Inbound Marketing | SEO | Responsive Website Design | Digital Consultant Omaha

On-Q Marketing helps businesses get found in a Search when their prospects are looking for what they do. Once the lead is captured, Inbound Marketing tactics are needed to qualify, nurture, and convert the suspect to a prospect, and then into a customer are used.

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WordPress 5.0 – Gutenberg. Why You Need to Update Your Website

Gutenberg or the next version of WordPress is coming within the next few months. The new features will be amazing. The biggest change will be to the visual editor and how it works and appears.

WordPress Gutenberg
Credit: WordPress Gutenberg by Automatic (screen capture)

I think most Content Creators using WordPress will like the enhancements.  I tried out a version of Gutenberg last fall on some test sites to see how it would work.

While I could play around with the new editor, it basically did not work with the themes and some plugins I was using.  That is totally understandable, since theme and plugin developers had yet to write code updates to meet the new WordPress requirements.

Which brings me to why I wrote this post…

The Need to Update Your Website’s Theme and Plugins on a regular basis.

Theme Developers and Plugin Developers will constantly update their code based on security, new features and WordPress core updates. This keeps your site functioning well and less capable of being hacked into.

If you are not already under my WordPress Freedom™ program, you may wish to check it out. I can take the worry out of your business operations regarding your website.

You can also continue as you are, and if you are disciplined to do monthly backups and updates, Great, continue to do so.

If you have not performed any updates in a while, get to it ASAP. I cannot stress it enough how important it is that you update your website and have backups of your site when it works to fall back on. I always backup first then do an update. I do them one at a time in case something breaks, I can recover easier and find a new plugin to do the same thing.

When Gutenberg Hits

I will send out another email to let you know when this update is launched as many websites have WordPress automatically update itself.  Websites that are on managed WordPress hosting sites like Flywheel, do not have anything to be too concerned, as the managed website hosting partners test the update before installing it on their servers and your site. STILL, you need to have the other elements – THEMES and PLUGINS – updated.

You can check out your site to make sure it is still working.  If not, you should be able to roll back the WordPress Install to version 4.9.5 (the current version as of 4.8.2018) and then figure out what needs to be updated to restored your site.

Those clients on using my WordPress Freedom program will not have to worry, as I will take care of everything to make sure this will be a smooth transition. The only caveat here is if you have a custom coded theme, and I am informing those client that do as it may be a time for a website refresh with a new theme.

Abandoned Plugins / Out-of-Date Themes

Sometimes plugins are abandoned by their developers.  They have not done any updates in years.  This can pose a serious risk for security reasons and also functionality with a new version of WordPress. I do monitor this for my program clients and will replace these plugins with new ones that perform a similar function.

Out-of-Date Themes are another issue. Some clients I work with had different creatives developed their site. Those sites may have themes installed they used, that may not have the current version installed.  This typically happens when the theme is installed and the user account information is not added to the theme settings to allow for updates. I have see that too on current active clients and I will let them know they may need to buy the theme so they can have the user credentials under their digital assets.  Or maybe they can contact the original developer to see if they can obtain those credentials.

In either case of abandoned plugins or out-of-date themes, business owners need to get these issues address before the update as well.  Once the WordPress update hits, your site may break.

Questions

Be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions.  Call me at 402-953-2340 or use the CONTACT form.

Again, clients under my WordPress Freedom program do not have to be concerned as you will take priority when it comes to any impact on the next version of WordPress, the Gutenberg update. Also Clients using website tools that are not on WordPress, do not have to be concerned; like SquareSpace or Drupal.

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“WARNING: This Site May Be Hacked”

Recently I was asked to help a local business clean up their website as Google had flagged it as a HACKED website.  Perhaps when you have Googled a search term and the organic results came back and one of the results was a site you want to see, but you saw the warning, “This site may be hacked.” You obviously didn’t click it.

You wouldn’t know what the problem might be. You would not want to take a chance that some malware or spyware being downloaded to your computer.
Goolge SERP result with HACKING FlagObviously this type of warning is something serious for any business.  Let’s face it most businesses would not have any idea on how to clean this situation up and it does hurt ranking and clicks.

This was my third case like this and fortunately, the only harm done was the loading of thousands of pages with links and hundreds of Google Webmasters Tools keys onto their server.

How did this site get hacked?

That is a question they all asked,  In all three cases, the business was using WordPress as the website development tool. WordPress is now used on more than 30% of all websites in the world and hackers know this and they know how to get to the dashboard login screen.

Most people when the set up a WordPress website they leave the first user name that is created – “admin” – as their user name. A very bad idea as hackers know this too. They send out their little robots (most often) to hammer passwords until they break into your site through your own dashboard.

As I laid out in my post on WordPress Security you need to create a new Administrative user account for yourself and not use “admin” as the name.  Do something more cryptic and don’t use your regular name.  Put some numbers in the user name, as hyphen or asterisk help as well.

Keeping WordPress Up to Date

Woirdpress logoThen you need to keep WordPress up to date.  In all the cases I have worked on, the other backdoor is out of date plugins, themes or even WordPress itself. As a business owner, you need to either update these items on a regular basis or appoint someone on your team to do so.  Just go out to your website’s dashboard and look for the UPDATES on the dashboard home page.

Add Security to Your WordPress Website

There are a number of plugins available that will add some level of security for you.  I detailed several in my WordPress Security post. They are designed to:

  1. Stop the front door attacks.
  2. Hide your true user name from the world.  Just scroll over my name with your mouse and see what shows up in the lower left hand corner of your screen. Try that on your blog.  Hint: whatever you see is not my real user name, the plugin I use scrambles it.
  3. Get alerts for out of date WordPress elements; plugins, themes, and WordPress itself.

Before you go ahead and do any updating, be sure you have backed up your site. Sometimes updates can play bad tricks on your site, especially if you hired someone to do your site and they performed some custom coding to the base code.  Something I avoid for this very reason.

And do use a strong password of 11 or more characters.  Avoid Pa$$w0rd.  Even I could guess that one.  No names, anything that someone could guess by Googling you.

What do hackers put on your website

Fortunately for the three clients I have worked with, it was rather harmless and I was able to get the flag removed from their sites within 24-48 hours. I say “harmless” as all the hackers did was add thousands of pages with links to other websites; the most recently client had more than 100,000 pages and 100 Google Webmasters Tools keys on their server. This is an old SEO tactic that Google and other Search Engines have discounted.  No longer it is the number of links leading to your website, rather the quality and relationship of the link to your business.

Hackers could also load malware or spyware that can download on the computer of a visitor’s computer to your website, which would be very bad for them and yourself as well.  It can happen to anyone that is why I have a couple pieces of software that I have purchased to protect my system and even then, nothing is 100%.  I do have say, these little gems did block the website when I first went to it.

Been Hacked?  Your Next Steps

Contact someone you know that can help you clean up your website and server. If you don’t know of anyone, give me a call at 402-953-2340 or fill out the contact form and I will be in touch soon.

Hope this has been helpful.  Have a Question or just want to comment, leave one below.  Thanks.

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