A Dedicated WordPress Manager is a person who is experienced in managing all aspects of a WordPress website including Themes, Plugins, Edits, Design, Development, Search Engine Optimization, Hosting, and Domains. At least that’s what it means here at WP Harbor.
Our company mission is to provide great service. One of the ways we achieve that is to provide a Dedicated WordPress Manager who they can email, call, text, or screen share. We make managing websites easier for business owners however we can. For example, we will log in to 3rd party systems for website integration purposes, make website-related purchases for you such as plugins or themes, and more.
Does “dedicated” mean full time?
Do you need that much help? If so, then yes! What we primarily mean is that you have a dedicated point of contact who knows you, knows your website, and can make educated recommendations based on your needs. Your manager is available to provide answers, guidance, and can help with projects for an additional fee. Whether it be a quick edit you’re struggling to make, a new functionality you need added, or a brand new website. However, most of the time, your manager will quietly update themes, plugins, and generally make sure everything is running smoothly.
Why is a Dedicated WordPress Manager needed?
If you want to be in business today, you have to be online. Unfortunately, being online is more complicated today than ever before. A website requires hosting, domain setup, themes, plugins, pages, backend code, and frontend code. It needs to display properly screens of all shapes and sizes in all different orientations. It needs to integrate with 3rd party code from social platforms, digital marketing, analytics tools, and all sorts of other systems. More now than ever, business owners need a smart, qualified person who can manage all of these different aspects of maintaining a website in 2022. This is what we do.
Where will my WordPress Manager Be Located?
All of our WordPress managers are located in West Michigan.
Quarterly Reviews
More info coming soon.
How can I contact WordPress Manager?
More info coming soon.
Examples of problems a WP MAnager can fix
More info coming soon.
What does Monthly WordPress Management include?
Managing a WordPress website means different things to different people. To us it includes the following:
Website Monitoring
Is the website up or is it down? While you would think monitoring a website would be a given in this day in age, it’s not. The reason is that a typical WordPress hosting provider’s job is to just provide hosting space. They don’t know what you have going on so they don’t know the difference between “up” or “down”.
That’s a difference between us and a typical WordPress host. We “know what’s going on”. We serve businesses and our job is to make sure the website is up and running. If that’s not the case, it’s our job to figure out why and then fix it.
WordPress Updates
WordPress is the most popular Content Management System in the world. It is the system most commonly used to build a website in 2022. Like all software, updates are released for WordPress a few times throughout the year. We manage the process of updating your site to the latest version of WordPress. Typically, this happens automagically, however, sometimes a WordPress update can cause conflicts with themes, plugins, or underlying code like PHP. When that happens, we figure out what needs to be done and resolve the issue if you would like us to.
Plugin Updates
Plugins are little packages of web code that add features to a website. For example, almost all WordPress websites have a contact form plugin because WordPress doesn’t include a way to build contact forms by default. Many WordPress sites run SEO plugins, speed optimization plugins, social media plugins, and more.
Plugins often update to remain compatible with code updates, WordPress updates, browser updates, device updates, etc. If you don’t update a plugin, oftentimes nothing bad will happen, other times it can cause functionality on your website to break, or in the worst case, can create security flaws that hackers can exploit.
We check for Plugin updates twice a month or about every two weeks. Many plugins are updated automatically, but some have to be updated manually. And after updating plugins it’s always a good idea to check the front end of the website to make sure the update didn’t break anything!
Theme Updates
Themes are packages of web code that give a website its visual appearance. You can think of it like the body of a car, or the siding on a house. All WordPress websites have a theme, and they are often updated to remain compatible with code updates, WordPress updates, browser updates, device updates, etc. If you don’t update a theme, oftentimes nothing bad will happen, other times it can cause functionality on your website to break, or in the worst case, can create security flaws that hackers can exploit.
We check for Theme updates twice a month or about every two weeks. Themes don’t update as often as plugins do. After updating an active Theme, it’s always a good idea to check the front end of the website to make sure the update didn’t break anything!
Reporting
Every month we generate a website report that details Plugin, Theme, & WordPress updates, website response time, traffic statistics, and website downtime. Your Dedicated Website Manager reviews the report for any issues that need to be addressed (like a large drop in website response time) before personally sending it to you. If you have any questions, you’re free to reply. Otherwise, you can ignore the report and know that your website management team is on it!
Hosting
We’re one of the only WordPress Management companies that provides premium, fully managed WordPress hosting. Our clients run on LiquidWeb dedicated servers, solid-state drives, high-powered ram, high-powered CPU, and Litespeed technologies with dedicated CPU for LSCache. If none of that makes sense to you, don’t worry, you can ignore all of it. And don’t worry about storage, bandwidth limits, or anything like that. It’s our job to take care of this techy web stuff for you. We’ve got it covered!
Backups
We’re a little nutty about backups. We run several that fall into three main categories: On-server backups. These backups are made to SATA drives located physically on our dedicated web servers. Secondly, we make backups (yeah that’s plural) to Acronis Cyber Backups. Thirdly, we backups to WPMUDEV. All in, we have about thirty copies of any given site at any given time. As I said, we’re a little nutty about backups. It’s our job to manage your website, and we take that responsibility seriously.
Security
Security starts with keeping the software and code versions of your site up to date. This includes WordPress itself, Themes, Plugins, and PHP Version. We set up Cloudflare whenever possible for its DNS Masking, built-in Firewall, DDOS protection, Bot fight mode, and more. In addition, we scan site files in real-time for any anomalies, threats, or intrusions. Anything flagged is investigated by our team.
If your site ever is hacked (infected with malware) we’ll clean it up for free, because managing your website is our responsibility.
PHP Updates
More info coming soon.