Website management – DYI

Thank you for working with us at ActionSkills on your website.

You now need to maintain and look after your WordPress website, like any other tech or software.

It is cheaper and easier to maintain a WordPress website than fix, repair,r troubleshootor risk being hacked.

Site performance and security is at its best when you regularly monitor and update it. Things can break and go south if your site is unmaintained.

Below is some information on how to DIY this maintenance and is a guide you can refer back to at any time.

We also offer Care Plans if you’d like us to manage all of this for you.

Ongoing Support

You can ask us for help anytime via email or schedule a zoom on our contact page.

ActionSkills provides ongoing Ad Hoc support. This means you simply contact us if you need a hand and we then invoice you for the time. Please note it is more efficient to do multiple tasks at once.

ActionSkills does not offer ‘emergency’ after hours support because your host does this for most tech related issues. The cost of ActionSkills providing emergency support systems is far too expensive for our clients to afford. We will of course prioritise you and help you out of an emergency wherever possible.

Managed websites and CarePlans

Being on a plan means your site will continue to ‘just work’ and do what you need it to do, giving you more time to focus on updating the content. We mange all the details below for you.

This process advises ActionSkills of any errors which will then get fixed. If a specific issue is complex or time consuming, ActionSkills will roll back the site to a previous backup and advise you.

You will still need to regularly test the website, particularly on Call to Actions such as contact forms and donation forms to make sure they are functioning correctly. There are many factors that may break functionality..

For more information see our Managed website hosting and CarePlans

Managing your WordPress yourself

Software Updates

Plugins, themes and software need to be updated regularly. We recommend updating them weekly because this allows you to catch things quickly before they become an issue.

Option1: You may manually update these by logging into your WordPress weekly (recommended).

• Guide to updating WordPress
• Guide to updating WordPress Plugins

Option 2 : Configure automatic upgrades on your host using Cpanel WordPress Toolkit. 

Option 3: Enable Automatic Updates via WordPress

BackUps

Updraft Plus
ActionSkills has installed a backup plugin called Updraft plus for manual backups. These are saved to your website itself. They can also be downloaded to your local computer or configured to send a copy elsewhere such as your Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS S3 or other services. How to use updraft plus

Host Backups
Your host will provide you with daily, weekly and monthly backups. We recommend you familiarise yourself with how to access these and how to restore a backup. Contact your host for more information.

Security
ActionSkills has applied our security setup to all sites we publish using the All in one Security plugin and other measures. Do not edit the settings unless you understand them because it can cause issues and unnecessary risks.

ActionSkills review and improve our security setup all the time to make sure it’s up-to-date and that we are using and recommending good-practice security methods and set ups. If you are not on a care plan, we recommend booking your site in for an annual security review with us.

Trouble shooting

If your site disappears or won’t connect

This is likely a hosting issue. Contact your host for tech support. We recommend that you audit your host’s services to ensure they provide the level of support you expect and that you understand how to contact them in an emergency using phone, email or ticketing systems.

If your site breaks

Clear the cache as this is the most common issue. The cache is there to speed up your website.
How to Clear Your Cache in WordPress

If you upgraded recently, you could have a plugin and/or theme conflict. You can try switching off plugins to try and isolate the issue. Disabling a plugin will not delete the settings. Best practice plugins will delete data and settings only when the plugin is deleted.

Are you unable to login?

In this case you will need to disable plugins manually using the ‘File manager’ in Cpanel until you can restore the WordPress admin login page.
Disabling A Plugin With FTP Or File Manager

Plugin or theme breaking your site?

If you work out which plugin is breaking your site, you can try re-installing it in case it did not update correctly. If a fresh install still breaks the site, do a Google search to see if you can find out why. You may consider running an old version until the plugin is updated again.

Website Hacked?

This is unlikely if you keep your software regularly updated and ensure everyone who can access the site uses strong passwords. Smart password management

1. Rollback (restore) to previous version using Updraft Plus in WordPress
2. If that fails or you cannot access the WordPress dashboard, rollback using the backup system provided by your host.
3. If that fails, contact your host for help
4. Login and upgrade WordPress, plugins and themes
5. Change all the WordPress user passwords
6. Send ActionSkills the updated password
7. If you are still stuck, get in touch and we can help you with this.

Monitoring

You may also want to set up a third party monitoring service to check up on your hosting. These services check your website and email or sms you if your site goes down. A lot of hosts will not advise you if your site goes down for a short time so it is a good idea to keep an eye on their reliability, and sign up for their server notifications.

Example free monitors:
uptimerobot.com