More than website hosting

Hosting your website isn’t simply about giving it somewhere to live.

I look after the server it runs on, keep WordPress and its software updated, monitor its security, take daily offsite backups and keep an eye on the systems that help your website work properly.

All of this happens quietly in the background, leaving you to get on with running your organisation.

Below are some of the systems I use to keep your website running, protected and up to date.

What does it do?

Your website is hosted on my own dedicated server rather than being placed on cheap shared web hosting.

This gives me greater control over the environment your website runs in, with dedicated resources for the websites I manage. It helps provide better performance, reliability and security, while allowing me to manage everything centrally.

A dedicated server is a physical server whose resources are not shared with hundreds or thousands of unrelated websites, as is common with inexpensive shared hosting.

I manage the server using Plesk, which provides individual hosting environments for each website while allowing me to centrally manage PHP, databases, SSL certificates, backups, security and other server services.

Having control of the server also means I can configure and monitor its resources, software and security specifically for the WordPress websites I host. This provides considerably more flexibility when troubleshooting problems, improving performance or making server-level changes that wouldn’t normally be possible with standard shared hosting.

What does it do?

Your website is automatically backed up every day, with a copy stored away from the server where your website lives.

If something goes seriously wrong — such as a technical failure, accidental deletion or security problem — I have a recent copy of the website that can be used to get things back up and running.

Daily offsite backups provide an additional layer of protection by storing copies of your website independently from the server hosting the live site.

The backup includes the website’s files and database, allowing the site to be restored if data is lost, corrupted or compromised.

Keeping backups offsite is particularly important because a backup stored only on the same server could be lost if that server suffered a serious failure or security incident. Automated daily backups mean there is always a relatively recent recovery point available, significantly reducing the amount of data that could be lost in an emergency.

What your website is built with

Every website I build uses WordPress, combined with the Avada theme to provide the design and layout tools I use to create your site.

Together they provide the foundation on which everything else is built.

What does it do?

WordPress is the system that powers your website.

It provides the foundation that everything else is built on, allowing your pages, images, menus and other content to be managed without needing to understand the code behind the website.

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that provides the core framework for your website.

It manages your website’s content, users, media and database, while themes and plugins add the design and additional functionality required for your particular site.

WordPress is continually developed and regularly updated with improvements, security fixes and new features. I keep the WordPress installation maintained and updated as part of looking after your website, while carefully managing compatibility with the theme, plugins and other systems it relies upon.

What does it do?

Avada is the system I use to design and build your website. It controls how the site looks and allows pages to be created using flexible building blocks rather than having to code everything from scratch.

It also helps ensure your website works properly across desktop computers, tablets and mobile phones.

Avada is a premium WordPress theme and visual website builder. It provides the framework used to create your site’s page layouts, headers, footers, menus and responsive design.

Its visual builder provides a library of containers, columns and elements that can be combined to create individual page designs without relying on lots of separate plugins.

Avada also includes extensive controls for typography, colours, spacing, responsive behaviour and performance. I use these settings alongside a child theme where necessary, allowing me to customise your website while keeping the main Avada software updateable and secure.

What’s included with your website

I provide and maintain a range of professional WordPress plugins as part of hosting your website.

These add important functionality, improve security and performance, manage things such as forms and email, and help keep your website working as it should.

You don’t need to buy, install or manage any of these yourself. I take care of that for you.

What does it do?

Gravity Forms is the system I use to create forms on your website.

These might be simple contact forms or more complex application, registration, booking and enquiry forms. It securely collects the information your visitors enter and can automatically send emails or trigger other actions when a form is submitted.

Gravity Forms is a premium WordPress form builder that provides much more functionality than a basic contact form.

It supports conditional logic, file uploads, calculations, multi-page forms, automated notifications, confirmations and validation. Submitted information can be securely stored within WordPress, allowing entries to be viewed and managed through the website’s administration area.

Gravity Forms can also integrate with payment providers, email marketing platforms, CRM systems and other third-party services. Its extensive developer tools and add-ons allow me to build more sophisticated workflows and automate processes that would otherwise require manual administration.

What does it do?

WP Armour helps stop spam being sent through forms on your website.

It works quietly in the background, identifying automated bots and blocking unwanted form submissions without forcing genuine visitors to complete annoying CAPTCHA tests.

WP Armour is an anti-spam plugin that uses honeypot techniques to detect automated form submissions.

It adds hidden fields and checks that normal visitors will never see, but many bots will interact with. When this happens, the submission can be blocked before it reaches your website or inbox.

Because it works without traditional CAPTCHA challenges, it helps reduce spam while keeping forms quick and easy for genuine users. It can work alongside popular WordPress form plugins and adds an extra layer of protection against automated spam and nuisance submissions.

What does it do?

WP Mail SMTP helps make sure emails sent by your website actually arrive.

This includes messages from contact forms, booking confirmations, password resets and other website notifications. Instead of relying on WordPress to send email itself, it uses a proper email service, making messages much less likely to be lost or marked as spam.

WP Mail SMTP changes the way WordPress sends transactional email by routing messages through an authenticated SMTP server or specialist email delivery service.

This improves email deliverability and provides a more reliable alternative to the standard PHP mail function used by WordPress.

It can connect to services such as Microsoft 365, Gmail and dedicated transactional email providers using authenticated connections or APIs. Depending on the configuration, it can also provide email logging, delivery status information and alerts when messages fail, making it much easier for me to identify and troubleshoot email problems on a website.

What does it do?

Kadence Security helps protect your website from hackers and other unwanted activity.

It works quietly in the background, watching for suspicious behaviour, blocking common types of attack and making it harder for anyone to gain unauthorised access to your website.

Kadence Security, formerly known as Solid Security and iThemes Security, is a WordPress security plugin that adds multiple layers of protection to your website.

It helps defend against common WordPress attacks by monitoring login activity, blocking suspicious users, protecting important WordPress files and reducing opportunities for automated attacks.

I configure it alongside the other security measures on my server, rather than relying on a single plugin for protection. It also provides useful security monitoring and logging, helping me identify unusual activity and investigate potential problems if they occur.

What does it do?

Complianz helps your website handle cookies and visitor privacy properly.

It provides the cookie banner you see when first visiting a website, giving people a clear choice about which cookies they accept. It also helps ensure cookies that require permission aren’t used until that permission has been given.

Complianz is a WordPress privacy and cookie consent plugin that helps websites comply with privacy legislation including UK GDPR and UK cookie regulations.

It scans the website to identify cookies and services being used, generates and manages the cookie policy, and provides a configurable consent banner.

Where consent is required, Complianz can prevent relevant scripts and cookies from loading until the visitor has made their choice. It also integrates with commonly used services such as Google Analytics, YouTube and Google Maps, allowing consent requirements to be managed centrally as the website and the services it uses change.

What does it do?

Imagify helps make the images on your website smaller without noticeably reducing their quality.

Smaller images load more quickly, which makes your website faster for visitors, particularly on mobile phones. It works automatically in the background, optimising new images as they’re added to your website.

Imagify is an image optimisation plugin designed to reduce the file size of images stored within WordPress while maintaining good visual quality.

It automatically compresses images as they’re uploaded and can also optimise images already within the Media Library. Imagify can generate modern image formats such as WebP and AVIF, which can provide significantly smaller files than traditional JPEG and PNG images.

Reducing image file sizes improves page-loading times, reduces bandwidth usage and can contribute to better Core Web Vitals and overall website performance. I configure Imagify to balance compression and image quality appropriately for each website.

What does it do?

WP Rocket helps make your website load faster.

It works quietly in the background, reducing the amount of work needed each time someone visits a page and helping your website deliver its content more efficiently. A faster website is better for your visitors and can also help its performance in search engines.

WP Rocket is a premium WordPress performance and caching plugin that improves page-loading speed by creating optimised versions of your website’s pages.

It includes page caching, browser caching, file optimisation and other performance features designed to reduce the amount of processing and data required when a page loads.

I configure WP Rocket to work alongside the server, WordPress, your website’s theme and Imagify image optimisation. Because every website is different, these settings need to be managed carefully to improve performance without interfering with the design or functionality of the site.

What does it do?

Yoast SEO helps search engines such as Google understand your website and its content.

It provides tools for controlling how pages appear in search results and helps ensure the technical information search engines need is correctly set up, giving your website the best opportunity to be found online.

Yoast SEO is a WordPress search engine optimisation plugin that manages many of the technical elements needed for SEO.

It allows control over page titles and meta descriptions, creates XML sitemaps, manages canonical URLs and provides structured data to help search engines understand the content and structure of the website.

It also provides tools for controlling which content should be indexed and how pages can appear when shared online. Yoast includes content and readability analysis, while giving me access to the more technical SEO settings needed to ensure WordPress is presenting the site correctly to search engines.

What does it do?

ExactMetrics connects your website to Google Analytics, allowing you to see how people are finding and using your site.

It helps track things such as visitor numbers, popular pages, where visitors come from and which devices they use, giving you a clearer picture of how your website is performing.

ExactMetrics is a WordPress analytics plugin that connects your website to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and handles much of the tracking setup automatically.

It can track page views, outbound links, downloads and other useful visitor interactions without requiring additional tracking code to be added manually.

ExactMetrics also brings key Google Analytics information into the WordPress dashboard, making important statistics easier to access and understand. I use it to ensure analytics tracking is correctly implemented and to provide useful website performance data without clients needing to regularly navigate the considerably more complex Google Analytics interface.

What does it do?

MainWP is one of the tools I use to monitor and maintain your website.

I check it every day to keep an eye on available updates, security information and the general health of your site. It helps me spot things that need attention and keep your WordPress software, theme and plugins properly maintained.

MainWP provides a secure management connection to your WordPress website, giving me access to important maintenance and monitoring information from a dedicated dashboard.

I use it daily to check WordPress core, plugin and theme updates, review security and maintenance information, and identify anything requiring attention.

It also provides reporting and monitoring tools that help me keep track of the ongoing work carried out on your website. Used alongside the other security, backup and performance systems I have in place, it forms an important part of the routine maintenance and monitoring of your WordPress installation.