Why WordPress Care Plans Are Required

Unfortunately we now live in a world where websites are being increasingly targeted by overseas hackers and exploited with serious legal ramifications. Your hosting is already high quality but more needs to be done to prevent your website being hacked and remaining high performing. If you’re reading this page, then we know your website intimately and urge you to take action to protect your website.

Major Case Study: Optus and Channel 9 Were Hacked Recently 

You would also be aware of the huge data breach at Optus (2022) which occurred due to an API (web application connector) that was not updated properly and left vulnerable to an attack by hackers. The same thing happened to Channel 9 in 2021.

Dozens more high profile data breaches have occurred – see this article, let alone the thousands of small businesses that have been hacked and not reported in mainstream media.

How does this affect you?

We need to immediately take measures to prevent this happening to you. The solution is taking a more proactive approach in regards to your website maintenance.

Why do I need to secure my website? 

You have a website that is crucial to your business. It presents as the hub of your digital brand, generates leads, customers and revenue. You’ve already invested a lot on your website and you deserve peace of mind that it will be up and available for your audience without major issues.

New, Modern, Not Seen Before Hacking Methods Leave Your Website Vulnerable

All software needs to be updated on a regular basis, to keep it secure and performing well. If you are not monitoring, updating, and backing up your WordPress site, then it will become increasingly prone to a range of increasing security and performance issues, such as:

• Hackers can take down your website
• Hackers can send emails from your website (spam – not phishing)
• Hackers can embed explicit content on your website for your customers to see
• Hackers can hold your website at ransom

Other issues:

• The performance of your website diminishes
• User experience gets worse and deters visitors
• Google decreases your rank, with possible blacklisting (not showing on Google at all)
• Stressful for you and your team
• Hacked or broken sites are costly to your bank balance, as well as your brand
• Issues arise more frequently, costing you more to fix in the long run

All Software Is Vulnerable

Software needs updating. All software. Including the software that powers your website. More and more websites are getting hacked and attacked, including the big players like Optus and Channel 9 as well as millions of small businesses everyday. It’s the nature of the world we live in and unfortunately websites are an easy target.

The Do It Yourself Method (DIY)

You can certainly learn how to correctly update your website – there are plenty of online articles and tutorials. The process goes like this:

• Log into the web server
• Create a copy of your website
• Login to the copy of your website
• Manually update each plugin (about 10-15 per monthly update), checking the website for errors after each plugin update
• Update the WordPress core version
• Update the WordPress theme
• Test the entire website for errors, bugs and plugin conflicts
• If the website is safe, take the copy of the website and place it back on the live domain

This may take you 2-3 hours per month, once you know what you’re doing.

Why we don’t recommend the DIY approach.

Maintaining a website is more complicated than one would think at close glance. Websites are comprised of a combination of independent software that comes together to create your design and user experience. If you update the website yourself and one of the software conflicts with another software, it can take the entire website offline, or break an aspect of your website that is hard to resolve or find.

You don’t want to find yourself visiting this page – Have you been hacked? – from cyber.gov.au

This is Where We Can Help

Whilst no one can promise that you will never be hacked, our website care plans include everything to prevent that from happening. The range of benefits include:

• Integrated firewall, automatic malware scanner and instant malware cleaner
• Up to date websites are not an easy target for malware
• Website performance remains smooth and fast
• User experience is consistently good 24/7
• Google ranks you higher because it trust secure sites
• The time and energy you save can be invested in running your business
• Less costs that would accrue due to multiple repairs
• Peace of mind knowing that your investment is being well taken care of

Important note: none of our clients have ever been hacked. 

Protect your investment.

Many people don’t know what a care plan is, let alone what contains. We offer three website care plans, here’s what they offer: