outerbridge.co.uk

We’re in the top one million websites!

outerbridge — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 15:19:46 +0000

outerbridge.co.uk is in the top one million

A bit of fun today; we found out that our website outerbridge.co.uk has made it on to the list of the top one million websites. A company called “one million screenshots” have taken screenshots of the top one million websites in the world.

We were delighted to discover that Outerbridge is featured on the list. We were also thrilled to see that some of the websites we have built for our customers are there too.

The list is based on the top websites by page rank in something called the Common Crawl Web Graph

You can take a look at the full list of top websites here:

onemillionscreenshots.com

Be warned though, it is addictive!

For Web Designers

outerbridge — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 13:59:18 +0000

White Label Web Development for Designers

Your Great Design Needs A Like-Minded Web Developer

We love working with great web designers!

We build many websites for designers that are looking for a reliable web development service.

Whilst most of the designers we work with know a great deal about web development, they often choose to focus on web design and digital marketing services.

Outsourcing the WordPress development side of things to us means that they can focus on the things they love doing.

Whether your design is in Adobe XD, Photoshop, Sketch, Zeplin, or indeed any other format, we can help bring it to life.

We take the time to understand exactly what you are looking for. We can give you a fixed price quote and then code your design into a fully-responsive WordPress website.

Our experienced developers are experts at rendering your design in WordPress efficiently and accurately. And our comprehensive review and testing procedures mean that we get it right first time. So rework is minimised and bug fixing is fast.

We understand that there are sometimes compromises to be made between design and development, and we take a collaborative and constructive approach to achieve a great result.

If you want to find out more about how we can help turn your design concept into a WordPress website, then please contact us for a chat about how we work.

Flexible Development

Whether you need help with just a couple of web projects per year or a more ongoing relationship, we have you covered.

We work as partners

Communication is the key to all our projects. We work closely with you to iron out any issues, and together we create a website that your customer will love.

No credit required

We like to think you will speak proudly about working with us, and recommend us to others. But we don’t expect any credit. Our white label web development service means that your websites can remain free of our branding if you prefer us to remain in the background.

We love bringing great designs to life

Let’s make it happen together.

Website Audit

outerbridge — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:52:17 +0000

Struggling with your website?

Let us give it a health check!

What's a Website Audit?

Our website audit service will help you to understand what’s wrong (and right!) with your website. Our in-depth audits cover everything that matters. We’ll provide you with a comprehensive report that highlights any issues. We’ll even tell you which things to fix first.

We measure what matters

Maybe you’ve inherited a website from someone else or you’re just not sure how to sort out your own website. Either way, we can help you to identify the things that matter and get them fixed in no time.

Why Outerbridge?

Our WordPress website experts really know their stuff. So they can help you to see the wood for the trees.

A website audit from Outerbridge includes a comprehensive report that will provide you with straightforward, actionable advice. We avoid technical jargon, and we explain things in ways that are easy to understand.

We even include a meeting or call to discuss the report in detail, so that you can ask any questions you might have and get advice on what to do and how to go about it.

How much does a website audit cost?

Our comprehensive website audits cost just £499+VAT.

What's included in a Website audit?

We check over 40 critical success factors, covering areas including:

User Experience

94% of people cite web design as the main reason why they would not trust or use a website. We examine what might put people off.

SEO &Online Visibility

93% of visitors find a website via a search engine like Google. It is by far the biggest driver of traffic to websites. In fact, 300% more traffic arrives from search engines than via social media. Our SEO checks will identify potential improvements in your set-up.

Performance & Security

40% of website visitors will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. 82% of internet users will abandon an insecure website immediately. So we check your website performance in detail, and review whether it's safe and secure.

Conversion Optimisation

97% of visitors to a website are not going to buy from you. Yet companies typically focus on increasing visitors to their site, when what really matters is how many become customers. So we look at how well your site is designed to turn visitors into customers.

Give Your Website A Check-Up

Get Started Today

Too afraid to upgrade?

outerbridge — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 16:46:45 +0000

Too afraid to upgrade?

We’ve had a few people contacting us recently saying that they are too scared to update their websites in case something goes wrong. Very often, they’ve done an update in the past and something bad has happened. So not surprisingly, they are reluctant to let that happen again. But by not updating their websites, they are storing up even bigger problems for the future. Many people make the mistake of looking at the front end of their website (i.e. what the customer sees on the internet) and thinking that as long as it works, then everything’s fine. This is a recipe for disaster! We frequently log on to websites that have multiple error messages, update warnings and WordPress health check issues. But “it looks OK on the internet” they say. This is like seeing a red light on the dashboard of your car and continuing to drive down the motorway. If this is you, then eventually, your website will fail, and it will fail spectacularly. The more outstanding updates you have, the more likely it is that things will go wrong when you do finally install the updates. So it’s definitely best to update things frequently. Small, iterative changes are always better than big changes with huge gaps in between. In the same way that if you leave too long between car services then you are more likely to have an expensive problem when you do finally get your car serviced.

Which Updates Are Required?

1. WordPress Updates

The developers of WordPress typically to issue 4 or 5 updates each year. These include changes which might include bug fixes or new features. They might make your website load faster or look better for customers. But more importantly, these WordPress updates often include security updates.

These are software changes that are needed because a security loophole has been found in the WordPress software. You’re probably familiar with these on your mobile phone. For example, Apple & Android frequently issue new versions of their operating systems which you need to install to keep your phone safe and secure.

If you aren’t installing these updates then you are leaving your website vulnerable to being hacked. Issuing a new version of WordPress isn’t an easy matter, so the developers don’t do this for fun.

2. Theme Updates

All WordPress websites use something called a theme, which is responsible for the “look and feel” of your website. Popular off-the-shelf themes include Divi, Avada, The7 etc. Some themes are custom-built from scratch, but many websites use an off-the-shelf theme which is then customised to suit your website.

All good theme developers issue updates to their themes from time to time. Again, these will be to fix bugs, add new features, improve performance or fix security issues. Issuing a new version of a website theme is a lot of work. So when a new version is available, you should update it as soon as possible. Especially if it involves a security fix. Leaving an old version of a theme on your website can leave it very vulnerable to hackers.

3. Plugin Updates

Most WordPress websites use several WordPress plugins, which are items of software that provide specific functionality or features for your website.

Popular plugins include online shop software like WooCommerce, SEO plugins like Yoast, anti-spam plugins like Akismet, security plugins such as Sucuri etc.

Good plugin developers frequently release new versions of their plugins with better features, enhanced performance, bug fixes or security patches.

Many of the problems we see on WordPress websites are caused by out-of-date plugin versions, or just old plugins that have not been actively developed over time and now no longer work with other plugins and/or WordPress.

4. Server Updates

The software on your server will also need updating from time to time. This includes scripting languages like PHP, plus web servers and load balancers like Nginx and Apache.

Some hosting companies will take care of this for you, but not all. Some will only update things if you prompt them to, and some won’t update them at all because they consider it your responsibility.

Updating server software is a specialist job, so if you are not confident with doing this yourself then you will need to find a web developer to do this for you, or choose hosting that is fully managed on your behalf.

How to perform updates

The actual process for updating plugins is quite straightforward, but it must be done in a controlled way if you are to avoid problems.

1. Backups

The most important thing is to make sure that you have got a backup of your website (both the files and the database). This is vital because if anything does go wrong, you will be able to restore your website if you have a backup. If you don’t have a backup, you could lose everything and you will have to get your website rebuilt from scratch.

2. One at a time

Only update one thing at a time. If you update several plugins at once, you won’t know which one is to blame if something goes wrong. So we update one thing at a time and then test thoroughly to make sure that everything still works properly.

3. Check what’s changed

Before you update anything, check the changelog to see what changes have been made. Review all the changes to make sure that they are appropriate for your site and not likely to cause any problems.

4. If possible, use hosting with a staging area

If you can afford it, then try to use hosting that includes a development area. This will allow you to test any updates on a test version of your website before deploying them to the live site.

5. Test like mad

It’s really important to thoroughly test that everything is working before moving on to the next update. This will make it much easier to unpick any changes if something has broken.

6. Take another backup

Once your website is fully updated, backup the files and the database again, so that you have an up-to-date backup for future use.

Still afraid to upgrade?

To be honest, updating your website can be an unnerving exercise. Doing it properly is a skilled job, and if something does go wrong, it can be very hard for non-developers to fix the problem. If you don’t know a good web developer that can help you at a moment’s notice, then you could be left with a website that doesn’t work. And getting quality web development at short notice is very difficult.

For complete peace of mind, we recommend that you consider a website care package. For a monthly fee, expert developers will look after all the updates for your website, and more. The best packages include backups, security checks, performance monitoring, uptime monitoring and super-fast hosting as well as all the updates. That way, you never need to fear the update button again!

Call us on 01626 572572 to discuss a website care package. Alternatively, we can perform a one-off spring clean of your website (including all outstanding updates). If you’re not even sure whether you need any updates, our website audit service will identify any out-of-date software and check the general health of your website.

The 7 deadly sins of law firm websites

outerbridge — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:04:02 +0000

1. You don't have a security certificate

A professional firm that doesn’t care about security? Any potential customers will surely move on to one that does! Google and browsers (like Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Safari) will warn visitors that your website is not secure, and visitors to your website are unlikely to stick around once they know that you don’t prioritise security.

SSL certificates have been around for many years now. If you still don’t have a security certificate (otherwise known as an SSL certificate), your website may still look OK, but it will be vulnerable to hackers. Furthermore, any information sent from customers via the website (like contact details in a contact form) will not be secure.

When deciding which websites to show in search results, Google also gives priority to websites that have an SSL certificate, so that’s another reason to make sure that you have one.

An SSL certificate needs to be configured correctly, which can be a little tricky to get right. If you would like to know how secure your website is, there’s a handy little tool which you can use to check. Type your website address into the SSLlabs.com tester tool, and it will tell you how well your server security is configured. Anything less than A+, and you should check the security settings.

Here’s an example for one of our websites:

How to install an SSL certificate (or improve your security settings)

Unless you have experience of internet and server security, you should probably employ an experienced web developer to help you sort this one out. Some website hosting companies might do this for you, but make sure you use the above-mentioned checker tool after they’ve done it as in our experience, they often get it wrong.

2. It's not responsive (i.e. it's not optimised for mobile devices)

It doesn’t matter how good your website might look on a desktop computer, the fact of the matter is that more website traffic comes from mobile devices than desktops. So the majority of your visitors are likely to be using a phone or tablet to view your website.

If your website does not look good on all types of device (or maybe doesn’t even work on mobile devices), then you will be losing potential customers.

How to fix a non-responsive website design

It’s really worth getting several people to test out your website on their own devices to see what works and what doesn’t. If your website has not been built with mobile devices in mind, then you may need to hire a web developer to sort that out for you.

3. It's too slow

If your website takes too long to load, people will go elsewhere. The main culprit is large images (or videos) that have not been properly optimised.

When it comes to websites, the faster the better. A fast website gives an impression of efficiency and attention to detail. Most people are impatient when it comes to browsing the internet, and they will no longer wait around for a website to load.

How to fix a slow website

Google Page Speed Insights is a useful tool that will give you an indication of how long your website pages take to load. It also gives recommendations for how to improve your website performance. But don’t get too fixated on this as a tool – if you type Google’s own website into it, it won’t even let you see the result. And there’s a reason for that! We generally prefer the Pingdom speed tool, but there are lots of others, and they will all give you different results.

You might be able to fix some of the issues yourself, but a good web developer will be able to speed your website up even more if you are still not happy with it.

4. It's hard to navigate

Most professional services firms have quite complicated organisational structures. Just because it works for your firm doesn’t mean it works for your customers. We often see too many pages on professional services websites, which make it confusing and difficult to find your way around. Make sure you don’t have any pages which are several clicks away from the main menu. And make sure you have links to other relevant pages throughout your content – this is good for search engine optimisation too.

How to fix poor navigation

Ask some actual customers to test out your website and report back on how easy it was to find things. We find that most customers prefer to search for what they want either by sector or service, so make sure that both options are available to them via the main menu.

Make sure your website includes a search box where people can type some text in and get a list of relevant results. And make sure that those results are relevant. We frequently see search results that are meaningless on professional services websites.

5. It's too boring

Whilst it’s really important to project a professional image, most professional services websites are way too boring. If you want potential customers to notice you, then you have to stand out from your competitors. If your website looks like all the others, then why should they choose you over any other firm? For some reason, there is a great deal of similarity between websites in the same sector.

How to fix a boring website

Try to make sure that your website reflects the culture of your firm. Be sure to include high quality images of your actual offices and your team. Stock images are OK, but use them sparingly. People want to know what your firm looks like. If you are a local firm, use images of the local area. If you don’t wear suite to the office, don’t wear them for your photos. And people don’t need to see pictures of gavels, books and scales.

Invite your customers to engage with you via contact forms, calls to action and chat features. Maybe include some really useful features like a probate quote calculator or downloadable pdfs.

A blog is a really good way of getting across what you do for customers, as well as the range of services you provide. It’s also really effective at improving your search engine results.

Speak to a web developer or web designer about how to inject more interest and personality into your website. It may be that a change of colour or font might make all the difference. A good website expert will take time to understand the ethos of your firm, and they will be able to translate this into an effective and congruent design.

Don’t worry though – we’re willing to bet that even if your website is really boring, it’s not the worst one we’ve seen.

6. It's not compliant

Sorry to be boring, but some things just have to be done. If you don’t have a clickable SRA verified website badge (also known as the digital badge) on your website, then it’s time you got one! If you haven’t thought about GDPR and you don’t have terms & conditions, privacy policies and cooky policies on your website then shame on you.

How to fix a non-compliant website

Task someone with working out what needs to be done and getting the appropriate content in place. If you need help with setting up the digital badge, a good web developer that specialises in professional services firms will be able to help.

7. You have no testimonials

It’s well known that potential customers really value the experiences of past or existing customers when making purchasing decisions. When people are looking for a law firm or a solicitor, they like to hear about whether others have received a good service and enjoyed working with them. Good quality testimonials are highly valuable to legal firms, and help to build trust with potential customers.

How to get testimonials from your customers

If you don’t have one already, implement a process to ensure that all customers are asked to provide a review or give some feedback on their experience. This can be via email, as part of a wider feedback process or via a third-party review website such as ReviewSolicitors.

You can then use quotes from these reviews on your law firm website, as “social proof” of the quality service that your firm provides. Don’t forget to seek permission to use these quotes, and to include their names if possible.

Testimonials also make great social media posts, which can generate further traffic to your website.

Is your law firm website guilty?

Is your law firm website guilty of any of these? Let us know. Most of them are fairly easy to sort out. They could make all the difference to your website and help you to stand out in a competitive marketplace.

We’ve tried to be positive in this article and not name-and-shame all the worst legal websites that we’ve ever come across. But we do have a “wooden spoon” award to give to a particular group of legal websites that really should be able to better reflect the profession they purport to serve, and that’s local Law Societies. If anyone knows of one with an attractive and user-friendly website, then please let us know!

Outerbridge specialise in hosting and looking after websites for professional services firms. Find out more about our WordPress website care plans.

Feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss any aspects of your website with us in more detail.

Looking for ongoing website support and a more personal approach from your web developer?

outerbridge — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 13:58:47 +0000

Looking for ongoing website support?

If you are looking for ongoing website support and help for your WordPress website, you may well have spoken to several different web agencies. If so, you’ll know what a frustrating process it can be.

Mass market website support plans

You may even have come across websites like MaintainWP, WPHelper or WPBuffs (or any of the many “one-size-fits-all” maintenance giants), only to be faced with an impersonal “buy now” button.

Something probably didn’t feel quite right about your search, so you may have given up and decided that a solution to your problem didn’t exist.

A different approach to ongoing website support

Perhaps you would prefer a different approach? For example, wouldn’t it be great if you could build a relationship with an actual person? Someone who could help you out with your website when necessary, generally look out for you and be there if you needed them. What you are really looking for are some talented, like-minded professional web developers who will treat your website as if it was their own.

Why mass market maintenance plans are a poor fit for smaller businesses

Although mass-market website maintenance contracts can fill a need for a very specific segment of website owners, they are not generally a good idea for smaller businesses without in-house website resources. One of the main problems is that you don’t know what you don’t know…

With the mass-market providers, it can be really difficult to explain things, you’re not even sure what to ask for and they certainly aren’t going to advise you on the best option. They will often do the bare minimum of what’s required, and they are never going to be a trusted advisor to your business.

They are often difficult to get hold of; it’s certainly hard to speak to a real person and even if you can, you never seem to get the same person twice. They are frequently hard to communicate with, and will often blind you with science or confuse you with technical jargon that you feel you ought to understand, but don’t.

So for small or medium-sized businesses whose websites generate their sales, mass-market maintenance providers are usually a very poor fit.

The advantages of personal service when it comes to ongoing website support

Here at Outerbridge, we don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to ongoing website support. Every website is different, and every business owner has different priorities. So we tailor our service to fit your specific needs. And we take time to understand your business, with its unique set of circumstances and foibles.

There’s one thing that all our customers have in common. They are looking for a personal connection with their website professionals.

We understand business

We are not straight out of college. In fact, we are both Big-4 qualified Chartered Accountants with long, highly successful careers in professional services. So we understand business inside and out, and we can advise you on many aspects of running your business (not just websites).

Personal service from a web developer

Our biggest strength is in building personal relationships with each one of our clients that makes them feel like they are in good hands. They trust us to give great advice, make great recommendations and be proactive about potential problems or improvements.

Most mass-market maintenance shops will have thousands of clients. We only work with a very small number of VIP customers, so we can give them the attention that they deserve.

What to expect from our ongoing website support service

If you call us, we nearly always answer (unless we are with another VIP customer). If we can’t, we’ll call you back as soon as we can. You will speak to either me (Penny) or Mike. Every time. Try it – we’re on 01626 572572.

We will respond to all queries promptly and professionally. Most of the time, we will spot any problem with your website and have it fixed before you even know about it.

The only people that will work on your website will be Mike or I. We can advise you on many aspects of running your business (not just websites). Things like SEO, marketing, social media, website strategy and website content.

We are highly skilled, so we can do 99.9% of everything that ever needs doing on your website. On the rare occasion that we can’t do something ourselves, we will be honest and tell you, and we will recommend somebody that can do it, from our network of carefully chosen experts.

The problem with mass market website support

The WordPress support market is full of website maintenance companies who offer fixed plans, impersonal service and a very limited, inflexible list of what’s covered. And despite their marketing, when it comes down to it, your particular issue never seems to fit their criteria.

There’s also no way for you to purchase extra development time when you want to add more features to your website, or fancy a website refresh. You are faced with finding a reliable, professional web developer who is available, and then having to explain your business to them from scratch.

With our ongoing website support service, you can get priority extra help when you need it. And we offer a discount to our support customers too.

Trusted advisors

We love to help our customers and we see ourselves as their website consultants, ready to give advice when they need it and let them get on with it when they don’t. We make proactive suggestions, but we never try to sell them things they don’t need.

We are different from most web developers

We’ve been in business for over 10 years
We have an established network of contacts
We are not interested in competing on price alone (as this always results in a “race to the bottom”)
We don’t quote ridiculously low hourly rates just to get the work
We price fairly and we offer fixed price quotes
We work much faster than inexperienced developers. (If someone tells you that their hourly rate is £25, ask them how long it will take to do the work. And get a fixed price quote for it!)
We won’t work with customers that are a poor fit with our style of working
We have a manageable list of clients, so we can offer you the personalised attention that you need

Our ongoing website support plans are loved by our clients

Customer loyalty is the ultimate stamp of approval, and many of our customers have been with us for years. We even count some of them amongst our closest friends.

How many mass market website maintenance providers can say that?

You can find out more information about our ongoing website support plans here.

But the best way to experience our service is to contact us for a chat about how we can help you.

Inherited a WordPress website? 10 things to do right now

outerbridge — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 09:28:47 +0000

Congratulations! We promise you're going to love WordPress...

If you’ve inherited a WordPress website recently, you may be wondering how best to handle it.

Perhaps you’ve just bought a new business that already has a WordPress website? Or maybe you have just been given responsibility for looking after your company’s website and you are not sure where to start?

Maybe you can’t wait to get started, or maybe you’d prefer not to! Either way, this article will help you to decide what’s most important, and give you the confidence you need to get started.

1. Get the logon details

First things first

Before you begin, you’re going to need a lot of password and username information. It’s not just the website either. If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, you will also need usernames and passwords for:

The WordPress admin dashboard itself.
The “FTP” password. FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol.” You don’t need to know what this is at this point.
CDN password. CDN stands for “Content Delivery Network”. Again, you don’t need to know what this is at the moment (and not all websites have one in any case)
Domain provider (i.e. the company that provide you with a domain name such as outerbridge.co.uk – this usually needs renewing every year).
E-mail marketing service. You’ll need this if your company uses an e-mail service such as MailChimp or MailerLite.
Third-party services and premium plugins. If the website uses any additional services such Yoast Premium, GoCardless, PayPal, Stripe or WooCommerce plugins, then you will need access to these too.
Social media services. Don’t forget that you may also need access to your company’s accounts for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram etc.
Google Analytics & Google Search Console. This is so that you can check that Google Analytics tracking has been set up on the website. (Google Analytics is used to collect data about your website’s visitors). Make sure you can log on to both of these services; you’ll need them later.

Phew. That’s a lot of work in itself, right? Stop and have a coffee, and maybe even a bit of cake, because now you’re going to need to…

2. Change them

Unfortunately, once you’ve got all those passwords, you will need to change them all. Yep, every single one of them.

Why? Well, if you don’t change them, then the previous owners/developers/administrators will still be able to access everything. You don’t want them making any modifications, so make sure that only authorised people have access to all these things. If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, you may not even know who has had access to it in the past.

Even if you trust the previous users, it’s a really good idea to change all the passwords because you never know what might happen to those logon details in the future.

3. Review user access and admin emails

Check who’s got access to the website

If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, then you probably don’t know for sure who’s got access to the admin area. You can easily check this by selecting “Users” and then “All Users” from the WordPress admin menu. You’ll then see a list of everyone who has access to the website.

Review the list of users, delete them if appropriate and make sure they have the appropriate level of access. Note that administrator access is hugely powerful, so make sure you restrict that to the people that really need it.

Change the admin contact details for the website

WordPress sends any important website notifications to the admin email address, so you will want to make sure that those messages are being read by the right person i.e. you!

To do this, select “Settings” and then “General“and you can change the administration email address there if necessary.

4. Stop! Before you do anything else, take a backup...

I can’t stress this highly enough. If you don’t have a backup of your website, then you are asking for trouble. Websites can (and do!) fail. If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, at this point you will have no idea how reliable it is, so it pays to be really obsessive about backups.

If something goes really badly wrong and you have a recent backup, you will be able to restore the website and carry on as though nothing has happened.

But if you don’t have a backup, you will have to BUILD THE WEBSITE AGAIN FROM SCRATCH. Yes, really. Fancy adding that to your to-do list? Or telling your boss/partner/customers how stupid you are?

There are lots of backup plugins you can use. You need to backup both the website files AND the database. And make sure you keep the backups somewhere separate to your website. Like Dropbox or Google Drive.

You can find out more about backups here. And find out how often to backup your website here.

5. Run a security scan

If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, you’ll want to make sure that it doesn’t have any lurking security issues. One of the best ways to do this is with a security plugin like Sucuri or Wordfence. You can use one of these to run a scan on your website to check for any problems. You should also check out this article about site security.

6. Speedy Gonzales

Nobody likes a slow website. These days, people don’t hang around for a page to load, they will just go to one of your competitor’s websites instead. If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, you might have no idea how fast or slow it is. So run a performance check to see how fast your website is.

Most of the performance tools will show you a list of issues if your website is not up to scratch. We like Pingdom and GTMetrix, both of which have free online tools to check whether your website is like Delboy’s van or a finely-tuned Formula 1 car.

There are lots of reasons why websites can be slow, but the one we so most often is cheap, shared hosting. If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, don’t just carry on with the same old hosting. Make sure it’s fit for purpose. It’s definitely worth paying extra for decent hosting to ensure that your website zips along nicely. No point in having a Formula 1 car with bald tyres and lawnmower petrol, right?

7. Check Google Analytics & Search Console

Remember those logon details for these Google services? You’ll need them now to log in to Google Analytics and see how many visitors the site gets, and what they do when they get there. If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, this is a really good way to familiarise yourself with it.

Google Search Console allows you to check for any crawling errors or issues that might mean that Google is unable to index your site. It’s a good idea to diarise a regular review of both Search Console and Analytics too.

8. Time for a spring clean

There aren’t many websites that don’t need a really good clearout from time to time. And if you’ve inherited a WordPress website, I’ll bet that there are some dodgy things lurking under the bonnet.

Check that all your plugins are up to date. Are they still supported (i.e. being actively developed and maintained)?

Familiarise yourself with all the plugins. Make sure you know what they do, and check the settings. Note that lots of plugins send important emails to the admin address recorded in their settings area, so it’s important to make sure that this is correct.

Are you using the latest version of your website’s theme? You should be.

Finally, get rid of any spam comments, optimise the database and delete any old post revisions. There are WordPress plugins that will do this for you if you’re not sure where to start. When we do this, we like to use Marie Kondo’s KonMari method of decluttering. If something doesn’t bring us joy, we get rid of it…

9. Get some training

If you’ve inherited a WordPress website and you haven’t used WordPress before, then it’s a really good idea to get some WordPress training. You’re going to need some help with all this, and a good WordPress trainer will be able to answer any questions that you have and give you the confidence to get started.

Even if you already have some WordPress knowledge, a training session will give you lots more tips and tricks and will end up saving you loads of time. Find out more about WordPress training here.

If you've inherited a WordPress website, be sure to enjoy the process!

If you’ve inherited a WordPress website, then you’ve been given a great opportunity to develop your skills and have fun doing it. WordPress is a fabulous tool, and one that we promise you will really enjoy using. Being able to use WordPress is a great skill to have on your CV, and it could even lead to a whole new career. So embrace the change and get stuck in.

One of the key benefits of WordPress is that it’s freely available and used by millions of people. So if you need help, there are lots of online resources, and you can often find the answer via Google.

If you’re based in Devon or the West Country, and you’d like some face-to-face WordPress training, then please contact us to book a training session. We also offer Zoom or Skype training sessions for those further afield or anyone who prefers online training. Our sessions are fun, friendly and tailored to your specific needs. You’ll be surprised at what you can learn in a couple of hours…

5 Steps to Building a Website

outerbridge — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 11:49:58 +0000

Developing a Website

Web development can be a daunting process. But with Outerbridge’s 5 Steps to Building a Website process, we make it a straightforward and hopefully enjoyable process.

The 5 Steps to Building a Website

Mike has recorded a video which talks you through each of the 5 steps to building a website. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a complex e-commerce website or a simple brochure site, our process is the same.

There’s more detail in the video, but, in summary, the steps are:

Initial consultation
Discovery
Build
Test
Go live

Questions?

If you want to talk more about the topics in this post, or how we can help you generally to get the most out of your website, give us a call on 01626 572572 or email contact@outerbridge.co.uk

Uptime Monitoring

outerbridge — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 12:19:50 +0000

Uptime Monitoring is the assurance of knowing that your site is available to visitors and customers.

If you’re an Outerbridge Support Package customer then you have Uptime Monitoring of your site included as standard; whether you’re Silver, Gold or Platinum. And what that means is this: in the very unlikely event of your site going down, we receive emails and texts to tell us. When we know about it, then we start fixing it. You probably won’t even know that there’s been a problem, but we’ll let you know what we’ve done.

At the time of writing, we have 3 sites with over 500 days of continuous uptime. We’re a bit like the Carlsberg Complaints Helpline!

If you want to talk more about Uptime Monitoring, give us a call on 01626 572572 or email contact@outerbridge.co.uk

Backups

outerbridge — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 13:01:35 +0000

Backups are vital to ensuring that your website can be recovered when necessary. Backups are included for our Support Package Customers.

I Don't Believe It!

Here at Outerbridge, we’re constantly amazed by how much time, effort and money people will spend on their websites. And yet they don’t ensure that they’ve got a proper backup of that site. What happens when they need to restore the site when something goes wrong?

Backups - What You Need To Know

For a WordPress site, there are two parts to that backup – there’s the files and the database, and you need both in order to be able to restore. All of Outerbridge’s Support Package Customers’ sites are backed up regularly, so they don’t need to worry about backups at all.

We have a “belt and braces” approach. Each website is on its own server and the server backs up the site according to the required schedule. Then, another server takes a copy of those backups – so that we’ve got a backup of the backup – to a completely secondary different location. Finally we use another service to take a further contingency backup, just in case!

If you’re not an Outerbridge Support Package Customer, then we would urge and encourage you to check today that you have a backup of the files and the database. We also advise you to restore from your backup when you don’t need to. This will check that you can actually do it, so you confirm that your backup process actually works!

We do that for our Support Package Customers from time-to-time just to make sure that everything’s okay. So, should the worst happen, we can always restart their web site from a backup.

Want To Know More?

If you want to discuss anything about backups call us on 01626 572572, or email us at contact@outerbridge.co.uk. It might not be the most exciting topic in the world, but it could save you a lot of heartache.

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