Why do you take your car to a mechanic? Why do you insure your home and business?
Because you want your assets maintained in tip top condition and you want to know you’re covered if anything does go wrong. Your website is no different.
To give you peace of mind that you’ve found the right “mechanic”, and you’re investing in the right “insurance” for your website, we’ve put together answers to a selection of questions we’re asked most often.
FAQ
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Yes, you aren’t locked in to any contracts or other “fine print” – you’re free to cancel your webmax365 account at any time.
As your payments are made in advance of service, this will take effect at the expiry of your current billing cycle. The exception is during the first 30 days – if, for any reason, you feel you’re not getting real value from our services, we’ll also fully refund your initial payment.
We’ll hate to see you go, but simply send us an email at support@webmax365.com.au.
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A Content Management System (CMS) is a tool that allows you to maintain the pages of your website, without the need for any technical skills. A CMS allows you to edit and add pages, images, products or blog entries to your website. No additional software is required – all you need is a web browser and an internet connection.
WordPress is the most prolific example of a CMS.
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Two reasons – Popularity and Vulnerability.
WordPress powers over 60% of all websites across the globe that use a content management system (CMS), while the balance is spread between more than 50 other developers! As specialists in maximising website security and performance, we focus on the platform that gives the greatest benefits to the largest number of people.
However, WordPress’ popularity is also its major weakness. While it’s the base for over 60% of CMS websites, 90% of all hacked CMS sites are WordPress! Attackers are constantly looking for ways in… on average, your website will be hit with over 60 attack attempts every single day!
Content Management Systems are inherently more vulnerable than non-cms systems. To allow users to modify their websites without the need for any technical skills means the system must contain many thousands of additional lines of code to allow this to happen. This automatically makes the platform vulnerable. In addition, it also has the ability to accept numerous plugins created by third party developers, any of which could contain bugs or malicious code.
It’s no different to your computer or mobile phone — you have to keep them up-to-date to both protect yourself and get hold of all the new features and functionality. If you don’t, you’re subject to hackers, malware and all sorts of other intrusions.
So, building your website is just the beginning! To keep it performing and protected, it needs to be regularly updated to patch discovered vulnerabilities, fix bugs, and maintain functionality.
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Sure, you can. But the real question is, SHOULD you?
Are you a website engineer or, like us, specialists in delivering maximum security and maximum performance for your website? No… so what makes you think this would be a good investment of your time and skills?
How much new business could you generate doing what you do best – running your business – while we do what we do best, keeping you online 24/7, without problems, without interruptions, and looking fantastic!
Get an in depth comparison of DIY versus Professional Support.
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No website is too small or too unknown to be hacked. 43% of all cyberattacks target small business! An average small to medium business website is attacked over 60 times every day.
In addition, a low-profile website is a nice playground for hackers to try out new tools and techniques. Hackers will often use automated tools to find vulnerable websites and won’t discriminate when it comes to the size or nature of their target.
Web applications, even if they’re not targets themselves, will also be of interest to attackers. Web applications with sloppy security are easy pickings.
Also, while you might not operate an eCommerce business with payment information etc., there are still plenty of other assets, data and resources a cybercriminal would love to get their hands on. These include:
Drive By Attacks: Your site is used as a “launch pad” – someone visits your website and software is maliciously installed on their computer which then gives the hacker access to that device. Your site, in itself, is of no interest beyond its ability to be the vehicle that installs malicious software onto other computers.
Email addresses: The email list you’ve worked so hard to build could be a target for phishers and scammers.
Your website’s traffic: A type of malware called a redirect can automatically send visitors from your site to a malicious website.
Your keyword rankings: Google uses keywords and links in your site to tell it where to rank you in search results. “SEO Spam” is a type of attack that injects spammy keywords and links into your site and forces it to show up in results for the unrelated keywords, while preventing you from displaying in searches for terms actually related to your business.
Your visitors’ attention: Defacements, a type of attack that vandalizes your site, are often executed with the intent to push a political or religious agenda.
Also, keep in mind that you might have to rebuild some or all of your website from scratch if you don’t have a clean, recent backup to restore from.
Read this POST for more information.
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Why should I pay for website security when I already pay for hosting?
Because your hosting provider only protects the server your website is hosted on, whereas webmax365 protects your website within that server.
Think of the server like an apartment building, and your website is one of the apartments. While the building might be protected by on-site security, each tenant (that’s YOU!) must secure your own “apartment”.
Check out this article to learn more.
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Yes, we do! However, each site in the multi-site setup needs to have its own webmax365 plan, but you can have a different type of plan for each site.
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Great news! we don’t charge extra to look after all your added functionality. While the ESSENTIALS Plus Plan will provide priority support and the PERFORMANCE Plan will help you build a better business, our core ESSENTIALS Plan will cover all your key security requirements.
Here are some examples of advanced functionality that we cover:
- eCommerce
- Membership Sites
- Learning Management Platforms
- Multilingual Sites
We’ll review your site as we work with you on selecting the most appropriate Plan.
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Not at all. While we provide a full suite of hosting options, we’ll work with any other hosting provider. Some, of course, are better than others and we do have our preferences.
We’ll review your web hosting and talk to your hosting company to make sure it fits with our specifications and your needs. Every hosting service is different — they have different operating systems, configurations, features, and other options. For example, if your site is running on a very slow shared server this might be limiting your resources and sacrificing both speed and security, so we might recommend an upgrade.
If you prefer to move your website to our Premium Web Hosting, we offer a FREE migration service.
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You don’t. We do it for you at no charge! All you have to do is provide us with access to your existing hosting and domain registrar accounts, and we’ll take it from there — with little or no downtime!
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Our team is distributed, meaning we work from around the globe! Our core team is based in Australia, while other staff work remotely from key locations.
This gives us the ability to provide 24/7 service. So, if your website crashes at 3am one morning, we’ll be notified within a few minutes, the issue will be addressed, and your site will be back up ASAP!
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Your Credit Card will be charged automatically on the same day each month. For example, if you start your Plan on the 10th, this will repeat each month on the 10th (or the next business day).
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Most of our clients elect to invest in a webmax365 Plan on a monthly basis. This regular, all-in-one charge is easy to budget for and provides peace of mind.
However, if you’d prefer to pay for your Plan annually (perhaps there’s a tax advantage), simply get in touch and we’ll have a chat.
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Yes, of course you can!
You can change plans at any time, by either upgrading or reducing your cover. Simply send us an email at support@webmax365.com.au and we’ll make it happen. A pro-rata adjustment to your monthly payment will be reflected in your next billing cycle.
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While search engines do flag some websites for being unsafe, they only flag 17% of websites infected with malware. That means search engines don’t provide any warning to the other 83%.
A search engine only finds malware on sites as fast as it crawls them. How often a search engine crawls a site depends on a variety of factors, which means it could be hours, days or weeks before your site is crawled and an infection is found. By the time Google alerts you, the damage has already been done!
FAQ2
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Once we’ve agreed to work together and you’ve signed up for the webmax365 plan that best meets your needs, you’ll receive a welcome email with details about how to securely send us the login credentials for your WordPress dashboard and hosting provider. Once received, we’ll initiate your plan within 24-48 hours.
Some elements like speed enhancements can take up to a week to configure as we need to optimize your unique core files, theme and plugins while ensuring there’s no interruptions to your site.
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If your plan includes support tasks, these are defined as any maintenance requiring, on average, 30 minutes or less. We can make content and image updates, theme or stylesheet adjustments, configure forms, add new blog posts or set up additional pages. We’ll take care of almost anything that isn’t a major change or fix.
However, adding additional functionality to your website that does not already exist, such as eCommerce or a membership plugin etc., are not included as part of the monthly support tasks and will require a separate project proposal.
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This applies to our Performance Plan. Your time allocation does not accumulate, so we encourage you to use this time as much as possible each month to get maximum benefit from your webmax365 Plan.
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If your plan includes support tasks, you simply send us an email.
To make sure any change requests are logged correctly, you will be provided with a “priority support” email address as part of the on-boarding process.
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While we’ll do everything we can to keep your website free of issues, sometimes things happen that are outside our control. For example, you may install a new plugin and your website breaks, so you need us to fix it for you.
If your webmax365 Plan includes Support Tasks, we’ll apply that time against resolving your issue. However, if the time needed exceeds your Support Task allowance, we’ll need to bill you for the additional time. But, don’t worry, we’ll investigate the situation, quote the work and get your approval before proceeding.
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Updates can apply to the core WordPress installation, to plugins or the themes you have installed.
Before we process these updates, we review and test them to reduce the chance of potential security and incompatibility problems with your website.
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Every day we check to see if any updates are available for your website. However, we usually process these once a week. There are several reasons for this. Sometimes plugin updates are released with bugs. Holding off on updates allows the plugin developer to resolve these bugs before we add them to your WordPress site.
Also, batching updates together means a more effective manual review. This, in turn, significantly reduces the likelihood that these changes will break your website.
Wherever possible, we do these updates at “off-peak” times when most websites receive less traffic. This creates a safer environment and minimises issues for your visitors.
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Your site is monitored 24/7 for malware and other malicious threats.
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When you think of a compromised website, you might picture a site that has had its appearance changed, perhaps with a shocking political or ideological message. This type of attack is called a defacement, and since it’s easy to spot, it’s commonly associated with compromised websites.
They are indeed common, making up around 18% of malware files. Other symptoms include:
- Spammy links appearing on your site
- New pages or files created on the site without your knowledge
- URLs on your site redirecting to other malicious websites
However, recent data shows that cybercriminals prefer types of malware that discreetly enter a site and stay hidden. Depending on the type of malware, your website might be infected and you may not realise it. A common and stealthy type of malware is a backdoor, which can be used by cybercriminals to enter and re-enter your website at any time. In 2018, 44% of infected sites were found to have at least one backdoor file.
Cybercriminals are generally more successful if their attacks go unnoticed, so they often work under the radar to take advantage of your website’s vulnerabilities. Once they secretly enter your website, they can access your data, steal traffic, deploy phishing schemes, and more.
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Yes! If you’re on the Performance Plan and malware is detected or a hacker or other intruder does get past our extensive front-line protections, we’ll take care of it.
We’re confident the chances of them breaching our systems are incredibly small, but we’ll take responsibility for cleaning up their mess if they do.
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All webmax365 Plans include a secure, off-site backup of your site to the Amazon S3 system. Depending on the plan you select, backups will happen either every night or once a week.
If you need a backup restored, just send us an email and we’ll take care of that for you.
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If included in your Plan, our up-time bot checks your website every 5 minutes. If it goes off-line, we are notified immediately and will investigate. However, with an up-time rate for our hosting system of 99.99%, downtime is a very rare occurrence.
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Our entire focus is on preventative care to provide Maximum Security and Maximum Performance. However, we can’t guarantee your website will never be hacked or taken off-line.
Should this happen, your site can be quickly restored using the latest backup.
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Every month, we send you a Security and Performance (S&P) Report. It contains detailed information about your website traffic, the updates we’ve installed, security data, and so much more.
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Business Strategy Support gives you the opportunity to ‘pick our collective brains’ on ways to improve your business and accelerate successful growth.
If your Plan includes Business Strategy Support, there are several ways we can make this happen. Email is a simple and effective form of communication and yields a fast response. However, phone or video calls are a great way to brainstorm ideas and solutions.
This time can also be used to finalise small updates or deliver the latest training to you and your team.
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All webmax365 Plans include unrestricted access to 100+ WordPress how-to Video User Tutorials in your dashboard, valued at over $400. These will help you manage your content, eCommerce site and website SEO.