Author: zerophoid

The Power of Dedicated WordPress Hosting: Unlocking the Benefits for Your Website

There are several benefits to having dedicated WordPress website hosting:

  1. Speed and Performance: Dedicated WordPress hosting provides faster website load times, as the hosting environment is optimized specifically for WordPress sites. This results in a better user experience and can improve your search engine rankings.
  2. Security: With dedicated hosting, your site is less vulnerable to security threats and hacking attempts. Dedicated WordPress hosting providers typically offer enhanced security features such as malware scanning, automatic backups, and regular software updates.
  3. Customization: With dedicated hosting, you have more control over your server environment, allowing you to customize your site’s settings and optimize its performance to meet your specific needs.
  4. Scalability: Dedicated WordPress hosting can easily accommodate high traffic spikes, ensuring that your site remains accessible and responsive even during peak periods.
  5. Technical Support: Dedicated WordPress hosting providers typically offer specialized technical support, with experts who are knowledgeable in WordPress-specific issues and can provide assistance quickly and efficiently.
  6. Backup and Recovery: Dedicated WordPress hosting providers often offer regular backups of your site’s data, which can be crucial in the event of a website crash or data loss.

Overall, dedicated WordPress hosting can provide improved website performance, security, customization, scalability, technical support, and backup and recovery options.

To run WordPress on a web hosting server, it is recommended to meet the following minimum server requirements:

  1. PHP version 7.4 or greater: WordPress recommends running the latest stable version of PHP for improved performance and security. We use PHP 8.0 as it’s a major update of the PHP language. It contains many new features and optimizations including named arguments, union types, attributes, constructor property promotion, match expression, nullsafe operator, JIT, and improvements in the type system, error handling, and consistency.
  2. MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.1 or greater: These are the two most commonly used database systems for WordPress, and the database stores all the content and settings of your website.
  3. HTTPS support: HTTPS is a secure protocol that encrypts data between the server and the user’s browser, and it is essential for securing your website.
  4. Apache or Nginx server: Apache and Nginx are the two most commonly used web servers for WordPress hosting. Apache is the most popular web server on the internet, while Nginx is known for its high-performance capabilities.
  5. Minimum disk space of 1GB: You will need enough disk space to store your WordPress files, themes, and plugins.

In addition to these requirements, our server configuration is optimized for WordPress. This includes caching mechanisms, PHP accelerators, and other optimizations that improve the performance and security of your website. We offer WordPress-specific hosting plans for Basic WordPress Website and WordPress E-commerce site that come preconfigured with these optimizations.

The Importance of Regular WordPress Maintenance for Your Website’s Success

WordPress has become one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world, with over 40% of all websites on the internet built on the platform. This has made WordPress maintenance more critical than ever before, as keeping a website running smoothly is crucial to the success of any online business.

Website maintenance is the process of keeping your website up-to-date, secure, and running at optimal levels. It is an essential part of managing a website, and it requires regular attention to ensure that everything is working correctly. In the case of WordPress, the maintenance process can be broken down into several key areas that need to be addressed regularly.

WordPress Backups

One of the most critical aspects of WordPress maintenance is taking regular backups of your website. Backups are essential because they provide a safety net in case of unforeseen events such as website crashes, hacking attempts, or even accidental data loss. Backups should be taken frequently, and stored securely to ensure that they can be easily accessed if needed.

WordPress Updates

WordPress is an open-source platform that is continually evolving, with regular updates that bring new features, security patches, and bug fixes. These updates need to be applied regularly to keep your website running smoothly and secure. Failing to update your WordPress site can lead to vulnerabilities and compromises that can affect your website’s performance, security, and search engine rankings.

WordPress Plugins and Themes

WordPress plugins and themes are essential to the functionality and appearance of your website. They can add new features, improve performance, and change the look and feel of your site. However, plugins and themes can also cause security vulnerabilities and conflicts that can damage your website if not updated regularly. Therefore, it is crucial to keep your plugins and themes up-to-date and only use reputable ones that have been thoroughly vetted for security issues.

WordPress Security

Website security is a top priority for any business that operates online, and WordPress is no exception. There are various steps that can be taken to improve the security of your WordPress site, including installing security plugins, using strong passwords, limiting login attempts, and implementing two-factor authentication. Regular security audits can also help identify any vulnerabilities in your site, allowing you to take corrective action before any issues arise.

WordPress Performance

Website performance is critical for user experience, search engine rankings, and overall success. There are many factors that can affect website performance, including page load times, image optimization, and server speed. Regular maintenance can help identify performance issues and allow you to take corrective action to optimize your website’s performance.

VIEW OUR WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE PACKAGES – Starting from €35pm for standard WordPress websites to €75pm for E-commerce WordPress websites

Why WordPress Maintenance is Important

Maintaining your WordPress site is essential for several reasons. Firstly, it ensures that your website is secure and less susceptible to hacking attempts, malware infections, and other security threats. Secondly, regular updates and maintenance keep your website running smoothly, ensuring that visitors can access your content quickly and easily. Finally, maintenance is essential for SEO, as search engines reward websites that are up-to-date, secure, and fast.

Hiring a WordPress Maintenance Service

While many business owners may be capable of performing basic maintenance tasks on their WordPress sites, more complex tasks require an expert’s touch. A WordPress maintenance service can help manage your website’s updates, backups, security, and performance, allowing you to focus on running your business. A maintenance service can also provide regular reports on your website’s performance, highlighting any issues that need to be addressed.

Conclusion

Maintaining a WordPress website is an ongoing process that requires regular attention to ensure that it is secure, up-to-date, and running smoothly. By addressing the key areas of backups, updates, plugins and themes, security, and performance, you can ensure that your website is optimized for both users and search engines. Hiring a WordPress maintenance service can be an excellent way to manage the ongoing maintenance of your website, ensuring that it is always up-to-date and

WordPress vs Joomla

What’s the 7 differences between Joomla and WordPress

Joomla and WordPress are both popular Content Management Systems (CMS) used to create websites, but they have some key differences:

  1. User base: WordPress has a larger user base and is generally considered easier to use.
  2. Customization: Joomla is more complex and has more advanced customization options, but WordPress is more user-friendly and easier to customize.
  3. Plugins: WordPress has a larger library of plugins and more extensive documentation, making it easier to extend its functionality.
  4. Security: Both Joomla and WordPress are secure, but WordPress is generally considered more secure due to its frequent security updates and active development community.
  5. Performance: WordPress is generally faster and more optimized for performance.
  6. E-commerce: WordPress has more e-commerce options, including better payment gateway support.
  7. Community: WordPress has a larger and more active community, providing more support and resources.

Joomla Explained

Joomla is an open-source content management system (CMS) used to build websites and manage web content. It provides a range of features, including templates, extensions, modules, and components, allowing users to create custom websites without coding knowledge. Joomla is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database for storing data.

WordPress Explained

WordPress is a popular, open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. It provides a platform for users to create and manage websites without needing advanced technical skills, through a user-friendly interface and customizable themes and plugins. It powers over 40% of all websites on the internet and is used for a variety of purposes including blogging, e-commerce, portfolios, and business websites.

Creating a Responsive Design for Your WordPress Website

WordPress Responsive Design is a design approach that allows a website to adapt to the size of the user’s device, whether it be a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. It uses a combination of flexible grids and layouts, images, and intelligent use of CSS media queries to create a website that is optimized for the device it is being viewed on. This approach ensures that the website looks great and functions properly on any device, providing a great user experience.

Key Points for WordPress Responsive Design:

  • Use flexible grids and layouts to create a website that is optimized for the device it is being viewed on.
  • Utilize images and CSS media queries to ensure the website looks great and functions properly on any device.
  • Implement a mobile-first design approach to ensure the website is optimized for mobile devices.
  • Test the website on multiple devices to ensure it looks and functions properly.

Hundreds of GoDaddy-hosted sites backdoored in a single day

In my opinion, hosting on big platforms like GoDaddy with all the features they showcase, but cost per application to use is pointless. Most website owners or developers think you’re secure by using the free Wordfence versions! 

We provide our managed dedicated servers in South Africa Xneelo and European server Hetzner to manage our client. All clients hosted on our servers @ €5.50 monthly includes updating theme, plugins, and core framework to the latest version of WordPress. We install Akeeba Backup and Akeeba admin Pro on all sites hosted and on a monthly bases as part of your hosting cost. In addition, we backup the sites to our external cloud servers.

View our WordPress Maintenace option or Hosted solution


Internet security analysts have spotted a spike in backdoor infections on WordPress websites hosted on GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress service, all featuring an identical backdoor payload.

The case affects internet service resellers such as MediaTemple, tsoHost, 123Reg, Domain Factory, Heart Internet, and Host Europe Managed WordPress.

The discovery comes from Wordfence, whose team first observed the malicious activity on March 11, 2022, with 298 websites infected by the backdoor within 24 hours, 281 of which were hosted on GoDaddy.

backdoor infecting all sites
Backdoor infections monitor (Wordfence)

Old template spammer

The backdoor infecting all sites is a 2015 Google search SEO-poisoning tool implanted on the wp-config.php to fetch spam link templates from the C2 that are used to inject malicious pages into search results.

The campaign uses predominately pharmaceutical spam templates, served to visitors of the compromised websites instead of the actual content.

The goal of these templates is likely to entice the victims to make purchases of fake products, losing money and payment details to the threat actors.

Additionally, the actors can harm a website’s reputation by altering its content and making the breach evident, but this doesn’t seem to be the actors’ aim at this time.

This type of attack is harder to detect and stop from the user’s side due to this taking place on the server and not on the browser, and as such, local internet security tools won’t detect anything suspicious.

Supply chain attack?

The intrusion vector hasn’t been determined, so while this looks suspiciously close to a supply chain attack, it hasn’t been confirmed.

Bleeping Computer has contacted GoDaddy to find out more about this possibility, but we have not heard back yet.

Notably, GoDaddy disclosed a data breach in November 2021 that affected 1.2 million customers and multiple Managed WordPress service resellers, including the six mentioned in the introduction.

That breach involved unauthorized access to the system that provisions the company’s Managed WordPress sites. As such, it’s not far-fetched to suggest that the two occurrences might be linked.

In any case, if your website is hosted on GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress platform, make sure to scan your wp-config.php file to locate potential backdoor injections.

spam search engine results
What the injected encoded backdoor looks like (Wordfence)

Wordfence also reminds admins that while removing the backdoor should be the first step, removing spam search engine results should also be a priority.

Looking Global – we have WordPress Updates South Africa – https://www.wordpressupdates.co.za, WordPress Updates Ireland – https://wordpressupdates.ie and Global WordPress Updates – https://wordpressupdates.com

Links to article:

Wordpress Updates South Africa

Origional article – click here

WordPress Basics

Featured image size

A good starting point for your WordPress featured image size is 1200 x 628 pixels. These dimensions tend to work well across WordPress themes and page layouts, and also look good when shared on social media feeds

WordPress Featured Image Size
1200 x 628 pixels

A featured image visually represents a post or page on your WordPress website. Featured images usually appear on your website at the top of posts. They also appear when you share your posts outside of your WordPress site, like on social media or news websites. The purpose of the featured image is to draw readers to your content and signal what your posts are about and reinforce your site’s tone and branding.

Metadata

Metadata isn’t important to the average person. This is despite the fact that the average person takes photos on their phone and uploads them online. The metadata on these photos contains the exact location the photo was taken. It’s a captured automatically and no one really thinks twice

image metadata
Protect your images

WooCommerce

Category image size

A minimum WooCommerce image size of 800 to 1000 pixels is recommended for standard products. If you have more complicated and detailed products, a larger image (e.g., 2000 pixels and above) will let customers zoom in to see the item’s details. So if you choose 800 then make it square 800px x 800px

G&M Joyce Construction Ltd

Mayo Construction needed

G&M Joyce Construction Ltd. is based in Westport, Co Mayo. Set up in 1996 the company provides a wide range of general construction services including bespoke housing construction, farm maintenance, groundworks and landscaping.

Started carrying out ground works for estate houses and commenced private house development.

In 1996 we started our own construction company, G&M Joyce Construction LTD and started specialising in building one off houses.  We are a small Company that gives personal attention to each customer and over the last 25 years we have developed our expertise in this area.


We have also branched out into landscaping groudworks,  patio, decking and fencing and continue to provide farming works including land reclaimation, hedge trimming and construction of farm buildings.

If you need help to build a house, we can help you 

  • New Builds
  • Foundations
  • Ground Work
  • Farm Buildings

Click here to contact us 

Transferring Your Wix Domain Away from Wix

If you have purchased a domain from Wix, you can later transfer it to another domain host. 

To transfer your Wix domain away from Wix:

  1. Go to the Domains page.
  2. Click the Show More icon  next to the relevant domain and select Transfer Away from Wix.
To transfer your Wix domain away from Wix
  1. Click Transfer Domain.
  2. Click I Still Want to Transfer

Next steps:

  • As soon as you click I Still Want to Transfer, we’ll send a transfer authorization code (EPP code) to your domain’s registrant contact email address
  • Once you get the code, follow the instructions from your new domain provider to transfer your domain. 
  • It can take up to 7 days for the transfer to complete.

In accordance with ICANN rules:

  • You cannot transfer a domain within 60 days of purchase.
  • Changing your registrant contact information locks your domain from transfer for 60 days.
  • Transferring your domain locks it from being able to transfer again for 60 days. 

Net zero emission

We wanna do our part in taking onboard Net Zero Emission companies so that we can help give our future generations with an earth they can be proud of.

#Netzeroemission: Net zero emission means that all man-​made greenhouse gas emissions must be removed from the atmosphere through reduction measures, thus reducing the Earth’s net climate balance, after removal via natural and artificial sink, to zero. This way humankind would be carbon neutral and global temperature would stabilise.

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WordPress Update Services is owned by Zerophoid and provides WordPress Services in Ireland and Europe.

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