Using Content Management Systems (CMS) makes building websites so much faster, but left unmaintained the site can hurt more than help. We run firewalls on the sites we build and one of the popular tactics we see in the logs is “File Inclusion”. These files often redirect “Search” users to other sites. This will cause a site’s reputation to be affected.

Running updates is not always easy. For the most part the updates work great, but when they go wrong and they can you have to restore the site. When we have had updates go wrong, so we always start with a full backup. Even if the site is small this first step is so worth it. It is probably the best and fastest way to recover your site.

Maintenance isn’t always updates; moreover, this is great time to look at any comments your site may have gotten. This is the time we look at the firewall and block IPs that are repeat offenders. This is also a good time to verify your Google Analytics is tracking correctly. We also take a peek at the users to make sure we don’t see any bad actors in there as well.

We log into unmaintained customer sites and often see many updates that are needed, and it can be scary. So many possible changes. If you read this article and are unsure about updating your website please contact us and we can help. Better safe than sorry….

Let us know if this helped you in any way.