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Why Use WordPress? The real question in our opinion is why not?

WordPress is the number one Content Management System (CMS) in the world with over 25 million websites using it. Many web design companies promote either home-grown Content Management Systems (CMS) or use niche proprietary solutions. They also tend to charge their clients more to use CMS solutions rather than build all their websites using a CMS like we do at Red Jet.

WordPress is open source which means that not only does it have a massive user base, but it also has a huge development team with hundreds of contributors working every day to make it better. We think you should avoid home-grown solutions at all costs, mainly because your web design company cannot enhance their solution to the same degree that WordPress can.

The main reason we love WordPress is that it’s easy to use. If you can use Microsoft Word then using WordPress is a piece of cake! WordPress provides you the ability to create and maintain all content on your website without any programming knowledge – it really is just as easy as using Microsoft Word!

Easy Administration

WordPress is designed so that you don’t have to be (or ask) an IT expert to update your website. Click on the image to the right to take a look of the WordPress editor. As you can see it’s actually a screenshot of this blog post. You’ll notice that it has a tool bar similar to Microsoft Word where you can change fonts, use different heading styles, insert images and adjust the look and feel of the page…

Blogging

WordPress was originally built as blogging software and therefore many people still think it’s only for bloggers. This is simply not the case as WordPress can be used to build any type of website whether you want a blog or not. WordPress also provides you the ability to publish content automatically at dates in the future which is a great piece of functionality. Of course here at Red Jet we eat our own dog food and use WordPress on this website. We also recommend blogging as one of the best methods to drive traffic to your website.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

WordPress by default is configured for SEO. If you are wanting your website to be found then WordPress will help you right out of the box!

Community

WordPress has a massive following and as a result has a large community of developers that create plugins that extend the features of WordPress. Whether its a contact or membership form, a online survey or maybe integration with a Google calendar, there’s a WordPress plugin for almost all possible requirements.

Support

The other benefit of having a large community is support. If you have a question about WordPress you can usually find a solution by posting in the WordPress support forums by clicking here.

As if you haven’t already guessed we are crazy about WordPress here at Red Jet. If your current website hosting company doesn’t provide you with a CMS for your website (or is charging you an arm and a leg) we’d love to have a chat with you to see if we can move you onto WordPress. Click here to contact us or here to learn more about how we can move existing websites onto WordPress.

Tags: Small Business Websites, WordPress

You may have read our other blog post about what to do when your website has been hacked, but this post is about things you can do to prevent your WordPress site from being hacked. We’ve broken down how to prevent your WordPress website from being hacked into 5 steps…

Step 1: Get alerted when your website has been hacked

Ok, we admit this step isn’t so much about prevention, but it’s important that you are among the first to know that your site has been hacked. You want to be in a position to fix the problems before your customers see them. The best way to get notified about a hacked website is via the Google Webmaster site. You can read more about enabling these notifications by clicking here

Step 2: Update WordPress Frequently

It’s vital that you keep WordPress up to date. Not only will you appreciate the new features that the latest version brings, but you’ll also ensure that you have the latest security updates in place. Be sure to take backups and test your website after you upgrade as some third-party WordPress plugins are not always compatible with the latest WordPress release. Click here to read more about the WordPress upgrade process.

Step 3: Lockdown, Scan and Monitor

Login Lockdown is an excellent WordPress plugin that limits the number of invalid login attempts to your website. You can set the number of failed login attempts before lockout and also the length of the lockout.

We also recommend installing a plugin called WP Security Scan. This plugin checks that you don’t have any lax folder permissions on your web server, analyses database security and among the other great list of features also hides the version of WordPress that your website is running.

Finally, Sucuri is another good option to implement. Although it is a little pricey if you are running a high traffic volume site or an e-commerce site then it’s an excellent option. Sucuri is a website monitoring service that can identify if your site has been hit with a malware attack and alerts you to take action. You can receive alerts anytime anything changes via Email, Twitter, or RSS feed. Depending on you subscription plan, Sucuri also cleans up your site if it has been compromised.

Step 4: Backup, Backup, Backup!

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of backing up your website on a regular basis. There are many great solutions out there but we recommend BackupBuddy if you are using WordPress. BackupBuddy lets you schedule both database and file system backups. You can either download these backups to your local computer or schedule all BackupBuddy backups to an Amazon S3 storage account.

The other great feature of BackupBuddy is that it can restore your website in a matter of minutes should your entire site get comprimised, or if you want to move to another hosting provider. Drop us a line at Red Jet if you’d like some help setting up BackupBuddy for your WordPress website.

Step 5: Ensure Your Hosting Provider Is Proactive

If your website designer hosts your website then you should ask them the following questions about how they protect your website.
– Do you host my website on your own servers or at another companies premises?
– How secure is the physical location where my web server is housed?
– Is my website database, files and folders being backed up? If so how often?
– How can you insure that unauthorised users will not compromise the integrity of my Web site?
– Is my websites database shared with other websites or standalone?

If you have a WordPress website site and would like some assistance in implementing these measures to strengthen your site then contact us at Red Jet today.

Tags: Small Business Websites, Website Security, WordPress

Unfortunately from time to time websites get hacked and Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer! is displayed to your visitors. Usually this malicious activity simply adds a series of links to other sites, however sometimes a website can completely defaced or even worse – completely removed!

For example, visitors to your website might see some something like this instead of your homepage:

This warning is what Google displays when it detects that a website has been hacked. In order to get rid of this message you need to remove all infected code from your website and then re-submit your site for review by Google. This review process can be done via the Google Webmaster site.

We believe that WordPress is an excellent solution for maintaining your website, however from time to time like all software new methods to hack it are discovered. Thankfully the WordPress development community are quick to patch these exploits. Most successful hacking attempts for all websites (both WordPress and non-WordPress) can be due to exploits in the security of the company you host your website with. In addition your website maybe have lax secuity permissions therefore it may be easy for a hacker to upload and install malicious code on you web server.

My website has been hacked! How do I fix it?

First speak to your website hosting company, they should be aware of any recent malicious activity on their servers and may be able to help you restore a recent backup back to a point before the site was hacked. Second, put in place measures to prevent your site being hacked again. We’ve written a blog post with some great tips on the ways to stop your WordPress website from being hacked. Click here to view the blog post on preventing your website from being hacked.

Many web design companies are great at building websites but aren’t so good and maintaining websites. Ask your website designer what measures they have in place to prevent malicious attacks and get them to explain how they backup your website. Possibly consider moving website hosting companies if you don’t believe they have the right systems in place. No one can guarantee that your site will never be hacked but you want to be sure that as much is being done to prevent it from happening again.

If you are struggling to get your WordPress website fixed then contact us at Red Jet as we can usually fix websites in a matter of hours and we can also re-submit your site to Google for review.

Prevent your WordPress site from being hacked again

After you have fixed your hacked website you will want to put measures in place to prevent it happening again. There are several things that can be done to prevent your website from being hacked again and we created a blog post about it here: Prevent your WordPress website from being hacked.

Tags: Small Business Websites, Website Security, WordPress

Red Jet Web Services uses HostGator for a variety of services and are happy to offer a coupon code that will give you 25% off your hosting fees.

Either click on the link below or go to www.hostgator.com and use the code REDJETGATOR25.

Tags: HostGator Coupon Codes, Small Business Websites, Website Hosting