Designers, website owners and agencies may be wondering what exactly do RocketWP to help? In this blog post we aim to show you what we do, how we do it and why you need to use our service.
New WordPress Sites
Once a designer or agency is using RocketWP we take care of optimising every site once the site goes live. Normally we get a message via our Slack channel (all our clients are members of our Slack Team) informing us that a new site has or is about to go live along with the domain name and the login details. That’s when we start working through our check list.
Install our plugins:
We install the following plugins:
- iThemes Security
- Imagify
- WP-Rocket
- Better Search Replace
- Postman SMTP
- iThemes Sync
Configure SSL
Next we install and configure an SSL certificate. If the customer is hosting on our Plesk Oynx servers then we will use the Let’s Encrypt extension to install an SSL for free.
We then enforce SSL connection for the front and back end. Using Better Search Replace we ensure that all URL’s within the database are set to https. We then check that there are no hard coded non SSL connections.
Optimise and compress Images
Using Imagify we configure the settings and then optimise all the images on the site. For any images not detected via the plugin we manually optimise and compress the images via the Imagify website.
Configure Postman SMTP
We use Postman SMTP and SendGrid to ensure that all the messages from the WordPress are sent and received as expected. Not only can we monitor the emails by viewing the Postman log, we can also view the messages via the SendGrid service.
Configure WP-Rocket
We configure WP-Rocket for caching and optimisation of the database. Optimisation is either set to run weekly. We also config the CDN if required.
Configure Security
iThemes security is configured to ensure the security of the site, brute force attack protection, hacker lists, System and WordPress Tweaks are all configured to ensure that the site is secured. We also enable re-Capture on all forms and logins.
Final Tidy Up
Once we are 100% confident that the site is working correctly we tidy up, we delete any plugins that are no longer being used, including Better Search Replace, delete any themes that are no longer be used.
We then carry out checks using GTMetrix and Pingdom tools to ensure the site is running as quick as it should do, we also pay attention to th waterfall to ensure that all the URL’s are correct – you’d be surprised how many links point back to the dev site.
Monitoring
The last stage is to add the site to our monitoring solution. We configure the monitoring service to check the site is up every 15 minutes, we set the PageSpeed test to check the site every hour and set a maximum time of 3 seconds, configure DNS checks to ensure A records do not get change and run a daily security scan.
We then add the site to the developer’s or agency’s status page to enable them to check our performance at any time.
Management
Now that the site is live the site is checked twice a day, every day of the week (including weekends) for updates. Any updates required are installed as soon as then next backup completes.
We use two methods of checking the site, hosted clients we use the Plesk WordPress Toolkit, non hosted sites we use iThemes Sync.
That all sounds great how do I sign up?
So now you know that all the management is being taken care of you or your team are now ready to start building the next great website for your client.
Ready to migrate your site, client base or setup new hosting with RocketWP? Check out our hosting plans and management plans using the link below or, for a more personal service then why not give us a buzz?
Find out more on our Management PlansExisting Sites being Migrated or Just Managed
For any existing site that we are migrating to our platform, remember this is a free service when you sign up, or we have been asked to purely manage an existing site on another providers servers we do exactly the same. The only difference will be with the SSL certificate, not every provider offers a free Let’s Encrypt certificate.
Questions?
We hope you can now see that the WordPress management service we offer can provide you with peace of mind that we do all we can to keep your site secure, up to date and online 24×7. However we may missed something that are particularly worried about or something we have not mentioned at all – don’t worry we are here to help just click the button below to find out how to contact us.
