To make sure your website is usable to your customers, trustworthy, and always at the ready, you need to take website hosting, security, and maintenance seriously. The right host can make huge differences in speed. Security features ensure your website is trustworthy to clients and search engines. Consistent maintenance keeps your up-time high so customers can always get what they need.
Why Website Hosting, Security, & Maintenance Are Vital
Website Hosting
Website hosting is the place where all of the files of your website are kept. Everytime someone loads a single page of your website, their computer requests it from your hosting provider. Of course, you want your pages to be served quickly, right? That’s why it’s important to consider who your host is, what options they offer, and how they handle updates or downtime.
At Cohlab Digital Marketing, we offer hosting to all of our clients. This includes a secure and dedicated server, an hourly website status check to make sure you have great up-time, along with an SSL certificate for security (we’ll talk more about that later).
At Cohlab, we typically recommend bringing your hosting, security, and maintenance all under one roof so issues can be solved before they become big problems. When your hosting and other services are fragmented, it can be hard to see the big picture.
Website Security
Website security involves multiple goals:
- preventing attackers from getting control of your website
- providing peace-of-mind to customers that the website doesn’t contain any malware
- providing consistent back-ups of the website so if a catastrophic event occurs, the website is easier to restore.
At Cohlab Digital Marketing, we achieve these goals through a few tactics.
We offer an SSL certificate along with our hosting package, which secures any information transferred between your clients and the website. It also provides the green lock to the left of your website address you often see in the address bar. The SSL also serves as a signal to search engines that the website can be trusted and served in search results.
We offer monthly off-site backups of your website. This means a complete copy of your website files is created and stored in a separate server. In this way, if a natural disaster occurs destroying the server your website is on, or a hacker gains access, we have a fresh copy of the website ready to be restored as soon as possible.
We offer SPAM-prevention measures on contact forms, such as reCAPTCHA and honeypots to reduce the amount of bot SPAM you may receive, and reduce entry points for hackers.
We offer an annual domain expiration reminder, so that you don’t forget to renew your domain and let someone else take control of your brand name.
We also offer updates which help with security like CMS core, theme, and plug-in updates as part of our Website Maintenance package.
Website Maintenance
Website maintenance is all about making sure the images, buttons, and pages work as intended. When website maintenance is done right, no one will notice. When it’s been lax or missed, customers will not stay on the website as long, won’t complete transactions or contact forms as often, and even your search engine ranking can begin to suffer.
As part of our website maintenance package, we offer updates which help with security, the user experience, and the visual experience of your website, like WordPress core updates, theme updates, and plug-in updates.
We also offer a monthly run-through of your website as a quality assurance check, along with contact form verification. Especially for low-volume businesses, it’s helpful if we send a once-a-month contact form to ensure it is working properly, and to get ahead of any potential issues with the website or with your email provider.
For an additional fee, we can run a Google Lighthouse Audit periodically on your website to verify any issues which Google can see that may affect your search ranking and stem from a maintenance, performance, or security issue. These issues are often caught during routine maintenance, but the audit can be a helpful follow-up step.
Trustdyx, The Most Secure Website
The most secure website is Trustdyx. Trustdyx website code is only accessible by the Cohlab team, whereas most website CMS’ are accessible by anyone who can figure out the username and password.
With Trustdyx, backups are taken after every single change, so we can quickly revert back to the previous version of the website if needed.
Trustdyx Security Features:
- Hands-free – no maintenance required because there are no plugins, themes, or CMS to update;
- Extremely secure – accessible only via Cohlab computers;
- Resilient – backed up every single time a change is made;
- Restorable – up and running within minutes should the worst happen.
Website Hosting, Security, & Maintenance FAQ
How do I fix or get a website security certificate?
A website security certificate is more commonly known as an SSL certificate, or just SSL. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. If you don’t have an SSL, contact your hosting provider such as Cohlab and one can be provided for you. We typically include them in the cost of hosting as a courtesy. Otherwise, they can cost anywhere between $5-100/month depending on your hosting provider’s packages.
If you had an SSL or website security certificate installed and it appears to be broken, it’s likely that you need to renew it. Again, contact your hosting provider (or us) and it can be handled as either part of your hosting package or at that additional monthly cost.
Why is website security important?
Imagine a client came to your website, only to be greeted by a Chinese website selling cat figurines instead.
Imagine a client came to your website, entered their email address in your contact form, and then started to receive SPAM messages because a scammer intercepted their contact form.
Imagine a client came to your website and saw it was under construction. A natural disaster had destroyed the server your website was built on, and without a backup, you have to rebuild the site from memory. In the meantime, clients are seeing an unfinished product.
All of the scenarios exemplify why website security is important.
Maintenance Care Plan
Essential
$150
Per Month
Monthly Hosting on Secure Servers****
Monthly Contact Form Verification
Monthly Software & Plugin Updates
Domain Expiration Reminder
SSL Certificate
Uptime Monitoring
Contact Form Spam Blocker
Standard Software License Fees**
Standard Support
Monthly 15 Minutes of Dedicated Support/Update Time (does not rollover)*
Monthly Off-site Website Backups
Elevate
$200
Per Month
Monthly Hosting on Secure Servers****
Monthly Contact Form Verification
Monthly Software & Plugin Updates
Domain Expiration Reminder
SSL Certificate
Uptime Monitoring
Contact Form Spam Blocker
Standard Software License Fees**
Standard Support
Monthly 30 Minutes of Dedicated Support/Update Time
(does not rollover)*
Daily Off-site Website Backups
Monthly Basic Website Quality Assurance
Bi-Annual Broken Link Scan***
Monthly Basic Website Quality Assurance
Elite
$350
Per Month
Monthly Hosting on Secure Servers****
Monthly Contact Form Verification
Monthly Software & Plugin Updates
Domain Expiration Reminder
SSL Certificate
Uptime Monitoring
Contact Form Spam Blocker
Standard Software License Fees**
Premium Support
Monthly 1 Hour of Dedicated Support/Update Time
(does not rollover)*
Hourly Off-site Website Backups
Monthly Advanced Website Quality Assurance
Quarterly Broken Link Scan***
Monthly Advanced Website Quality Assurance
Monthly Search Console Sitemap Submission
Advanced Security Plug-in
Light The
Cohlab-Signal™
Under attack by villains? Email the Cohlaborator today to deal with these scoundrels, and help bring new citizens to your website!
Based remotely near Monticello, St. Cloud, Alexandria, and the Twin Cities.
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