Maintain Your WordPress Website With These 6 Easy Steps

Maintaining your WordPress website is essential to ensuring that it runs smoothly and stays secure. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t know how to do this themselves. That’s why we’ve put together a list of the six most essential tasks that you should be performing on a regular basis. By following this checklist, you’ll help keep your site running quickly and avoid any potential security vulnerabilities or other issues.

Create complete backups of your website

One of the most important things you can do to protect your website is to back it up periodically. This will allow you to restore your site if something goes wrong, such as a hacker attack or server crash. There are several ways to create backups, including using plugins or manually copying your files and database. But while plugins like BackUpWordPress and hosting servers like SiteGround automate the backup process, performing manual backups may still be necessary to cover all your bases.

Verify your backups

Just because you have backups doesn’t mean they’re doing their job. You should test your backups regularly to make sure they are working properly. This can be done by restoring a backup to a test site or simply downloading the files and checking them to make sure they are complete. The last thing you need is for your backups to fail on the day you need them most.

Perform daily security scans

One of the best ways to stay ahead of potential security threats is to monitor your website closely for any signs of compromise. A good way to do this is to perform daily security scans, which will help you track any changes or suspicious activity. There are a number of different tools and services that can help you with this, and one of the most popular ones is Sucuri. Not only does this plugin carry out inspections, but it also sends an SMS to notify you of any suspicious activity and emails you a daily status report of your website’s security.

Scan for malware

Cyberthreats are growing in both number and sophistication. With every passing day, new strains of malware are developed and released onto business networks and systems. Unless you are a bonafide hacker yourself, detecting malware might be a little tricky. WordPress plugins like Wordfence keep your website safe using the latest firewall rules and flagging the latest malware signatures and malicious IP addresses.

Conduct page speed audits

Slow and steady may be qualities valued by some, but not when it comes to your website. Plugins like Google Pagespeed Insights test how fast your site loads. If it takes more than five seconds, you should consider implementing caching and other measures to speed up your site. Slow sites put off visitors, and that further lowers those sites’ search rankings.

Review your site’s structure and content

Just as you should periodically review your website’s security, you should also take a look at its overall structure and content. Are the pages well organized and easy to navigate? Is the content relevant and up to date? If not, you may want to consider making some changes.

Forbes, National Geographic, and The New York Times are all powered by WordPress, which means you are in good company. By sticking to the checklist, you too can harness the power of this online, open-source website creation tool. Or, instead of signing up for half a dozen services that need daily check-ins, why not have us take care of all of it for you? If you have further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and give us a call!

5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit From Dashboards

Data dashboards have become increasingly popular for businesses. These data visualization tools give you an overview of how your business is performing, and they cater to a wide variety of users, from marketing staff to project managers. Let’s take a look at how dashboards can support your business activities.

Marketing insights

Your organization’s marketing department analyzes a significant amount of data from various channels. Whether their purpose is to forecast monthly sales, predict trends, or build marketing strategies, marketing specialists use dashboards to compare, sort, and analyze raw data to produce meaningful information presented in an easy-to-understand manner. This helps key decision makers in your organization to formulate better marketing campaigns.

Tracking sales opportunities

Sales dashboards are ideal for tracking your organization’s products and services. They help you identify sales opportunities by monitoring top-selling products and comparing the growth in revenue on a regular basis. Sales dashboards sync to your raw data, so your charts are always up to date. This eliminates the need to manually enter and prepare sales reports and charts.

Social media management

Social media management is more than just posting statuses on your business’s social media accounts. And in most cases, your social media platform’s default dashboard doesn’t give you deep insights into your social media campaigns. What’s more, managing multiple social media accounts can quickly become tedious since you have to use several login credentials. Instead, you can manage all of your accounts through a comprehensive social media dashboard, saving you valuable time and effort.

Financial reports

Presenting financial data is a complex process that often leads to misinterpretation of critical information. Dashboards simplify the creation of financial reports, and financial analysts can take advantage of dashboards to display sensitive data — be it customer invoices, progress toward revenue goals, or business expenses — in an understandable graphical format.

Project collaboration

All businesses require their employees to collaborate on projects, whether on site or online. Project supervisors need to get their teams together to give them project requirements, deadlines, and responsibilities, and to get progress updates. By using project collaboration dashboards, team members will see a project’s complete workflow, allowing for a more efficient and collaborative working environment.

Dashboards streamline the presentation of complex business data and make your team more efficient. If you’re looking to implement dashboards and other cutting-edge tools to make your job easier, contact the Net Activyt team today.

Laptops Or Desktops: What’s The Right Choice For Your Business?

If you’re buying computers for your startup or upgrading your small business’s existing machines, you need to decide whether laptops or desktops are right for your needs. To help you choose, consider these five factors.

Portability

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven most businesses to adopt remote work and hybrid work setups. If you’re thinking of implementing a remote or hybrid work arrangement, investing in laptops is the smart move, as your employees can easily take their laptops with them and work anywhere, anytime.

That said, you must not discount desktops altogether. While laptops are light and portable, modern desktop computers aren’t nearly as immobile as they used to be. In many cases, today’s desktop monitors are thin and light, and all-in-one desktops are easy to move around.

Memory and speed

In the past, desktop computers had more memory than laptops, and they were faster because they had bigger processors. This has now changed, thanks to improvements in laptop technology. But until high-powered business-grade laptops become more affordable, desktop computers are going to provide your business with more memory, speed, and power for your money.

How much speed and memory you need depends on the work you do. If your employees’ work mostly entails word processing and emailing, laptops should be enough. But if they need to run gaming software or edit heavy media files, it would be better to invest in desktops.

Security

A desktop computer is more physically secure because it’s often kept in one location, making it easier to guard. And because a desktop’s internet access is often a single source (whether through Wi-Fi or cable), it’s easier to defend it against malware and cyberattacks.

If you choose to invest in laptops, make sure to put in place strict security policies for devices used by remote workers. Don’t let your staff connect to unsecured networks, and deploy encryption tools to protect data from unauthorized access. You must also employ mobile device management software to enable your IT administrator to wipe laptops of data should they get lost or stolen.

Price

Laptops, especially the smaller notebook-style ones, are a lot cheaper than desktops. However, desktop computers are also becoming more affordable through local channels and flexible payment terms. A capable IT services provider can offer cheaper desktop options so you can get powerful machines without going over budget.

Quality

Although laptop computers provide the convenience of portability, they’re prone to battery and charging cord problems. They are also easily damaged, especially if they are dropped or mishandled. By contrast, desktops are generally sturdier. But when they do experience a problem, repairing them can be expensive.

The desktop versus laptop debate is an old one, with supporters on both sides touting the advantages of their choice. A growing company usually needs a combination of both types of computers, especially as their needs evolve. If you need help choosing the best computers for your business, or if you have any business IT-related questions, give Net Activity a call today.