As a business owner, you get to know a little bit about everything and if you have a WordPress website, this is the bit you need to know!
***Note: some of these links are affiliate links. We recommend these products but if you purchase off our link, we get a small kick back from the sale. Thanks for helping support our content!***
We made Matthew Baya, our web host at Svaha.com, come on against his will as a guest presenter to talk about all things WordPress. A brief summary of our discussion:
1) Keep your software up-to-date monthly. And if you don’t want to, pay us $25 to do it.
2) Back up regularly and also understand your web host’s backup policy. (May we recommend Svaha? Level 2 will work for most people watching this) We love Backup Buddy as a backup plugin ($99/year) if you aren’t hosted on Svaha.
3) Install a security plugin (we recommend iThemes Security (the free version is fine but if you want the fancier paid one) and Sucuri.
4) Make sure you can access your website on the file (FTP) level or at the hosting level so you can troubleshoot more deeply if needed. If something goes *poof when you update, it is likely a plugin conflict.
5) If you’re not sure, if you use a premium theme or plugin, typically part of what you pay for is ticketed support troubleshooting issues and/or documentation (written or video) about how to use it. In terms of a paid plugin we like, Gravity Forms is an amazing form software that is totally worth the price.
For a premium theme, we like Divi.
6) WordPress does a lot… and might have too steep a learning curve if you want to have more of an informational/brochure website. But if you do want to do more and more with your site over time (host a podcast, pull in a real estate data feed every two hours, sell your online courses, etc.), then check out WordPress.org as a solution. (WordPress.com is the commercial arm of WordPress and it’s a little confusing. We did a broadcast about the differences between the two flavors of this software)
We love talking to Matt because, even though he’s one of the smartest people I know, he’s really down to earth, easy to work with, and really gets small business owners. If you have additional WordPress and/or web hosting questions, leave them as a comment and we can make Matt come back again on a live stream against his will. 😉