Care plans for WordPress from Kerri Marvel Services
The only way to protect your website, and by extention, you, affordably, is to keep your website updated (all parts of it), run malware scans to keep up to date on brewing problems, and have complete, error-free, daily backups available to you ‘just in case’. Your other option is to hire someone like Mark Wahlberg’s character in the movie Date Night.
The statistics and numbers of how many hacksters and fraudsters are out there, and what they are doing, is frightening. They think of new stuff to try every week. Here are a few examples of what they’re attempting:
- Copying entire contents of your website – Fake or fraudulent sites can use the stolen content to appear legitimate and trick visitors. Be monetized to sell drugs or worse, under your name.
- Data harvesting / Crypto Mining — Harvest specific data such as personal, financial, and contact information.
- Price scraping — Product prices can be stolen from eCommerce websites to be used by companies to undercut competitors.
- Brute-force logins and credential stuffing — Malicious bots interact with pages containing login forms attempting to gain access to sites by trying out different username and password combinations, to leave malware on your site, to install code to redirect traffic from your site to another, and other nefarious crimes.
- Digital ad fraud — By gaining control over your pay-per-click (PPP) advertising system, hackers can earn from fraudulent clicks.
- Spam — Using forms and buttons on websites and social media pages to leave phony comments or false product reviews to damage your reputation.
- Distributed denial-of-service attacks — Overwhelming your website’s server uses up the allotted resources, and then websites become inaccessible to legitimate users.
- And so much more.
All these potential problems can be answered by having a Care Plan in place. See Care Plan pricing options below.
Keeping your website safe
You’ve made a big investment in creating your website. Now you need to take care of it. Websites can’t just be created, and left to run indefinitely by themselves. Websites are very much like taking care of a house or your car. Both need maintenance. Think about how many times your cell phone carrier forces hardware and software updates! Care Plans give you peace of mind that in the event of a hack, or a mess-up, your website will be back up with a phone call to me.
Your Website Care Plan Questions – Answered!
Back-ups
Most website owners plan to run back-ups of their site, some actually do learn how, and some actually run back-ups. But most people do not back up consistently enough. And then they get in trouble. I run daily backups, backing up your content files, and the database, and store them away from your website’s server.
Updates
But there is more to it than having someone help you get a compromised website back into place. Did you know your website requires updates, all throughout the year? Updates come out for WordPress’ core software periodically (every month or two). Plus there are your plugins – these are small software applications that add functionality to your site. Every website is different, and may have a different group of plugins; all these need periodic updates as well. Just like your smartphone. Updates, of various types, can easily occur weekly.
Maintenance
In addition to backing up your site, and storing them in a secure location, and keeping your site up-to-date, my Care Plan will run monthly maintenance for you. This includes elements such as: malware security scans, database optimization (keeps your website running smoothly), removal of spam (if applicable), and may include broken link scans and uptime monitoring.
Reporting
All KMS Care Plans include an emailed summary report, annually, unless requested otherwise. All care plans require monthly automated credit card payments (or checks for annual payments).
Your Website Care Plan Questions – Answered!
Explanation of Care Plan Services
- Weekly updates to WordPress core and plugin files – to ensure full functionality at all times, but the most important reason for this is if these files are not updated (pretty much immediately), your website becomes vulnerable to attack. If an update breaks something on your website, I will work to resolve the issue. Theme updates are done as needed.
- Full Backups (stored offsite) – Content Files and Database
- Daily security scans keep watch over your site’s safety with malware scans
- Weekly database optimization keeps your website running fast and clean
- Removal of spam comments (if applicable) – also keeps your site running quickly
- Care Plan reporting so you can be comfortable that I’m doing what I say to keep your site safe – annually unless otherwise requested
- MOST IMPORTANTLY, Restoration of your site, performed by me – in an emergency (and I will contact your hosting company if needed)
Note that New client website launches all receive one month of “Essentials” Care Plan services for FREE to evaluate the service.
Additional Features included in the Superior and Supreme Care Plans
- Broken Link Scan – pinpoints problems sitewide so broken links can be fixed
- Up-time monitoring – I’m notified and can investigate any prolonged or repeated instances, and take corrective action.
- The “Website Support” – Some consider this the best feature in the 30+ and 60+ plans! This is support time each month that I can spend on your site, doing whatever you need, such as changes or updates to design, navigation, plug-ins, and content (text, images, galleries, slideshows, products, etc.).
- Rollover of Minutes: You can roll over unused minutes from month to month, but they must be used within 90 days. Extra time spent over your allotted minutes will be billed to you at my normal hourly rate.
How to Sign up for a Care Plan
Simply call me with your credit card number, which Care Plan, and whether you’d like to be set up for monthly, quarterly or annual payment. No contract needed at this time.
Still have questions?
You will find more information in my Website Care Plan FAQs.
Think you want to Do-It-Yourself? Sure, you can, but it’s a lot of work and you may want to leave it to a professional who knows what they’re looking at. I wrote a blog post to give you an idea of what’s involved. Read Securing WordPress Websites for the DIY Person. I’ll still be here to help, although my hourly rates will apply.
Still wondering what’s in it for you? Have a look at my article, Why You Should Invest in a WordPress Care Plan.
While what I offer to you are just tools to keep your site safe, they are proven to be vastly effective. Note that I can’t guarantee this will keep your site malware or hack-free, but I do know these care plans will significantly lessen the odds that your site will be a victim of internet hacking. If your website does have issues, I can restore it from back-ups at no additional cost.
