Greetings,
By now, everyone knows that the Wordpress
blog platform has quickly grown into a universally accepted
and speedy way to transfer subject matter to the Web. Search
engines like Google or Bing seem to truly be partial to Wordpress
blogs and numerous users have discovered that installing Wordpress
can help them attain online search engine "natural"
traffic more rapidly than a conventional site.
Why Use A Wordpress Install Service?
In order to use Wordpress, you have to
install it on a web site. If you are installing Wordpress
manually for the first time, you may run into several problems.
Some of the more common issues are:
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- Error Establishing
A Database Connection With Your Server
- Fatal Errors Due To
Incorrect Installation or Undefined Function Call
- 404 Not Found Pages
Appear Where They Shouldn't
- Images, Themes Or
Pages Are Not Displayed Properly
- Permalink Errors Could
Result In Pages Not Found
- And Others...
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Usually, these type of errors could occur
due to improper installation, compatibility issues, wrong file
permissions with your web host or other various inconsistencies.
Wordpress is a fluid application and is
constantly being updated. While you can update after a Fantastico
installation via your web host cpanel, we believe a manual install
is always a better choice.
As well, if you are installing manually
for the first time, you may run into issues or problems such
as the ones mentioned, that could slow you down significantly,
even have you wanting to pull your hair out after the second,
third or fourth attempt!
And speaking about web hosts or
hosting options... Many of them offer an automated way for
you to install Wordpress via a script called Fantastico. But
there can be problems with this approach. An automated install,
while seemingly simple, contains known coding and footprints
that leave your blog vulnerable to hackers and spammer's links
and/or posts.
Surely you've heard the stories of blogs
being hacked, even destroyed to the point everything is lost.
Vulnerability to these attacks is very high with automatic installations.
While these installs are most commonly referred to as a fast
and simple way to get a Wordpress blog installed, the cost of
lost data could be significant in the long run.
All Wordpress Installation services are
not created equal, and using one you feel comfortable with and
know is installing you the "right way" the first time,
takes all the hassle and worry out of setting up your blog
correctly and with security in mind.
Security IS A BIG Issue!
As discussed, the last thing you need is
to find your web site hacked, defaced or destroyed. Even worse,
no backup was made beforehand in order to restore it. Wordpress
is known for its simple and uncomplicated installation. This
fact has contributed in particular to the popularity of the
software, but it also ensures that many of the configuration
and settings are exactly the same on thousands of sites. This
allows people lacking moral integrity who know what they are
looking for to easily find and gain unauthorized access to your
blog.
Our custom manual installation allows the setup process to be
more unique. But we take things even further by tweaking the
settings to eliminate several security issues. This greatly
reduces the risk posed by hackers and rogue programmers from
injecting code into your blog that enables a backdoor entry,
allowing them to steal information, enter their own, or completely
disable your blog.
What About Wordpress Themes?
Wordpress themes are a group of files that
work together to give a visually appealing layout of the information
created through Wordpress. These themes usually have sidebars,
footers, headers and specially coded content areas. Due to the
fact that Wordpress is open source software, available to the
masses... there are literally thousands of companies and people
worldwide that create themes for it. A theme changes how your
blog looks and feels and many themes add additional features
as well. You can usually change the look of your site
by changing items such as the images. This allows you to create
just about any type of blog, web page or site that you can think
of.
There are thousands of themes available
in all price ranges and many that are completely free of charge,
while others can cost up to few hundred dollars. You have to
be careful when selecting a free theme because some may contain
malicious code or various links embedded in encoded sections
of PHP code. Some could be very detrimental to your blog. Many
authors of these free themes sell links to web site owners,
embed them in the footer script, and then encode the script
so that they cannot be removed. Some themes even have embedded
code that allows the authors to remotely change the links found
in the footer, or worse in some cases.
The issue at hand is not only the fact
that malicious code may be hidden in the encoded PHP, but any
time a web site contains numerous links to unrelated sites,
Google may interpret that as "purchased" links, a
practice that search engines have been on a vendetta about for
the past few years. In other words, even if the theme is legitimate,
but contains links to casinos, ring tone sites or any type of
site that is unrelated to the theme or content for your blog,
you put your blog at risk for receiving a penalty from Google.
This can greatly reduce the ability for your blog to rank, or
rank well. Without ranking, natural traffic (that found in the
search engines) is greatly diminished, even non-existant.
What is acceptable and legitimate
is for the theme author to include links back to their own web
site where the theme was developed. It is quite common to find
links to Wordpress theme sites or a designer’s web site, so
you do not need to be concerned about those types of links.
What Are Wordpress Plugins For?
A Wordpress plugin is a piece of software
that is written to give your blog more functionality. There
are literally thousands upon thousands of plugins available.
You can usually find a Wordpress plugin for almost anything
you want your blog to do.
The problem that arises with plugins is
that the more of them you have, the slower your blog will become.
So you shouldn't have a plugin installed or activated just for
the sake of having it there. For example, if you are not going
to use a twitter account with your blog (or maybe don’t even
have one) then there is no point in installing a Twitter plugin.
Now, in the world of Wordpress plugins,
some are free, some you have to pay for. But the big question
is this, "which ones will truly help your blog and
not hamper it?" You should always keep in mind the
following when using a plugin: will it increase your efficiency
of your blog by doing something that is required over and over;
or "is it user friendly, not only to your visitors, but
also to the search engines?" Or both!
Up-To-Date Themes And Plugins
Out of date themes and plug-ins can cause
issues with your blog. For instance, a popular image re-sizing
plug-in, "TimThumb" was recently the target of a security
breach that could potentially lead to a blog being hacked. It
is important to know what themes you are using, where they came
from and are they up to date.
This also applies to plugins. There are
literally thousands of plugins and more coming on the market
everyday. A good many never work, or have never been tested
with various themes. While we can't cover all the plugins here,
we include popular tested plugins with both the basic and premium
installations as described below.
Standard Installation
Package
Standard Installation is known as "the
basics" you need to get Wordpress up and running. We will
have tested and installed three (3) themes. You can make your
choice in the beginning and even change later if you decide
you want a new look. Many of the universally used basic plugins
will be installed to allow you to choose the ones that best
suit your needs.
Additionally, we will include and/or
do the following:
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Setup on your host's
server with a MySQL database that stores and manages your
blog's content and settings.
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Professional, care free,
MANUAL installation of the latest version of Wordpress on
your host's server.
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Install and activate
a variety of popular and free plugins that extend the capabilities
of Wordpress.
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A Theme bundle. You
can choose one of three (3) themes initially, but have the
other two already installed in the event you decide to change
the look at a later date. To see the choice of the basic
installed themes,
Click Here.
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Optimize link structure
(To improve search engine ranking).
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Configured to automatically
notify search engines, RSS feed directories and social media
sites when you publish new content.
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Integration of compliance
documentation pages – Privacy Statement, Terms Of Usage,
and Disclaimer.
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Install a robots.txt
file to guide the search engine spiders indexing your site.
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Set up one (1) custom
email address (you@yourdomain.com).
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Automatic online database
backup set up and configured.
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Set up contact form
so visitors can easily contact you.
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Set up simple, concise
stats with no additional load on your server.
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Set up anti-spam and
security measures to deter malicious behavior.
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Improve your server
performance, caching every aspect of your blog, reducing
the download time of your theme and providing transparent
content delivery network (CDN) integration.
-
Thoroughly test prior
to delivery to make sure there are no errors or problems
with the installation.
Premium Installation
Package
The premium package comes with everything that is in the standard
package as stated above, PLUS a custom program written
in-house that we call Sitescan Inspector. One of the
things hackers are known to do is insert invisible iframe
code on your site. Your site is intact and everything looks
fine but... when anyone visits your site, the iframe loads
a script from another site.
Example: A script that issues false security
alerts and fake scan results to try and trick the visitor
into thinking that their computer is infected so they will
then purchase it. Sitescan Inspector monitors the files
on your server 24/7 and if any of them have been changed,
it will warn you by sending an email that contains a list
of the files that have been modified.
Sitescan Inspector is NOT a plugin and
is installed in such a way that it is difficult for hackers
to disable it. You are notified by email when anything on
your site is modified, so if you've NOT been to your site,
you will know to check it for inconsistencies, or have your
hosting company look for malicious or suspicious activity.
Additionally, we will
include and/or do the following:
- Include everything in the Basic Installation as described
above, PLUS....
- A largerTheme bundle. You can choose
one of six (6) themes initially, but have the other five
already installed in the event you decide to change the
look at a later date. To see the choice of installed themes,
Click Here.
- Install up to three (3) images you provide, where you
choose.
- Create custom Google account so you have use of Feedburner,
Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.
- Set up Feedburner account for RSS feed.
- Set up and verify Google Webmaster Tools.
- Set up and configure Google Analytics.
- Configure and setup both HTML sitemap for visitors and
XML sitemap for search engines.
- Set up automatic tweeting of posts. (requires Twitter
account)
- Install social networking and Facebook Like buttons
on posts.
- Set up automatic backup system that creates an archive
(as a .zip file or .tar.gz file) of ALL your Wordpress
data & files which is ‘sent’ to a remote
storage provider (up to two gigabytes of free storage). The
archive can also be 'sent' to your computer as well! (PC
and MAC compatible)
- Thoroughly tested prior to delivery to make sure there
are no errors or problems with your installation, also
included in the Basic Package install..
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