FAQ

Website Hosting:

Website Hosting is a service that takes your website and places it onto a web server (a physical computer disk) and presents it to the search engines for access. And to do this, the web hosting company provides the following services:

• DNS Records Management
• Physical server (computer/disk) 
• High-speed connections to the internet
• Services that they may not offer:
  • A domain name registration and hosting 
  • Website backups
  • Email Hosting
  • Website Security
  • SSL Certificates (provides the Https at the front of your URL)

Website Support

Website Support is a service that assists the website owner. This service is to help them keep their website working properly. The term “website working properly” is NOT related to hosting; they are two different things. Even if your site breaks, it may still be running. Here are some “Website Support” items:

• Technical support may come in all forms email or phone or text message
• Technical support consists of, but not limited to Page Loading Errors, Plugin Issues, Theme Support, WordPress Support, Website Security
• Professional go-between you and your hosting company
• The actual work to update the website is not part of “website support.”
• The training to you and your staff for using WordPress, your website theme or plugins

Website Maintenance

Website Maintenance is the process or task of keeping the website, not the hosting or server, up-to-date, and may consist of:

• Content management, this does not mean creation.
• Plugin Updates
• Website Offline backups
• Custom Programming
• Page Layout Creation
• Social Media Connections
• Site Analytics Reporting
• Website Speed Optimization

Conclusion:

It is essential to have your expectations align with your hosting/service/maintenance agreements that you may have purchased. And if you haven’t bought a contract(s), you may want to consider doing so.

Since website hosting, email hosting, website support, domain hosting, and website maintenance are all foreign to most businesses. It may be prudent to find out all included and excluded service items within your website hosting/support agreements. And also, ask how much time that may consist of within the term of the contract(s).

Many website developers are now offering separate contracts for each service provided.

Things to consider before purchasing any servcie agreements:

• Your technical expertise?
• How much time do you have available to manage your website?
• When do you need said services(s) on-demand or scheduled? The answer to this question may dramatically change the service contract price.
• It is critical that your website is always running, little to no downtime? However, you answer this question; it may increase the cost of your service level agreement.
• What is the typical response time of your service provider? Again, if you do not need 24/7 service, consider the cost first.

The task of the creation or upgrade of a website can be daunting. However, it doesn’t stop there. Here are some points to consider to keep your website current and interesting to your prospective site visitors.

• How will you manage the content of your website?
• How will you keep the website code (WordPress, its theme, and plugins) up-to-date?
• How will you keep the website secure?
• What about changes to graphics, adding new images, and cropping images?
• Who will connect and manage your social media sites?
• How will you respond to negative reviews on Google or Bing Business?
• Who will you create new and fresh content?
• Where will you purchase or create royalty-free images, and who will crop and edit these images?
• What will you use to track and monitor visitors to your website?
• What software will you collect emails on your website?
• What will you use to monitor and improve your search engine ranking position?
• If you need a layout change to your website, who is going to do this?

To give a general answer to this question is easy, the general answer is NO!

The problem with your web designer/developer being responsible for your website content is that they do NOT know your business, your products, or your services. In an attempt to fix what they think is a problem that may cause more issues. It is, therefore, a better idea for you to spell, grammar check text yourself. There are many great online tools like Grammarly to make this task more relaxed and more convenient.

The general answer to this question is yes and no.

Yes, if creating website graphics was a part of the original website design/development contract. No, if it wasn’t part of the original website design/development contract.

Also, ongoing website graphics costs will be an extra cost, and no designer can afford to cover the cost of creating graphics for the life of any website they may produce.
These tasks are what you will need to budget as part of the ongoing costs of website maintenance.

The general answer to this question is yes and no.

Yes, if purchasing royalty images was a part of the original website design/development contract. No, if it wasn’t part of the original website design/development contract.

Also, the ongoing purchasing of royalty-free images is the responsibility of the site owner. No designer/developer can cover the cost of purchasing images for the life of any website that they may have developed. You will need to budget the purchasing of royalty images as part of the ongoing website maintenance costs.

As a suggestion, purchase a website maintenance agreement from your website developer to fix these costs.

To keep your website up-to-date and current is the sole responsibility of the site owner.

No designer/developer can cover the lifetime cost of maintaining any website that they may have developed. You will need to budget website maintenance as an ongoing cost of doing business.

As a suggestion, purchase a website maintenance agreement from your website developer to fix these costs.

When a website breaks, it is the responsibility of the website owner.

No designer/developer can cover the lifetime cost of maintaining any website that they may have developed. You will need to budget website maintenance as an ongoing cost of doing business.

As a suggestion, purchase a website maintenance agreement from your website developer to fix these costs.

Protecting your website is a fabulous question and one that usually gets asked after a hack. Prevention is the best approach, and here are some preventative plugins to get set up on your WordPress website:

• The WordFence plugin prevents Brute force attacks, prevents login attacks.
• The Jetpack plugin is a fabulous anti-spam protection software.
• Google Recaptcha is a remarkable form of anti-spam protection.
• All-in-one backup plugin is a beautiful onsite and offsite backup software.
• And then use uptime robot to monitor your website’s uptime.

Other Ideas:

• Use a NON “admin” user name.
• Use 12 long character passwords.
• Remove unused administrators

Each website hosting provider is different. They may or may not provide this service; however, even if they do, restoration of those files may come a fee.

You will need to budget website maintenance as an ongoing cost of doing business.

As a suggestion, purchase a website maintenance agreement from your website developer to fix these costs.

Each website hosting provider is different. They may or may not provide this service. However, if something breaks during the process of updating your website, there may be a fee to fix it.

You will need to budget website maintenance as an ongoing cost of doing business.

As a suggestion, purchase a website maintenance agreement from your website developer to fix these costs.

The answer to this is NO, but your website hosting company may offer this service as an add-on. And remember that this is NOT a one-time cost, there may be plugins involved and tweaking required, and sometimes your website might break during this tweaking.

You will need to budget website maintenance as an ongoing cost of doing business.

As a suggestion, purchase a website maintenance agreement from your website developer to fix these costs.

The answer to this is NO, but your website developer may offer this service as an add-on. And remember that this is NOT a one-time cost, there may be plugins involved, and there is constant monitoring tweaking required to move your website up in its Google ranking positions.

You will need to budget Search Engine Ranking as an ongoing cost of doing business.

As a suggestion, purchase a monthly maintenance contract for Search Engine Ranking from your website developer to fix these costs.

WordPress is a content management system or CMS, and a WordPress theme is what makes your WordPress look and function like a website.

WordPress is a content management system. Plugins provide the functionality to WordPress CMS and its themes. For WordPress, this is one of its great features and one of the reasons for its popularity. 

Plugins do the following:

• Site maintenance functionality
• Website editing functionality
• Customization of WordPress
• Website security
• Lead generation functionality
• Ecommerce functionality
• Site visitor tracking functionality

And more, with over 55,928 available plugins from free to premium, there is usually a plugin to suit all needs.

To help answer this great question, Website Visibility provides the basics to get your website listed on local search directories. Search Engine Optimization is get your website found when someone searches for a specific item on Google.

Website Visibility Options:

• Site Maps
• Google Webmaster, now Google Search Console
• Bing Webmaster listing
• Google My Business Listing
• Bing My Business Listing
• Plus a myriad of other free and paid listing services, like Yelp

Search Engine Optimization Options:

• On-Page optimization
• SERP, Search Engine Ranking Optimization
• And there are many technics and software and plugins to assist with this.

The answer to this is NO, but your website developer may offer this service as an add-on.

The answer to this is NO, but your website developer may offer this service as an add-on.

The answer to this is NO, but your website developer may offer this service as an add-on.

SMM is “Social Media Marketing” it is the science and art of marketing your products and services to prospective clients through the use of social media platforms.

On-Page SEO is the science and art of marking up pages on your website so that Google will appropriately search your products and services.

First of all, don’t do it if you don’t want to do it correctly! It would help if you had the following:

• A good email collection and responder software installed on your WordPress website.
• An SMTP service that bypasses your website hosting provider and accurately delivers emails to their intended recipients.

These are all extras for any WordPress website installation, and a competent provider can do the job for you!

Oh, don’t forget your website security too!

An SSL is a Secure Socket Layer, and it protects your website and its visitors from compromisation. It would help if you had it to protect both your website and your website visitors, and it is a must for google and website optimization.

Website hosting = hosting your WordPress website
Email Hosting = hosting your emails
Domain Hosting = hosting your domain name

These are separately purchased or packaged, please consult your provider