Is it safe to update WordPress or my plugins myself? What about my theme updates?

This is something I often hear from WordPress website owners: “I was going to install my updates but I didn’t want to break anything.” This trepidation is not unfounded. Updates seem to have a way of breaking what we’re attempting to maintain, on occasion. Not always, but sometimes.

The truth is that a WordPress update can cause something to break for may reasons. This can any time an update is applied, without warning. The best course of action to deal with these issues is to have a complete website backup secured and accessible, ready to be restored if needed.

The below information is aimed at helping you understand the various aspects of a WordPress website which must be considered in order to backup your website completely so that it may be restored with ease if the need ever arises.

Continue reading…

Small Business WordPress Websites

Small businesses have unique needs when it comes to their websites. The most obvious of these needs are performance in the form of sales or conversions, affordability, and scalability. WordPress is perfectly suited to fill these needs.

Small Business Sales / Conversions with WordPress

Unless other accommodations are being made, a website development plan which does not include a search engine optimization and conversion strategy is inherently flawed. Every website should have goals: create sales, deliver lead form submissions, newsletter signups, or simply page views. Establishing a list of goals allows for proper micro- and macro-analytic tracking which will allow conversion rate optimization to be applied.

 Conversion rate optimization is the process of reviewing conversion analytic data in order to ascertain specific reasons behind a successful, or unsuccessful, conversion strategy.  Continue reading…

Managed WordPress Hosting | WordPress Website Hosting Security

Due to a recent increase in malicious activity directed at websites with out-of-date software, it has become necessary for us to make modifications to our hosting services and rates. These modifications represent our ongoing effort to provide our clients with secure, professional hosting services.

Although it is true that hackers are working day and night to find security vulnerabilities to exploit in every CMS (not just WordPress), the good guys are doing their part as well. By issuing regular updates to the WordPress Core, WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Themes these web developers are actively patching potentially exploitable holes in security. These updates will not do any good if they are not installed, however. The Bellingham WP Managed WordPress Hosting service has been created as an affordable option to address these security concerns.
Continue reading…

Comcast DNS Issues | Troubleshooting and Fix

Shared from the Bellingham WP Facebook page. View the post on Facebook.

Last night I was having issues with my internet connection through Comcast. After some initial troubleshooting, the issue appeared to be with Comcast’s DNS. After hard-coding Google’s DNS server addresses into my network adapter the issue was resolved.

Continue reading…

Is your website responsive? | Responsive WordPress

Your website should look good for your visitors and customers at all times. Don’t you agree? Not only does this require rock-solid WordPress Hosting, but also a properly coded website.

Have you ever loaded a website on your cell phone and had a very poor experience? Maybe the white text displayed on a white background making it unreadable, or maybe a slideshow failed to load. Regardless, I feel confident that we have all experienced a non-responsive website at some point in time.

 Without a proper responsive website design, your website could be unusable for your customers when they need it most. 

Continue reading…

Bellingham WP’s Sustainable Connections Membership

Triple Wren Farm's Flowers

I’m very proud to announce that Bellingham WP has become a member of Sustainable Connections. Sustainable Connections is a membership-based group of local businesses whom understand the benefits of supporting our local economy while committing to sustainable business practices. Holding a membership with Sustainable Connections has been a goal of mine for Bellingham WP ever since we began offering website design services.

Continue reading…

The Importance of Proper WordPress Permalinks for Search Optimization

What are permalinks?

Permalinks are an important part of every WordPress website’s SEO efforts. So, what are they exactly? The term permalinks refers to the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for specific pages and posts. Take a quick look up at the address bar while you’re viewing this post and you will see the end result of a proper permalink structure. As you can see, the URL for this post is https://www.bellinghamwp.com/wordpress-seo/the-importance-of-proper-wordpress-permalinks-for-search-optimization/. The permalinks that I have set within the dashboard of WordPress are responsible for the /wordpress-seo/the-importance-of-proper-wordpress-permalinks-for-search-optimization/, where /wordpress-seo/ is the category and /the-importance-of-proper-wordpress-permalinks-for-search-optimization/ is the post name. With regard to search engines this is a perfect, keyword-rich URL structure. But WordPress doesn’t come this way by default.

Continue reading…