HOSTING & CARE PLANS
The relationship with our clients once a website is launched doesn’t end there. We provide the support needed to ensure our client’s websites are kept up to date, secure, fast, and reliable.
MAINTENANCE
Envious Digital provide dedicated hosting services including an SSL certificate on high performance servers with plenty of storage and bandwidth.
With all of the sites we host, we also maintain out of courtesy, giving peace of mind to our clients that their sites will be kept up to date with WordPress software, theme and plugin updates.
KEY FEATURES
Envious Digital offer a variety of types of hosting, which we can recommend once we know what the infrastructure of the website is. That way, we can ensure the site has all the hosting components to make it fast, future proofed and secure.
A few examples of hosting components we provide are hosting the site on dedicated servers, SSL certificates, VPS (virtual private servers) and private SQL databases. Once we’ve analysed the requirements, we can ensure the site has the performance it needs, without the risk of running out of space or bandwidth which can be the pitfalls of hosting with a cheap hosting provider.
In addition, we apply a CDN (content delivery network) which stores and loads website assets so when a user visits a page, the content has already been loaded.
All of the sites we host include having an SSL certificate applied. This is vital for Google rankings and some browsers don’t even allow access to non-SSL sites anymore. It is also required by payment providers on ecommerce sites and is a mandatory requirement to keep in line with their PCI requirements.
Our hosting provider continuously monitors for attacks from outside connections and automatically puts the server into ‘safe mode’ until they have investigated the injections and made safe again.
For sites containing sensitive data, we recommend tightening up security even more by applying additional firewalls such as CloudFlare, although for WordPress sites, we do recommend applying a plugin called WordFence. More can be found out about this in our ‘enhanced plugins’ section.
Over a period of time, there are many things to keep updated when running a website such as the software its built on, the PHP version, the database and if built on WordPress, WordPress itself, themes and any plugins.
WordPress itself releases new versions that must be updated as soon as possible. This is to protect against known vulnerabilities, and also to apply new features that have been added. When this happens, themes and plugins can stop working.
Our hosting plan includes our developers testing the theme and plugins after a WordPress update, and updates those as well – testing again to ensure that everything is still compatible and working as it should. If something isn’t quite right, we spend the time working out what element has caused the issue and either revert it back to the previous version until the plugin developers have released an updated version to remedy, or where possible, fix the cause.
The backup includes all files uploaded, the database, and the theme and plugin files. By backing each of these elements up individually, it allows us to restore backups of a specific kind rather than having to restore the whole website, which would also remove any recent edits made on the front end or for ecommerce websites, orders placed.
At the end of the day, having full backups to hand which are easily downloadable, gives a huge amount of peace of mind.
Wordfence: Wordfence is a security solution developed by a global team of security analysts, threat researchers, and software engineers. The plugin protects against brute force attacks, carries out malware scans, and uses a firewall to block known, blacklisted IPs attempting to attack the site. This provides a high level of security along with the knowledge that their team is constantly monitoring a pattern of attacks and their sources from all other sites using the service who can then alert all other admins of the issue. Learn more here – Wordfence.
WP Rocket: WP Rocket provides many features that not only help websites perform quickly but also satisfy many SEO best practices. Features include page caching, cache preloading, eCommerce optimisation, GZIP compression, and file minification. Media files are loaded only when needed whilst the database cleaning tool makes it run more efficiently helping to speed up the site. Find out more here. WP Rocket.
UpdraftPlus: UpdraftPlus is a brilliant tool to provide peace of mind when it comes to knowing that your site is backed up on a regular basis. Why do we use it? It separates the backup files into sets of zip files containing the database, plugins, themes, core files, uploads (media uploads) and any other folder within the wordpress installation directory. If you are not using our hosting and maintenance service, we strongly recommend UpdraftPlus is used to limit the damage caused by hacking, incompatible updates, or simple user error. Visit here for more information. UpdraftPlus.
Our enhanced care plans offer five hours of our time every month to help with a variety of circumstances such as fixing more complex issues that have occurred, or helping our clients with tasks that they aren’t capable of doing themselves, or simply don’t have time. This can be especially helpful and necessary with bespoke sites and apps, as although they can often be the best development solution, the pure nature of their architecture means our clients will be less ‘ hands-on’. Having a care plan also means the requests can ‘jump the queue’ and will be responded to within the relevant time frame, depending on which care plan is chosen. These options are:-
| Care Plan 1 | Care Plan 2 | Care Plan 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Severity level 1 | ||
| Target response time – 4 hours Target completion time – 2 business days |
Target response time – 3 hours Target completion time – 1 business days |
Target response time – 1 business days Target completion time – 2 business days |
| Severity level 2 | ||
| Target response time – 4 business days Target completion time – 5 business days |
Target response time – 3 business days Target completion time – 3 business days |
Target response time – 1 business days Target completion time – 2 business days |
| Severity level 3 | ||
| Target response time – 4 business days Target completion time – 10 business days |
Target response time – 3 business days Target completion time – 6 business days |
Target response time – 2 business days Target completion time – 4 business days |
HOW CARE PLANS WORK
Naturally, there are many benefits of having any care plan. The prices differ depending on which one is taken up and reflect both the speed of response and the time allowed for us to provide a resolution.
We have made raising requests or tickets with us super easy by utilising a tool called Bugherd. Bugherd is a visual tool that allows users to click anywhere on the screen and raise a task detailing the request, with the added ability to upload supporting documents. On our end, we receive an instant notification along with a screenshot of exactly what was clicked on, the exact URL, and all of the details and documents sent at the same time.
In addition, this ticket is created and we can discuss any further details or ask questions from within the individual task, keeping everything organised and easy to understand. No more trawling through emails to find the right one!
You can learn more about Bugherd and download the Chrome extension here. Bugherd.
All of our care plans provide five hours of service per month. If the requests are actually extra development, or the five hours is exceeded, we will be able to provide ad-hoc quotations up front and communicate a precise timeline for completion.
For more information about our development process, visit here.
FAQ’s
WORK
Here are just some of our portfolio pieces to demonstrate the website design and development of WordPress websites, bespoke websites and mobile app development projects that we have worked on with our clients.
Batten & Allen
Batten and Allen wanted to really stand out against the crowd within their industry. Read more to find out about the whole project.
Perfect Teams
Envious Developed an algorithm within this bespoke application to create profiles within teams of staff to compare their character types.
Aquiko
Aquiko manufactures its own products within the water flow market and needed an e-commerce solution along with product builder.
TESTIMONIALS
Luke Schönenberger
Benefit Cosmetics
Douglas Quigg
Idox Group
We began the development of a comprehensive new brand project in March 2020. At the same time, we set the objective of addressing a new design and build of our corporate website which is a key component in our go to market strategy. This was a major project within the business and we appointed Envious to work closely with our marketing team and, importantly, our brand agency to deliver this. Teamwork was essential. Over a 5 month period, the Envious team got to grips with this complex project brilliantly. It involved a complete, ground-up rethink of how we engage with customers.
Rhys Redrup
ION Science
BLOG
In an ever changing digital environment, Envious Digital aim to write and publish informative articles to help keep businesses up to date with important changes in technology, as well as interesting insights on specific topics, and of course, keep you up to date with what’s going on in our world.
