Looking after your site
Do you actually need a new website?
It’s very common for organisations to feel uncertain about what their website needs, or even whether it needs anything at all. Some people come to me with an existing site that feels fragile, outdated, or difficult to manage. Others don’t have a website yet and are trying to work out what is genuinely necessary, and…
Read MoreHow to Make Sticky Posts in WordPress
Sticky Posts Did you know that WordPress allows you to feature a post by using ‘sticky posts’, one of the least known features of WordPress, though it is a standard part of the posting process? This is a feature that places a chosen post at the top of your blog, keeping it there for as…
Read MoreSSL Certificate And Why Your Website Needs One
An SSL Certificate is a digital certificate providing authentication for a website, enabling an encrypted connection. In plain English, this means that any data (messages, login details, payment card details) are encoded so that a hacker can’t intercept them when they’re passed from your device to the website. The authentication process is often described as…
Read MoreHow to check your WordPress site for plugin conflicts
So there you are one day trying to add your latest funky photo to your beautiful new WordPress website, and something weird’s happened. Try checking for plugin conflicts as your first step to fixing any odd problem on your site.
Read MoreI deleted a blog post accidentally – how do I get it back?
One of the things I like best about WordPress is that it’s actually quite hard to make a total mess of things. Every change you do to a post or page is stored so you can easily go back to previous revisions, but did you know that it also uses a recycle bin? If you…
Read MoreIs there a quick way to speed my site up?
Site speed ups can be very complicated and involve a lot of tweaking, but if your site is loading really slowly have a look at the filesizes of the images on your pages. A large filesize will slow your site down considerably, particularly on mobiles which have restricted bandwidth. You should be aiming for images…
Read MoreDo I really need a firewall and anti-virus on my WordPress website?
Yes, you do, particularly if you’re using cloud hosting (which most of us do) rather than your own servers or virtual private servers (VPS). Most hosts provide some sort of firewall protection, but on cloud hosting the firewall runs around the cloud space, rather than around your individual website. That means that if any one…
Read MoreIf you put a post on your website as a blog page can you alter it at a later date to turn it into an actual page?
Yes, you can. You can either copy all of the content from the Post and paste it into a new Page, or you can use a plugin. Try something like ‘Convert post types’, though I have to admit to never having used that myself so do let me know if it works.
Read MoreHow do I know which bits of my WordPress site to test after an update?
The importance of testing your WordPress website If you’ve updated your WP version recently you’ll be familiar with the success screen – “Welcome to WordPress vx.x.x”. Of course, that only means that the new version has been installed correctly on your site – it doesn’t actually mean that your site is still working as it…
Read MoreHow I Answered the Call – Help! My Website is Losing Sales and I Don’t Know Why
Freddie Matthews of Hanging by a Fred had found out that she wasn’t getting notifications from her contact form on her website and she’d lost at least 30 sales because of it. She’d already contacted two WordPress developers and neither of them could find the problem, so I offered to help.
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