Website Management

Before any website goes on to our management service plan and audit will be done. This is to determine how much work is required to not only setup and move the website to our provider, but also what software needs to be updated and what else needs to be fixed.

Based on the audit a setup fee will be calculated to help offset the time it will take us to get your website running at peak performance.

Since a setup fee has been paid you may cancel your website management service at any time. We just need 30-days notice.

Please remember that our managed hosting solution is part of this service plan. If it is canceled, you will be cancelling your hosting as well along with your remotely stored backups. We will provide you with the latest backup of your website so you can migrate it to another host. If you wish you can also hire us to migrate your website to another host at our current hourly rate. Please note that a lot of web hosts may offer cheap rates but with reduced server resources which may affect how well your website operates.

To keep things running smoothly we set up recurring payments to be automatically billed to your credit or debit card at the start of each month for that current month.

A Management Service Plan may have a set number of 30 minute task blocks per month.

Tasks will be completed usually within 1 to 3 business days of the request. Any task at a minimum requires 30 minutes. A task that takes longer than 30 minutes will use up additional full task blocks. If you require extra time for the month above what has been specified in your subscription, we will try our best to accommodate the situation, but the extra time will be billed at our current hourly rate and completion time may be delayed due to other project commitments.

Task blocks include a large discount over our regular hourly rate. If you find you need more or a less number of task blocks per month, let us know and we can tailor the subscription plan to your needs.

Example tasks include (but not limited to):

• Comment moderation
• Content changes
• Adding new content
• Minor website adjustments

Any left-over task blocks in a month cannot be rolled into the next month.

Tasks do not include programming or design services since these take time and are outside the scope of a task block. If this is something you need, please contact us and we can discuss it further.

Priority Support is meant for discussing tasks and to report any problems you are experiencing with your website.

eSilverStrike Consulting is available during our normal business hours (not including holidays). Any support request received will be answered within the response time of the subscription plan. Response time is in business days but in most cases, we usually do respond by the next business day.

If a website goes down, we will make every effort to assist as soon as possible. However, the Management Service Plans does not guarantee 24/7 emergency support.

Non-emergency tasks will go into our regular workflow and will have an average 1 to 3 business day turnaround time. For extra work that exceeds the allotted number of task blocks of your Management Service Plan, you will be billed at our current hourly rate.

If you wish to discuss changes to your Management Service Plan, or improvements to your website including enhancements, marketing, or a new project, feel free to reach out via support (or contact us directly) and we can then schedule a call to go over the details.

It allows us to protect your WordPress user accounts by requiring strong passwords and limiting failed login attempts. 2 Factor authentication can also be setup for Administrator accounts.

When setup and managed properly, WordPress is a secure platform. That being said, nothing is 100% secure and new software vulnerabilities are found all the time and patched. This happens with all types of software and hardware.

When we launch a website or add one to our Website Management Service, we take additional steps to lock down the website. This includes adding/updating appropriate web server settings and making sure our preferred security plugin is installed to help us monitor the risks and implement additional security measures.

Our security software includes a Web Application Firewall (WAF) which continuously monitors visitors for bad behavior and offers Brute-Force Protection against common attacks on websites. Scanning your files and database content for Malware is also included.

We review notifications from the security software and make adjustments as needed.

We are proactive as well and keep updated on security news regarding the software your website uses.

Google Analytics is a service which we use that tracks and reports website traffic.

We will monitor your analytics and report any traffic swings (increases or decreases) that are outside the average for the time period.

Larger traffic swings that are outside the norm should be researched to find out why they happened.

A traffic decrease may indicate an issue with the website that has affected your search engine rankings which needs to be fixed.

A traffic increase is something positive and finding out why it happened could mean we can capitalize further on the popularity. For example if a page on your website was linked to by a media organization, tweeted, or shared on Facebook and has gone viral. You may want to add additional information or Calls to Action to this page to increase sales or add other similar pages to supplement the popular content and grow that particular traffic source.

When reviewing your traffic you need to realize that patterns do depend on the niche of your business, the current season, and holidays.

Both Google and Bing have Search Consoles. It is a service which allows webmasters to check search engine indexing status and other attributes related to website rankings.  It helps to optimize the visibility of a website.

We will monitor your Search Console for notifications from Google and Bing about technical issues that need to be fixed.

When an issues arises we will notify you of the problem and how it may potentially be fixed.

In very limited cases we allow this, but it depends on who your web host is and what plan you are using.

Some web hosting companies may appear to offer a lot at a cheap price, but they limit resources in other ways which make it difficult for WordPress websites to function properly. Unfortunately, this happens a lot.

Some of these companies also may not have the most helpful customer support team or use technologies that we are not ideal for WordPress websites.

If you want to go on a Management Service Plan but keep your own web host, then let us know. We will check your host out to see if it meets our qualifications. If it does, you could then subscribe to one of our plans, minus the built in hosting fees.

Please note, using your own web hosting may limit some features offered including backups and security enhancements. We would also need full access to the hosting control panel and customer support.

Unfortunately, no. It is not recommended to let WordPress, or it’s plugins, and themes to auto update.

Just like with any other software, from time to time an update may cause problems by either failing during the upgrade process or by introducing bugs which may affect the features your website is using. In the worse cases an update can cause your entire website to go down.

This is why we always research any updates (for WordPress along with the theme and plugins installed) before applying them and perform backups before updating any software. In some cases where we are not sure of the outcome, we may even run a copy of the website updated in a staging environment to test things before applying the update to a live production website.

Additionally, all websites require routine maintenance. Just like your home, you must cut the grass, clean, and fix things like the roof and appliances when they break or get run down. Delaying these maintenance tasks just creates bigger problems down the road. You may save money initially but it costs a lot more to fix later on and they can create additional problems themselves. Using home maintenance as an analogy, in the same way that’s what our management service plans provide for a website.

WordPress along with the installed plugins and themes need to be updated regularly. Updates can include new features, improvements, bug fixes, and security fixes.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as clicking the “update now” button on the WordPress plugin page. A lot of things need to be considered first before updating software or you may end up breaking the website.

In fact, it may be better to wait a week or 2 before applying the update in case another update is released fixing problems that the previous update caused. This is especially true when a major version update is released. There are bound to be major bugs that need to be fixed.

Compatibility between all the software installed as part of the website and the server also needs to be considered. Updates may add support for newer versions while depreciating support for older versions.

You need to ensure that the plugins and themes updates not only support the WordPress version currently installed, but also support each other. Some plugins and themes rely on features offered by other plugins and themes which updating may break support for.

The software on the server that is used by the website also must be considered. WordPress along with the plugins and themes support specific software and versions. Unfortunately, this support is not the same across all of WordPress’s plugins and themes so some may support newer or older versions than others.

Updates should only be applied after a website backup is performed and all the research for the above considerations has been completed.

The web hosting on a preferred partner includes emails sent by the website itself. It does not include emails used by the business and it’s employees.

Though it is possible if setup with the correct software to send email through web servers, it’s unreliable and considered bad practice to do so. This often leads to emails getting marked as spam, or simply never being delivered.

A dedicated email provider is recommended that will allow you to have custom branded email addresses and ensure deliverability. Inboxes like this typically start at $8 per inbox, per month — which you would pay directly to the service provider since they would also be providing the support. We recommend hosting your email with an cloud solution such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace.

If you need help getting something like this setup, please let us know!

No one can guarantee that a website will not be hacked. There is also no guarantee that everything will run smoothly 100% of the time. For example, a WordPress update could introduce bugs that negatively affect your site, or an update at the server level by the hosting provider (software or hardware) could cause some downtime.

What we can do is pick quality hosting, software, and technical expertise that will greatly reduce the chance of something bad happening. Performing regular maintenance as well as solid security practices will greatly minimizes your risk. Our Management Service Plans may not seem to be the cheapest option on the market but in the long term you will save money, time, and a lot of aggravation.

If your website goes down due to actions we have taken, we will find the cause, and if possible, fix what is needed. If a fix is not possible in a reasonable amount of time, we will restore a backup to return your website to it’s previous operating state. We would then inform you of what has happened and what the next steps should be.

If your website goes down due to actions on your part or by a third party you have hired, we can restore a backup to return your website to it’s previous operating state. If you want us to investigate and fix the issue, then you will be billed at our current hourly rate.

If you received an email about your website being hacked, please forward it to our support team so we can investigate.

In most cases these emails are sent by spammers or hackers to websites that are perfectly fine. These individuals are either “fishing” for more information about your website so they then can compromise it or are wishing to sell you extra services under false pretense.