Maintaining a website used to be easy. In the good ol’ days, if you built your website correctly, you could pretty much leave it alone and you would be ok.

But as Google continues to tweak their algorithm, hackers continue to create mayhem, and technologies get smarter, you need to make sure your website stays up to speed.

3 Things You Should Go Check Right Now:

1) Your Website Forms:

When was the last time you checked to make sure your Contact Us form works? Do not take this for granted! Just because it worked at one point, doesn’t mean that it still works right now. You should be testing your contact forms every few months to ensure they are working correctly. You could be losing business, so go check now!

2) Make sure your domain and hosting are on auto-renew

I see it about once a week. A client calls in because their website or email is down and most of the time it is because their credit card expired and they ignored warnings from their registrar or hosting company, or they didn’t have their domain & hosting on auto-renew. For most businesses, their website is the lifeline of their business and should buy their domain & hosting several years out. At bare minimum make sure that both domain and hosting are on auto-renew so they don’t go down.

3) Security – Keep your software up to date and have a backup

95% of small businesses have a WordPress website. It is the most popular website builder in the world because it is awesome! But because it is so popular, this also means it is the most targeted by hackers / spammers.
To keep your site safe, follow these rules:
1) Never use “admin” as your username.
2) Use a strong password with a symbol (! # $ % &) and a number.
3) Keep all of your plugins updated
4) Keep your WordPress software updated.
5) Use a plugin called “Login Lockdown”. This limits the number of login attempts which prevents most hacking attempts.

Lastly, make sure you have a backup of your site. There are several plugins that will create backups for you. Our favorite is a plugin called Backup Buddy.

If you follow the advice above, you won’t experience the headaches that occasionally come with your website. Cheers!
Want to read more? Check out our post on Online Reviews.