As business owners, we spend a lot of money on the perfect website. If you are using WordPress, you find the best theme and plugins to make your site shine! Your site goes live, and your business is online.
Do you know what is going on behind the scenes with your website?
Here is the 3-2-1 Chaos Buster for this week.
My topic? CONTROLLING WORDPRESS CHAOS!
When I first started Olinda Services, I offered WordPress design. After developing a number of sites, I discovered that I was too much of a perfectionist with the website. Design tweaking became my enemy. I pivoted, and only manage the backend of WordPress sites. I love helping business owner develop their content, and I make sure their websites are free to chaos.
Napoleon Bonaparte said, “The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.”
Let us look at a few ways YOU can win when you control your WordPress chaos.
My Three Chaos Buster Thoughts
One.
Information: Information is vital to controlling your WordPress Chaos. Know your website information. WordPress i.e.
- URL: websitename.com/wp-admin
- Login: susieq2019
- Password: secret#001 – always make sure you have a unique and secure password
You also need to know your web hosting information. i.e.
- GoDaddy
- You will need your Login: Usually a customer number or email address
- Password
- Pin
If you do not know this information, accessing your site will be challenging.
Two.
Backups: Backups are essential to your website’s health and controlling your WordPress chaos —back up your database, plugins, themes, uploads, etc. There is nothing worse than having your site hacked and not having a backup. I had a client contact me YEARS after I did their website asking for the original code because hackers attacked their site, and they did not have a backup.
Three.
Update: Your website needs to be updated regularly. Depending on how frequently you publish content, it could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. I would not go longer than a quarter. Hackers love finding loopholes in themes and plugins.
My Two Chaos Buster Inspirations
One.
I have worked on controlling WordPress chaos for many years. In a past blog post, I wrote
“You Should NOT Use WordPress if you do not plan to invest either the time or money in the maintenance of your website. I highly recommend an HTML, Drupal, or another type of site if you are only doing an online brochure, and you want to set it and forget it.”
Two.
In the 2019 Website Threat Research Report by Sucuri, Estevao Avillez, the Senior Director of Security Engineering, noted,
Website attacks usually derive from a lack of knowledge or complete denial about the threat landscape, and the common mindset is: Attackers only target large corporations or famous websites. “I’m only a small website, so there’s no way I’m going to be a target. There’s nothing to worry about.
In reality, these assumptions couldn’t be farther from the truth. We analyze hundreds of emerging security incidents every day. One of the most common factors is the exploitation of known vulnerabilities in software applications and extensible components, which are typically identified and abused using automated attacks — and can impact a website regardless of its size, traffic volume, or the amount of monthly revenue it generates.“
One Action Item
Your WordPress site is not safe just because you are a small business owner. When I started my business website, I was hacked three times in the first year. Website security became very important to me quickly.
Manage your WordPress chaos by gathering your website information, if you have that, then move on to ensure your backups are in place.
I have a free resource for you.
I created an infographic to help you manage your WordPress chaos with ease. Click here for the free download.