Running a Joomla! Site comes with the same complexities and challenges as any CMS and requires attention to security, updates and management tasks.

With most web hosts offering a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack it is a simple process to get your Joomla! site running juts about anywhere. The challenging bit has always been how to secure Joomla! and or manage your Joomla! Instance or instances.

The managing of a single Joomla! Site can be time consuming and running multiple Joomla! Sites can add an extra layer of complexity and additional time resource both of which costs money.

To manage Joomla! easier, the good people from Plesk have come up with a Plesk Extension called Joomla! Toolkit. As the name suggests it’s a web Toolkit that takes out the time consuming complexities of managing your Joomla! Sites.

The following are a few key features that the Joomla! Toolkit gives you and your Joomla! hosting. 

I make note that not all web hosts provide the Joomla! Toolkit and if you are running your own Plesk VPS you will need to buy the license however I am sure that when you see the benefit of the Joomla! Toolkit, you will either want to change to a Web Host who does support the Joomla! Toolkit or purchase the Joomla! Toolkit Plesk Extension. 

Joomla! Toolkit – Mission Control

The Joomla! Toolkit provides you with what Plesk terms as its Mission Control. This gives you a single overview of all your Joomla! Instances on your server and the ability to manage all of them from this single view.
You can quickly see if there are any updates required, your backup status and the health of your Joomla! Instances.

With the Joomla! Toolkit you can use the one click installer which does everything from start to finish. It downloads the latest version of Joomla! And automatically installs it to your hosting environment. It also creates and manages the database and with its automatic configuration and hardening of instances you can quickly spin up a secure ready to use instance of Joomla!.

In most instances you generally already have a Joomla! Site and are migrating from one host to another so there is no requirement to do a fresh install, this is ok as the Joomla! Toolkit has the ability to scan your server for any new instances of Joomla! And it automatically adds it to the toolkit ready for you to manage.

Once you have your Joomla! Instances running on your server the 1-Click hardening feature allows you to scan all Joomla! Instances with the security scanner to identify and protect your core installations. You then can choose what you wish to harden and secure.

As we all know keeping your Joomla! Up to date with the latest security releases is essential. With millions of bots scouring the Internet looking for vulnerabilities having an up to date website is key. The hackers are not specifically targeting you; they are simply looking for an out of date system that they can use to exploit other sites or launch other malicious activity like DDOS attacks. Remember you have to get your security right every time the hacker only needs to get it right once. 

With the Joomla! Toolkit you can set up the automatic update system that will update your Joomla! Instance when a new release for core, components, module or plugin is released. It will also update your template if available. This setting is fully controlled by you and can be disabled or set for updating Bug Fixes only or feature releases and bug fixes.

Prior to any automatic update the Joomla! Toolkit can take a snapshot backup of your site just in case you need to roll back. You can also view every backup action in the audit log.

You also have the ability to set up scheduled backups with daily or weekly options. This backup is independent of Plesk Backup and gives you that granular control over your Joomla! Instance itself. 

If time is money then the Joomla! Toolkit is well worth the small investment for a Plesk license if you are running your own Plesk Server. Feel free to grab a Plesk license from our store.

 If you have a Conetix VPS we can provide you with an upgraded key and install the Joomla! Toolkit for you. 

If you are on a web host that can not provide the Joomla! Toolkit please reach out to one of our team here at Conetix. We provide FREE migrations and we can even provide your first month for FREE so you can instantly take advantage of the Joomla! Toolkit.

1. One-Click Joomla! Installation

Gone are the days of wrestling with complex installation processes. With the Plesk Joomla! Toolkit, deploying the latest version of Joomla! is as easy as a single click. This feature eliminates the hassle of manual installations, allowing you to set up a new Joomla! instance effortlessly.

Whether you’re launching a personal blog, an e-commerce website, or a corporate portal, the convenience of one-click installation saves you valuable time and effort, enabling you to focus on building and refining your website’s content and functionality.

The Joomla! Toolkit One-Click install also goes the extra mile and adds extra security features like a random prefix to your default database install it also installs the latest core and up-to-date extensions plus creates a full audit log so you can easily see all user install actions. 

2. Automated Updates and Security Checks

Keeping your Joomla! website up-to-date and secure is crucial in today’s cyber landscape. The Plesk Joomla! Toolkit automates the update process, ensuring that your Joomla! hosted Core and extensions are always running the latest versions with essential security patches applied.

Furthermore, the Joomla! toolkit performs regular security scans, detecting vulnerabilities and potential threats to your website’s integrity.

By proactively addressing security concerns and staying current with updates, you can fortify your Joomla! site against malicious attacks and ensure uninterrupted performance.

3. Backup and Restore Functionality

Data loss can be catastrophic for any website owner. Fortunately, the Plesk Joomla! Toolkit includes robust backup and restore functionality, providing peace of mind in the event of unforeseen disasters. 

With just a few clicks, you can schedule automated backups of your hosted Joomla! site, including files, databases, and configurations. Should the need arise, you can easily restore your website to a previous state, minimizing data loss and ensuring business continuity. 

Whether it’s a minor mishap or a major catastrophe, having reliable backup and restore capabilities is indispensable for safeguarding your Joomla! website’s data and preserving your hard work. 

With the added protection of the Joomla! Toolkit creates an automated backup prior to any upgrade or update you are always secure in the knowledge that you have a recovery point.

In conclusion, the Plesk Joomla! Toolkit is a game-changer for Joomla! website hosting management, offering a wealth of features that streamline workflows, enhance security, and elevate performance. 

Whether you’re a seasoned developer or a novice user, these top five features empower you to unlock the full potential of your Joomla! website with ease and confidence.

Embrace efficiency, harness innovation, and elevate your Joomla! web hosting presence with the Plesk Joomla! Toolkit today!

Take the example of a small business. They manage their own website, which receives a low and steady amount of traffic. Then, the company is featured in a news article, on television, or promoted during a community event. They receive an unprecedented spike in traffic. With so many individuals on an unprepared website, it can slow down and crash.

We saw this happen during the 2016 Australian census, where thousands of people completed the census online for the first time, and the website could not keep up with the traffic. These incidents normally happen when you least want them to occur: when your business is in the limelight.

There are a few things you can do to keep your website available and prevent web traffic overload.

1. Prepare for website traffic overload by running load tests

A website load test gauges whether a website can sustain a spike in traffic. The test simulates heavy user loads to flag bottlenecks before they arise in a production setting.

Using a load test lets you test capacity before your site is tested by external forces. Run load tests before busy periods begin to make sure your website can manage peak load. If you leverage a content delivery network (CDN), make sure it is also not overloaded. Consider using an external resource to run the load test, ideally someone with experience managing website crashes due to high traffic. 

There are various types of load tests you can perform to test performance and scalability. These include:

• Stress Testing: This simulates different conditions for you to see how much traffic your website can handle. It shows the breaking point before it becomes overloaded or crashes. You should set up multiple stress testing tools to simulate as many users as possible.
• Load Testing: This checks whether your website can handle a certain number of concurrent requests. You should also apply different settings on the load testing tool, such as browser types, locations, and operating systems. Using different settings will provide an accurate result of what traffic your website can take before becoming overloaded or crashing.

2. Scale back on WordPress plugins and themes

Plugins and themes are great to use as they can speed up your website’s performance. But if you have too many plugins or themes, they can overload the server with memory usage. For example, if you have 20 plugins each using 20MBs of memory, that will be 400MBs in total. That might not seem like a lot, but it is enough to slow down your website.

Make sure you only use essential plugins or those that speed up your site’s performance, such as caching plugins like WP Super Cache or WPTouch.

Your WordPress theme can also contribute to the poor performance of your business website. If the theme is complex and has many features, your website will be slow. So, it is best to use a simple theme that only has the necessary features.

Do not forget to submit your site for Google PageSpeed Insights and see how you can improve its performance by reducing page load times with plugins and themes.

3. Caching plugins can reduce website traffic overload

Caching is one of the most efficient methods to improve the speed of your website. Caching is when a server stores copies of your website data allowing the server to generate and deliver your website pages much faster to a user’s browser. By requiring the server to use fewer resources to load a page, caching will help reduce Time to First Byte (TTFB) or the time it takes for your website to start loading.

Plugins can speed up load times by caching pages, posts and categories on your site. You can also set different types of cache rules according to how you want it to behave, for example:

• Cache a page’s content only after updating it.
• Always cache posts and pages added within the past week or specific dates.

These rules allow you to control when caching should occur and how much of your site will be cached. Also, make sure that caching works correctly by checking your site from different locations and browsers.

To take full advantage of caching, you should also combine it with other methods such as a CDN which brings cached files closer to users geographically speaking, reducing the distance data has to travel back and forth between servers and clients. A CDN can reduce latency or ‘lag’, which increases during high traffic periods.

4. Keep WordPress comments under control

Comments can also add unexpected load to websites when there is a spike in traffic. It is essential that you keep WordPress comments under control to prevent website traffic overload. You can disable pingbacks and automatic pinging by turning off the ‘Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)’ option under Settings → Discussion.

You could also install a plugin that will automatically moderate comments, such as WP-Comments Blacklist or Akismet, to keep spam and offensive content off your site by filtering out suspicious links in the comments section. Many other plugins can help you control WordPress comments too, so it is best to experiment with a few.

5. The right hosting plan can prevent website traffic overload

The quality of service you get for web hosting is often proportional to the amount of money you pay. For example, shared hosting will struggle to handle high traffic periods compared with a dedicated or managed server. So, if your site is getting too much web traffic and struggling to keep up, then maybe it is time to look into other plans that are more suitable such as a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or managed hosting.

With dedicated servers, you get complete control over the server. You can install advanced caching plugins and a CDN which can help speed up your site by allowing cached files to load faster from different locations. This way, users worldwide will not have to use as much bandwidth or wait for slower response times to load your website with cached files.

Conetix optimise your website to prevent traffic overload

The right hosting plan can prevent website traffic overload and give you full control of your site’s performance with flexible caching, CDNs and plugins, along with increased processing power so users can load your website quickly without crashing or slowing down.

Conetix provides Australian businesses with fast and reliable hosting on an Australian-based cloud network. We can prepare your website for unprecedented traffic to keep it running when the spotlight is on. Visit our Managed WordPress Hosting page for more on our capabilities.

Many WordPress providers offer plugin management as part of their offering, but it is essential to analyse what type (and quality) of management they perform. Many provide automated updates without a professional double-checking them and ensuring the plugins have updated correctly without error. Sometimes a plugin looks to have updated correctly however if you look deeper there may be lots of PHP errors causing your site to slow down. Even worse, they could cause website functionality failures that you may not notice until you stop receiving new orders. 

Below are some of the ways Conetix approaches plugin management as part of our Managed WordPress offering.

We allow you to install any WordPress plugin you require

Many WordPress hosting providers restrict certain WordPress plugins. Backup and cached plugins often top the list of WordPress plugins restricted by managed hosting providers because they often tend to interfere with the hosting providers’ managed caching and scripted automated update system. As a result, the Managed WordPress company provides the caching engine and the developer has no control over what can and can’t be cached.

Your Managed WordPress hosting provider should update the core, WordPress plugins and themes as often as necessary. Updating all elements of your website prevents vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins that could limit performance. A snapshot backup should also be taken at this update point for quick and easy roll back in the event of an issue. 

When a Managed WordPress provider provides their own caching engine with their hosting it can restrict your site in a number of ways. 

• No ability to Manage what can and can’t be cached
• No ability to set cache expiry
• No ability to bypass the caching engine all together and run your preferred WordPress caching plugin
• Limits what other plugins you may wish to use that are not compatible with their caching engine

We understand the importance of WordPress plugins for enhancing your website’s functionality and feature customisation. That is why our Managed WordPress solution supports a range of WordPress plugins, offering flexibility for both developers and end-users. You can install and update default WordPress plugins and even custom plugins without having to limit your options. 

We protect against WordPress plugin failure with frequent backups

There are various WordPress plugins available that add functionality to a WordPress website, with many of them created by third-party developers. They may interfere with the functionality and performance of your website and cause it to crash if not managed well. That is why we recommend you backup your website.

There are two vital components when it comes to backing up your website: 

• Automated backup: Spares the front-end user the effort needed for manual backup.
• Cloud-based backup: Stores data safely on your server or even your Managed WordPress host’s server.

Weekly backups are industry standard for protection against WordPress plugin failure. At Conetix, we have set our standards a cut above the rest by providing nightly backups.

Nightly backups protect data on your website from loss and also restore the website quickly. Website downtime and WordPress plugin failure can mean loss of income; the earlier you restore your website, the better. 

We also carry out backup before any upgrade or update. Our backups also use two different methods of backup up for your WordPress instance. We take a full server-wide backup and store it on our independant double parity NAS and also take a backup via WordPress itself using UpdraftPlus Premium which is once again stored on an entirely different double parity NAS. When you choose our Managed WordPress hosting services, you also gain access to Plesk WordPress Toolkit. Plesk has fantastic features like Cloud Backup and Restore, which allows you to take your own copy of your site to a cloud based storage system of your choice. The choices include Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and SFTP.

Plugin updates checked by a WordPress professional

WordPress plugin updates are essential for the smooth operation of any WordPress website. Plugin updates can either be automated or conducted manually. An automated solution checks for installed WordPress plugin updates on a regular basis. If a plugin update is available, it installs the updated version.

While automated updates may seem like the ultimate WordPress solution, it is a bit of a grey area. When managed WordPress hosts and admins automate WordPress plugin updates, they often fail to check if the updates work. The updated plugin may be coded poorly or may interfere with other functionalities on the site. This is often the case with third-party WordPress plugin updates.

It is essential to have a human eye counter-check each plugin update despite the convenience of an automated solution. That critical human eye is what you get when choosing Conetix as your Managed WordPress provider. Ideally that eye also belongs to an experienced professional on these matters!

The Conetix staff are accredited professionals that check and verify our customer’s WordPress plugin updates. Our Australian-based team deeply understands the WordPress landscape and are available when you need them. If something goes wrong on your end, we know before you even tell us, and can take the right course of action to restore your site.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) for WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugin developers work hard to improve the functionality and efficiency of their plugins. However, black hat hackers are also hard at work creating malware and always looking for new vulnerabilities in these plugins.

Expired WordPress plugins have vulnerabilities that are easily exploited by hackers causing substantial losses. Good WordPress hosting providers check the licenses on all plugins and update these upon expiry.

Updating WordPress plugins as soon as a new version comes out is standard practice for most managed WordPress service providers. However, WordPress plugins may still be exploited by unethical hackers even before an update is necessary. This fact necessitates a Web Application Firewall (WAF) on every WordPress website.

A WAF protects applications, such as WordPress plugins, by monitoring and filtering HTTPS traffic. WAFs automatically block malicious traffic intended to cause harm to your applications and paralyse your website.

A WAF will protect your plugin resources from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks send overwhelming traffic to applications and resources that block out genuine website users, and potentially brute force their way into your website. A WAF for WordPress plugins also protects your website pages from brute force attacks and hacking.

Managed WordPress hosting providers should offer a comprehensive security package. Some WordPress hosting providers only provide WAF plugins and some limit what security you can install. Conetix offers cloud-based WAF security as a standard offering in all our packages.

Managed WordPress with Conetix

Conetix provides Australian businesses with fast and reliable hosting on an Australian-based cloud network. Our Managed WordPress plans include all plugin updates, frequent backups, and access to our dedicated and accredited support team.

Visit our Managed WordPress page to learn more about the benefits Conetix can offer you.

Many freelancers and digital agencies in Australia and worldwide earn additional income by joining affiliate programs with web hosting providers. Other web developers choose to become resellers of web hosting in addition to their web development jobs.

Is your WordPress web hosting making you money? Your WordPress web hosting can make you money – and free up time, to help you build your business –  if you deal with the right web hosting provider.

What to look for in a web hosting affiliate program

There are a few points that might influence your decision to join an affiliate program:

1. Quality of the web hosting

Your goal is to create a good and responsive website for your client. In a bid to make more money as an affiliate, you must not neglect the core of your professional duty, which is to deliver a stunning website with a user-friendly interface.

Bad web hosting can create downtime, make even the most beautiful pages load slowly or incompletely, causing high latency and impacting the end-user experience. Choosing a web hosting provider that is committed to delivering consistent quality can prevent these issues from arising.

2. Relationship of the WordPress web hosting provider with customers

The WordPress web hosting provider you choose should have customer service at the ready and provide quick solutions to the problems you encounter while leveraging their hosting solution. 

The more time you are spending fixing web hosting issues, the less time you can spend billing for high-value work you enjoy.

3. Long term usability

Before choosing a WordPress web hosting affiliate program, you need to ensure the affiliate program stands the test of time. You do not want to select a plan that will elapse after a short period.

For example, a WordPress web hosting provider may start a promotion campaign to attract affiliates at the end of every year. This type of affiliate program is not something you should consider if you want consistent income because the provider can terminate them at any time.

It is best to opt for affiliate programs with long term plans. We offer our affiliates a lifetime commission for WordPress web hosting fees paid to the company by the affiliate’s links.

Web Hosting Affiliate or Web Hosting Reseller: which should I be?

You can earn money as a web hosting affiliate or as a reseller. What should determine your choice should be the nature of your clients and the nature of your business.

For example, if you are a web developer who designs a website for clients who hire you, you may want to become a web hosting affiliate. If you own a digital agency, you will do well as a web hosting reseller. We cannot choose for you but will guide you in selecting the right one for you.

If you become a web hosting reseller, your job will be to resell web hosting under your brand name even though the web hosting provider will provide web hosting services to customers who buy web hosting from you. Web hosting reselling and web hosting affiliate marketing both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Pros and Cons of becoming a web hosting reseller

If you are a web hosting reseller, you have to own your brand, which deals with reselling web hosting. The original web hosting provider must understand that you are purchasing web hosting for resale and should run a program to support this.

A web hosting reseller does not suffer the burden of providing technical web hosting solutions to customers. It is the original web hosting provider that is responsible for technical web hosting solutions if necessary.

The weakness of web hosting resale is one of differentiation: what makes your brand different? The best way to overcome this demerit as a web hosting reseller is to package your services on top of the web hosting, in a unique way, that will attract customers whilst preserving your profitability.

Pros and Cons of becoming a web hosting affiliate

Your job as a web hosting affiliate is to connect customers to web hosting sellers for commission. You are a marketer who does not need to own a brand as a web hosting reseller. 

The significant advantage of becoming a web hosting affiliate is that you need very little capital. All you need is the ability to link people to the web hosting provider for a commission.

Becoming a web hosting affiliate is a quick path to passive income. Once you set up your affiliate link, it does not matter if you invest any other resources into the setup; you will make your agreed commission as long as customers visit the web hosting provider through the link.

Join Conetix’s Affiliate Program

It is pertinent to remember that you should look for a quality company that offers a long term affiliate program. Conetix offers good affiliate and reseller programs, which you can choose from depending on your business and clients.Visit our website to learn more about the benefits of our affiliate program.

Read on for eight reasons why you should choose Managed WordPress hosting;

1. Complete Core, Plugin and Theme Management

It can be challenging to figure out the right ways to manage your WordPress site. Have you had a plugin update go wrong and stop your WordPress website from working? Or, been in a situation where no one is managing the updates, leaving your site vulnerable? 

Active WordPress management can be a major time-saver because of the convenience of never worrying about managing and updating your core, plugins and themes because a managed WordPress provider handles everything from the installation process and testing to security management. 

2. Customer support with robust WordPress knowledge

From technical challenges to core WordPress updates, it can feel like a major hassle to manage everything yourself. That is why you need a customer support team with a deep, technical understanding of WordPress to provide the right support.

An excellent Managed WordPress provider will offer support from experts with years of experience providing specialised support for WordPress-based sites. Whether it is a plugin conflict or a buggy theme, you can trust the experts to support you.

3. WordPress hosting servers located in your country

Domestic hosting can be a significant advantage when it comes to site performance. Choosing WordPress servers located in Australia improves your website performance by decreasing server connectivity delay. WordPress hosting servers based in Australia means you benefit from higher site speeds due to minimal latency.

The added benefit of keeping your data within Australia helps you with Data Sovereignty and Data residency security concerns or requirements.  

4. Protection from hacks and malware

With new digital threats emerging every day, it is crucial that you prioritise site security. A Managed WordPress provider takes charge of your security processes by providing enhanced security and monitoring options. Managed WordPress hosting creates a secure WordPress environment by actively monitoring for potential threats and malware. This protection extends into broader server-level monitoring to keep your digital resources safe.

5. Your WordPress website automatically backed-up

Most conventional hosting backups are highly technical and require a high degree of technical knowledge to function optimally. This can be a major inconvenience for most business owners that do not have the time to delve into the technical elements. Managed hosting prevents you from having to worry about manually backing-up your data by providing you with automated backup support.

6. Easy staging and local environments

A staging area is a copy of your website in a development environment that you can leverage to safely test and make changes before implementing them on your live site. A Managed WordPress hosting provider, can include simplified staging capabilities in your hosting plan. Simplified management of localised environments is a key feature that can help you with testing and deployment processes.

Accessing development tools during the testing phase ensures that the final iteration of your website is error-free upon deployment. Managed WordPress Hosting provides you with access to tools like Plesk WordPress Toolkit to simplify your development process when testing on your staging site.

7. Scaling as your website grows

With Managed WordPress hosting, the scalability of your Managed WordPress hosting plan is a major priority. Scalable hosting that grows with your website (and business) can be the ideal way to ensure that you have the right hosting and resources at your disposal in peak traffic times. For example, if you run an eCommerce site, you can be confident that your website will perform at the peak of the holiday season.

8. Managed WordPress is designed for high site performance

When it comes to digital metrics, site performance is the most important metric. Your site load speed can have a make-or-break affect on customer experience, so it is important to ensure your site performance is always up-to-par. Managed WordPress hosting allows you to benefit from superior performance because the server stack is optimised for a seamless WordPress experience.

Managed WordPress Hosting with Conetix

At the end of the day, Managed WordPress hosting is all about saving you the headache and optimizing your productivity by taking care of your technical requirements. With comparable prices to conventional hosting, it is clear that managed hosting is certainly worth the peace of mind.

Please get in touch with Conetix if you are a developer, digital agency or manage multiple WordPress websites. We would love to chat with you about how our Managed WordPress hosting solution can help.

Here are a few compelling reasons for you to choose an Australian-based Managed WordPress provider:

Keep your data in Australia

More businesses have prioritised data sovereignty as malicious privacy invasions increase. Data sovereignty ensures data stored by the hosting company is subject to the host country’s governance rules and laws.

Australian Managed WordPress providers keep your data in Australia and protect you against acting security concerns. It is mandatory for Australian data storage to comply with domestic law; similar requirements do not apply to foreign companies.

Choosing Managed WordPress in Australia ensures that you keep your customer data secure in domestic Australian data centers. Working with a domestic provider helps you comply with data sovereignty requirements by establishing a secure data handling environment. Doing so also helps you comply with active data protection legislation enacted by the Australian government.

Improve site load speed

Conventional site owners are often unaware of the site performance differences between offshore and domestic servers. Most people do not notice their offshore web host’s impact on site performance when the delay is a few milliseconds. Customers might notice a visible difference in page load speed, especially eCommerce businesses where customers are looking for a rapid response interface.

A major reason behind the delay is the time data takes to travel back and forth to Australian consumers through underwater cables. These cables are cramped with traffic, and peak hours can lead to noticeable lag time for customers. Opting for an Australian Managed WordPress provider allows you to skip all the trouble and have viable, localised data storage for consumers. This means consumer requests do not have to travel halfway around the world for a simple request allowing customers to have a lightning-fast experience.

Going with an Australian provider lets you take advantage of improved site load speed and personalised support. For businesses looking to target Australian consumers, Australian WordPress hosting can be the optimal option. Domestic Managed WordPress can cater to both your reliability and performance requirements with exceptional consistency. 

Another essential aspect in this regard is the impact local web hosting has on search results. Google has also specified site load speed as a major metric in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) rankings and localised search results.

Rank higher with local SEO

You need to be aware of all the contributing factors that can make a major difference in your visibility rankings on leading search engines. One of the biggest priorities for Australian businesses is to have visibility on local search engine results. You want to make it simple for your local clients to look up your business amongst your competitors.

Local SEO gives you better coverage for common local searches as Google conveys a preference for local content creators. For example, a law firm in Brisbane would have a lot of competition over traffic from search engines in their local niche.

Working with a proven Australian Managed WordPress provider is a great way to allow your business to rank higher with local SEO, ensuring better visibility of your business.

This improved visibility usually comes as a result of the way Google indexes localised search engine results. The company highlights local organic content to improve local search accuracy.

Even though it is difficult to have a clear list of all the metrics Google considers for search engine visibility, a local data server is a major contributing factor in improving business visibility. Choosing an Australian Managed WordPress provider allows you to improve your search engine visibility and enhance your indexing speed based on local server location.

Get support in your time zone

Many overseas companies claim to have 24/7 support, but upon calling you experience language barriers and automated messages from programmed chatbots. Companies without 24/7 support require you to coordinate their opening times as they do not operate in your time zone.

Choosing an Australian Managed WordPress provider can be a great way to bridge the time zone gap. A local hosting provider offers seamless support from personalised agents in your time zone. A local team can be an important decision-making factor for businesses looking to have reliable support.

Local support also means you talk to someone who understands your requirements from a local perspective. You can avoid the hassle of wasting time with language barriers and stuck in a situation where you are struggling to get your point across to offshore agents. It is important to choose a company with dedicated Australian support staff to get quality support whenever you need it.

Business owners need rapid response solutions so their operations can continue seamlessly. Local support in your time zone makes all the difference, whether it is potential support for a mail client integration or immediate setup help

Managed WordPress with Conetix

Conetix provides Australian businesses with fast and reliable hosting on an Australian-based cloud network. Our Managed WordPress plans include all updates, including those to the core system, plugins and themes, all backed by our friendly and knowledgeable support team.

Visit our Managed WordPress page to learn more about the local benefits Conetix can offer your business.

The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) are the key protocols used to communicate between your web browser and the web server. For example, here’s a very basic example:

While this is a simplified view, when the web server returns the data it’ll also send back a status code so that the browser knows if it was successful (200) or not.

While the list below isn’t all of the status codes, these are the common ones you may experience as well as some easy to understand examples of when they occur and what you action you need to take (if any).

200 OK

Example

Any website which loads without error. This is the code you expect to see from your web server most of the time.

301 Moved Permanently

Example

If you’ve changed website platforms where the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is now different, then adding 301 redirects tells the browser (or web crawler, eg Google) that the page, image or similar has moved permanently to a new location.

404 Not Found

Example

If you’ve deleted a page or renamed an image, it may generate a 404 if someone tries to access it. This is also common when you’ve built a new website and the URL structure has changed, so it’s important to analyse and redirect any broken links to the right location.

403 Forbidden

Example

403 means that the server received your request, but has denied access to it. This can be commonly seen if you’ve tried to login too many times with the wrong password or if you have blocks on specific pages or directories for your site.

500 Internal Server Error

Example

If you experience a 500 error, this generally means that there’s a bug or conflict in your website code. For example, if you’ve changed PHP versions and your website now throws 500 errors, it’s likely that the code isn’t compatible with the new version.

502 Bad Gateway

Example

This is generally a temporary error.

For example, if you change PHP versions for your site then you may experience 502 errors for a few seconds while the service is restarting. Make sure you refresh your browser and if the issue still persists after 30 seconds, contact your hosting provider.

503 Service Unavailable

Example

If you experience 503 errors, it can either mean that your site is hitting resource limits or that the webserver it’s hosted on doesn’t have enough capacity to respond (it may be overloaded).

When you see 503 errors, you can check your web server error logs for more details or contact your hosting provide for further assistance.

504 Gateway Timeout

Example

A 504 error generally means that the webserver talked to the process handling your website code (eg, PHP) but it took too long and didn’t return any information.

This can occur when you have a process which takes too long to run (eg it’s very resource intensive) or it relies on a third party system which may be down or slow to respond (eg image optimisation servers). You can check your web server error logs for further details or ask your hosting provider to see if they can provide further information.

522 / 524 Connection Timed Out

Example

This can be one you may see if your service is proxied through Cloudflare. It means that Cloudflare tried to talk to your server, but it never received a response in time. It may also appear as a 524 error, which virtually means the same thing.

If it’s a once off, it may that a service on your web server was restarting. This is expected behaviour for web servers and most will restart once a day to flush logs (generally early in the morning).

However, if it’s a continuous issue then it may be a script taking too long to process on your server or the server is overloaded. If you have your own Virtual Private Server, we recommend reviewing the Advanced Monitoring at the time you saw the 522 in order to determine if this is an issue or not.

Other Codes

With more than 50 specified codes, these are just the most common ones you may see when it comes to standard web hosting.

For a full list and basic description of each, we recommend also reading the Mozilla page on the status codes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status

If there’s one we’ve missed that you see all the time, please feel free to let us know in the comments below!

Main Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash