The Problem
Maintaining a website up and running requires several different pieces of technology to work in unison.
With traditional brick and mortar businesses, the last thing on anyone’s minds is whether the building will come crashing down on their heads. Owners can focus on things that really matter like paying the lease, stocking up on inventory and investing in marketing.
Alas, the same cannot be said for digital businesses. Visitors are quick to leave a site that is taking more than a couple of seconds to load, or that does not have valid security certificates. Having a website that is down is the equivalent to locking a brick and mortar shop’s doors and boarding up the windows. Total disaster!
Navigating the complexities of keeping a website up and secure can be daunting, especially if you’re already up to your neck in issues pertaining to all other aspects of running a business.
Keep reading to learn a bit more about each part.
Hosting
Websites need to be accessible to visitors. For that to happen, they need to be hosted with a company that keeps their servers running 24/7.
On top of that, the servers must be fast and always connected to the internet. There needs to be a team of system administrators that know how to fix things when they break (and they do break), and great customer support staff to serve as the middleman between the client and the sysadmins. All of that for a price that doesn’t break the bank.
I’ve been through several different hosts since I began working with websites in 1998. With every host, I learned a different lesson. Heck, I could write a series of posts pointing out hosting nightmares that I’ve been through (like this one).
Fortunately, my journey through different hosts has lead me to Cloudways.
Cloudways is a little different from other hosts as it is basically a company that offers the sysadmin and customer support teams, while the servers themselves are sourced from your pick of 5 different providers. Yes, it is possible to bypass Cloudways and hire the end servers directly, but I feel that having the team behind Cloudways to keep the servers running smoothly is a better bang for my buck (so I can focus on developing my WordPress plugins or working on keeping my clients’ sites up and running).
I strongly recommend switching to Cloudways Hosting*. You can also take advantage of the promo code: UseStrict for 20% off on your first two invoices.
* affiliate link
Performance
In the era of broadband internet where things load in the blink of an eye, people no longer have the patience to wait several seconds to interact with a website.
Again, there are several pieces that help achieve fast load times. The most important ones are:
- Hosting
- Coding
- Image Optimization
Slow servers mean slow sites. There’s no getting around that, regardless of how well your developer coded your website.
A visitor’s request to view your site leaves their computer, travels all the way to the hosting server, receives information and travels all the way back to the visitor’s computer. If a server is connected to a slow network or has little computing power, the request will be delayed in getting back.
The structure and amount of code involved in displaying the web page is the next piece of the puzzle. Some pages require massive amounts of code and there’s no getting around that, but there are tools and techniques to speed them up even so. A good developer will know how to implement them.
And finally, images must be optimized to load quickly without losing their quality.
Security
Who hasn’t heard terror stories of sites being hijacked or brought down by hackers?
There are several modern techniques to keeping sites secure. Using an SSL certificate used to be expensive and reserved for e-commerce sites. This is no longer the case, thanks to an organization called Let’sEncrypt.
Any halfway decent host will now offer an interface to install a free Let’sEncrypt certificate with just a couple of clicks. If yours doesn’t, it’s definitely time to move to one that does. Not having an SSL certificate installed on your site or even having to pay a hefty sum for one is a thing of the past.
Another important thing to do when keeping a website secure is ensuring that it is periodically updated with the latest security patches. A website, despite its coding, is never static. There are always new exploits being discovered across all pieces of technology involved in displaying a website page, and that requires applying the fixes before the hackers take advantage. It’s tiring work, but someone’s got to do it :).
Website Care Specialists
Fortunately for business owners, there is a special breed of people who thrive on making sure that things are running so smoothly that you forget that they exist.
For instance, I’ve been working with web hosting in one capacity or another since 2002. Back then I figured that I could build my own web hosting company as long as I studied enough to do so. I configured all aspects of the servers from New User Accounts, Email Services, DNS, Secure FTP and, of course, Web Servers. Ultimately I figured it would be more cost effective to outsource hosting instead of having noisy and expensive servers in my apartment so I pivoted and shut it all down.
On the plus side, the amount of knowledge I acquired was such that I started teaching Linux for a joint venture between the Brazilian Government and the then Sun Microsystems.
20+ years later, I apply my knowledge to giving business owners peace of mind in knowing that their websites are well cared for.
UseStrict's Website Care Services
If any of what you’ve read so far has hit close to home, do reach out and let us take care of you.
We’ll help you get set up with Cloudways, install the latest security patches, run an initial optimization scan and apply the required fixes.
We’ll also set it up so that your site gets backed up daily, and we’ll run weekly updates to ensure your site is secure.
It’s personalized service – you’ll be in contact with myself or another member of my team who will be taking very good care of your site so that you focus solely on your business.
Click the button below to learn more.