couple of phrases we use regularly at Gloucestershire Web Designs. The first one goes along the lines of "if you think it’s expensive to see a professional, wait until you hire an amateur".
The second suggests that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
So sure you can sign up to any number of those web companies you've seen on the TV who offer free or cheap web sites. And we understand the temptation - they promise so much and it looks so easy! And wait - it's all for free!
Granted, if you spend the time you could end up with something that looks amazing. But beauty is only skin deep, right?
What about performance? What about the updates and keeping your site safe from hackers? What about 'just shifting that image to the left a little'? What about if your site DOES get hacked? What about getting it to rank in the search engines? And just how do you integrate your newsletter sign up / social media account / blog? How do you improve your site speed so that you no longer have time to make a cup of tea between page loads? What about when you hit the wrong key and everything on your web page shunts down? How do you colour match your logo design? And what is that nebulous something that just doesn't look quite right?
There are some well known website services that offer cheap starter sites that simply do not perform well in search engine results. Sites are rolled out like stamps on a 'cluster network' that cannot provide the speed of page loads, or visibility for search engines to find and index them in their search results. Sadly, we know this from experience, by clients that come to us wanting a better web service and site performance.
And try getting hold of someone to talk to, who will actually speak to you in jargon-free talk AND resolve the problem.
We also ensure that you buy your domains name and not us. It's your legal entity and no-one should have access to it. Many web services provide your domain name for you, or give an option to buy it through their inclusive service. This means they have ultimate control over it. Again we have clients who have lost valuable domain names because they cannot get it transferred to their new web site or have to pay large sums to get it released and gain ownership.
We don't say any of this to be malicious or as sour grapes; we say it because we've had numerous clients come to us, often in a state of panic, overwhelm or hopelessness, when everything has gone wrong for them. They've either wasted hours on a site that doesn't perform well, or they've ended up in fruitless battles to have their domain names released to them. It costs them their peace of mind, their sanity and their precious time and energy.
Our advice? Consider the difference between cost and value before deciding what to do.
We offer a full Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) service that focuses on making your website both easier to be indexed by search engines, plus increase the website visibility in search engine results. This service is especially useful when you want high page ranking in Google and other search engines to increase traffic to the site. Commercial websites that depend on sales and publicity should always maximise SEO potential. Again you should raise this early in your enquiry to ensure we build appropriate support for SEO functions.
Our standard hosting and maintenance packages start at £30 per month. This covers your regular maintenance and website updates. It also includes daily backups. This keeps you worry free with a site that will always perform efficiently and maintained with software and security updates whenever required.
If at any time you want to upgrade your site, or add new features, we can do this and it won't affect your maintenance charge. If you want to add an ecommerce shop or booking system to the site, your maintenance charge will increase to £40 or £50 per month as more configurations are required.
We restrict full administration access, as this keeps your site safe and our clients prefer to pass on responsibility to their sites to us - they don't have the time or expertise to keep things up to date.
However, if you want to manage the site yourself, we can seamless transfer the site installation to your own WPEngine account (you will have to set one up) where you will have full access to all admin areas. If you choose to do this, we are no longer obliged to fix, repair, modify or work on the site on your behalf without assessing the work and levying charges.
From a security aspect we say 'the less people that have access to your site administration section the better' Too many cooks in the kitchen can cause chaos and we don't want to be the ones to have to clean up the mess.
WordPress has a a system of 'ROLES' and this is the best way to implement flexibility while maintaining secure permissions to lock down areas that can provide access to inexperienced people.
As a rule we retain Administrator access, meaning no-one else except Gloucestershire Web Designs has access to the code functions of the website. Things like plugins, themes, design layout and global settings are all out of reach. We do this to protect your site from mishaps and experiments that might go wrong. If you really want to make big changes, reach out to us, that's our job, in the same way that you wouldn't try to add an extension on your house, you go to someone experienced and capable of doing the work correctly and efficiently.
Beneath the ADMIN role, there are EDITOR and CONTRIBUTOR roles that we are happy to allow site owners to work in. Here you can login, write and edit blog posts, make minor changes to page content and authorise comments on your blog. If you run a shop, we can also extend the SHOP MANAGER role to you, providing you are competent with how to use the shop administration.
We use WP Engine for all our websites. This is a high end specialist WordPress hosting server that manages all aspects of security by their in house personnel. Several security protocols are built into their service, to prevent any type of intrusions. They also undertake immediate cleanup of any problems that may occur.
In addition all websites are fully backed up every 24 hours and provide a seamless restore should anything go wrong. We also use Cloudflare as a pass-though proxy to add even greater security and speed benefits. The only thing we can't control or protect against is when clients give access to administration of their website to third parties. We strongly discourage you doing this without checking with us first. Yes, we can restore your site if things go wrong, but save yourself the trouble and play safe.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is an extra security layer providing a secure data protection between 2 machines. Typically, this is your web browser and the server that you are sending/receiving data to and from. SSL is now superseded by a better protocol called TLS (transport layer security). TLS is still often referred to by the old term SSL.
What are the benefits of SSL or TLS?
- Encryption: protect data transmissions (e.g. browser to server, server to server, application to server, etc.)
- Authentication: ensure the server you’re connected to is actually the correct server.
- Data integrity: ensure that the data that is requested or submitted is what is actually delivered.
How do I know I have SSL/ TLS working?
You will know if you have a secure connection between your browser and the website server by seeing HTTPS:// instead of the usual; HTTP:// in the browser address bar. You will also see a padlock displayed as a small prefix icon.
Why are some sites showing an orange padlock instead of green?
Usually this is because there are some assets, such as images that are not 'secure' This can happen if a site gets converted from HTTP to HTTPS and some images are still addressed by the old protocol. Also, some images may be be addressed to serve your pages from another server that is not HTTPS. Technically, this will lower the protection of HTTPS and hence the orange padlock instead of the green version.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU). Personal information and data is considered anything that can personally identify you from other people. This regulation is now in force and affects all forms of business and organisations that receive, processes and stores personal information. This includes websites that use cookies to track your browsing habits and help your website experiences.
The GDPR applies to this website and we display an acceptance notice at the bottom of the site as well as a full privacy policy page detailing who we are, why we collect information and what we do with it.
If you run a website yourself, you will almost definitely have to provide a similar system in order to comply with GDPR. We provide all you need to do this as part of the build process, so don't worry. It's all in the service!
More details on GDPR can be found on the website here
Yes you can. We can install a blog system on your website where you can run a regular update easily. Blogs can be divided into categories, sections and offer a comment system from your users, allowing writer/ reader interactions. Included in the quote to build the website will be full training for you to log in and write / update your blog. Training takes place in Gloucestershire or via Zoom.
Our prices start at £1250.
Several clients have mentioned they can get hosting much cheaper than ours.
And they’d be right.
But is it better value?
And is it worth taking a risk with your valuable website in order to save a couple of hundred pounds a year?
Included in our monthly fee is fast hosting on our secure servers, core updates, theme updates, plugin updates, backups and hacking monitoring.
Let’s take a look at each one in detail. This is long and detailed, so if you’re pushed for time, feel free to skim to the end where you’ll find the recap:
Secure servers
Many website operators use cheap shared hosting. It’s often cheap because it’s not as secure as other hosting, is slow to deliver your content and doesn’t offer a comprehensive backup solution. We don’t offer shared hosting to our clients and only provide WordPress personalised hosting through specialist companies.
A little-known SEO fact is that page load time can affect your search engine rankings, so it’s important pages are delivered fast to your users and the search engines. This is why we use the servers we do. Our servers are built for the WordPress environment and are constantly updated, backed up and maintained to provide seamless long term reliability and uptime.
Even if SEO is not a priority for your website, research shows that most web users will bounce off your site if it takes more than 5 seconds to load a page.
Updates
Core updates
By not installing updates, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to hackers and the frustration of a site that doesn’t work properly.
Updates to the WordPress core are issued to fix a bug, address security issues and keep all aspects of your site working well.
Would you know how to update the WordPress core if you had to maintain your site yourself?
Theme updates
Updates to your WordPress theme increases security by patching vulnerabilities and strengthening against attacks.
By keeping your site updated and maintained, you make life much easier for yourself. For example, WordPress recently changed the way images were uploaded and managed. If you had a plugin or theme that uploaded images as part of a feature, which you didn’t update, the plugin failed to work – all because WordPress changed the way images are uploaded.
Plugin updates
Updates to your plugins, is arguably one of the most important updates as they can be a greater source of security holes than WordPress itself.
Would you know the first step to take in keeping your plugins updated?
According to research, 83% of hacked WordPress sites haven’t been updated and it’s easy for a hacker to figure out if your site is not up to date. When they learn of a vulnerability they’ll exploit it, therefore, all updates need to be done as soon as possible to reduce the time that your site is vulnerable.
Backups
Have you ever written a few hundred words in a document and had your computer crash on you?
Maybe you’ve had a computer virus and lost all your data.
Frustrating and time consuming isn’t it?
Imagine if you’d spent weeks, months or even years updating your blog and keeping your site looking fresh. If your site was hacked tomorrow, or your server disappeared, would you know how to restore the content and files?
Backups are one of the most important maintenance functions we do for our clients. Should your site disappear we can restore your backup and get your site back online and ready for business quickly.
Hacking monitoring
What would you do if you woke up one morning to find your site had been hacked?
Would you know what to do next?
Would you roll up your sleeves and spend the rest of the day fixing your site yourself?
While technical-savvy people might be able to get back online, you might not be fully aware of the extent of damage done to your site.
Even if you manage the restoration, the most recent backup won’t necessarily fix the problem. Some hacks involve inserting code that doesn’t activate until a period of time in the future, which means you need several backups on hand and the time to constantly monitor what’s happening.
Hacking isn’t just frustrating; it can be damaging to your business too. Not only does the hacker know your site is vulnerable, but Google knows too. A hacked site can lose position in search engine rankings and in a worst-case scenario can be penalised and de-listed on Google.
If you are using your site for lead generation, sales or marketing, stop for a moment and imagine how your business could suffer if you are offline and have to start from scratch.
While we don’t like to use fear tactics, we do like to give our clients a headsup on the real value of our monthly WordPress maintenance packages. Now you know what you get for your money, you’re in an empowered position to make an informed choice.
To recap:
Secure servers
We do not offer shared hosting because this can be less secure, slow to deliver content and doesn’t always include backups – three vital resources your site needs and will get with our hosting packages
Core updates
Updates to the WordPress core are issued to fix a bug, address security issues and keep all aspects of your site working well.
Theme updates
Updates to your WordPress theme increases security by patching vulnerabilities and strengthening against attacks.
Plugin updates
Updates to your plugins, is arguably one of the most important updates as they can be a greater source of security holes than WordPress itself.
Backups
Backups are one of the most important maintenance functions we do for our clients. Without them, you’ve lost weeks, months or years of work. Should your site disappear we can get your site back online quickly
Hacking
What would you do if you woke up one morning to find your site had been hacked? Would you know what to do next? We monitor your site daily for hacking attempts and should the worst happen we’ll take care of it.
We do not undertake work on other people’s servers for two main reasons. Firstly, on our server we have a 'staging' area, where we can test things out 'behind the scenes' and secondly we have unsurpassed technical support. This means both you and us have complete peace of mind.
