WordPress Staging Sites Made Easy
Posted on by Morgan Kay WordPress recommends that you use PHP version 7 or higher. However, the vast majority of web hosts put your site on version 5.x by default. That means you probably need to update your site to PHP 7. In this post, I’ll talk about why and how to upgrade, and how to make sure the process goes smoothly, with no downtime on your site. Continue reading →
Posted on by Morgan Kay We launched a new website!
Our shiny new website required the combined talents of several fantastic people: Continue reading →
Posted on by Morgan Kay The New York Times article entitled “Let’s Get Excited About Maintenance!” is well worth a read. The authors, Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel, point out that our culture tends to value innovation and the creation of new things, but we do not pay as much attention to the more important task of maintaining what we have. Continue reading →
Posted on by Morgan Kay Your e-commerce site is your always-open store front. It makes money while you sleep! But to make sure it is always available for your customers, and that it can always generate income for you, you need to take steps to make sure your site is always up and always functioning properly. If you have an e-commerce site, here are some best practices for site maintenance to make sure your customers can give you money whenever they want. Continue reading →
Posted on by Morgan Kay On April 7 and 8, two of our staging servers suffered a file system failure. We were able to restore one server within a few hours, the the other took the better part of a day to restore. We want our customers to be able to rely on our servers, so here is a post-mortem of what happened and what we are doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
This is the first time in WP Stagecoach’s history that we have had a complete server failure. We are doing everything we can to make sure it is the last! Continue reading →
Posted on by Jonathan Kay I had the honor of being a guest on the How I Built It Podcast with Joe Casabona. Tune in to listen to me talk about how I got the idea for WP Stagecoach, running servers, and more!
Posted on by Corey Freeman The first step in setting up your website is to choose a web host. There’s a lot of information and options out there, so we’re going to take a look at the most essential things to think about. Let’s get started! Continue reading →
Posted on by Corey Freeman I often get requests to make broken websites work again. “It just stopped working,” they say. Or “I can’t make any changes anymore.” And I sigh and tap around on my keyboard to find the same horrifying scene…an ocean of tiny orange update circles. A mountain of unused themes. Media files filled out in triplicate. And, of course, a frantic email from the client asking me to rescue them.
Certainly, helping is what I do. And so today I will tell you exactly how to do the incredibly easy magic behind maintaining your WordPress website. Let’s get started! Continue reading →
Posted on by Corey Freeman Imagine a WordPress site. The front-end is perfectly fine, beautiful even. But you login and find a nightmare.
The orange “update” circles are everywhere. Half the plugins are deactivated. Some of them appear to be doing the same thing. And in the themes section? 30 different selections, none of them used.
And oh dear, the content. Post revisions, empty drafts, categories that never get posted to, tags that never get used, pages that were never published. The content section is a graveyard of abandoned ideas, and frankly it’s demotivating.
How can anyone possibly get anything done in that environment?! Continue reading →
Posted on by Corey Freeman Your brand is the personality of your product, and personalities are always evolving. As you develop you grow, your website should be growing with you. That doesn’t mean you have to disrupt your current customers with half-changes to your online hub.
It’s okay to grow and adjust, and it’s okay to do that behind the scenes.
That’s why staging sites are so incredible! Basically…
A staging site is a copy of your live site, where you can mess around with your existing website, overhaul it, and even add new functions. Then when you’re ready, you transfer those changes to your live site. Boom!
For example, you could… Continue reading →