Page 21 - Grapevine July-August 2019

In The Winery

search engines will likely put you near the bottom
of a list of search results or not even display your
site. Second, a scary warning can appear where
your website should be strutting its stuff.

Security is especially important if you have a
WordPress site. WordPress powers over a third of
the internet today. Because of sheer volume and
the number of WordPress websites online, it’s the
most hacked content management system on the
web.

You should set up a routine schedule for removing
malware, scanning for viruses or hacks, removing
spam blog or product comments as well as spam
signups to your mailing list. And don’t forget to
monitor your SSL certificate to let purchasers know
that you are safe to enter credit cards. Nothing
says “don’t buy wine here” like a big security warn-
ing.

Data Preservation

You may not realize this, but on many mainstream
platforms, including WordPress, there isn’t an
automatic backup feature that you can just revert
to if your website gets hacked, corrupted, or dam-
aged.

This happens more likely than you think.

Five Areas to Focus on When Sometimes plugin updates can cause irreparable
damage to the design. Other times, there’s human
error when that new marketing intern deletes all
Maintaining Your Website your trade assets by accident.

It is up to you to back up your files. Luckily, there
By: Susan DeMatei are many tools on the market that can do this
automatically.
Broken Links

Whether your website is five pages or 30 pages,
it can be easy to miss a broken link buried on your
website. If the broken link is to your ecommerce
store, it’s like having a malfunctioning door to your
tasting room. Even if nothing is broken, if you don’t
have a proper “continue shopping” link in your cart
or checkout, you could lose the customer with their
frustration. Maybe the link is minor and doesn’t
lead to the store, but a broken link says you’re not
paying attention, so why should your customers?

Again, routine maintenance should look for

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