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April 15, 2019

12 Reasons Why is WordPress is Our Favorite CMS

First of all, to understand why WordPress is the CMS we recommended to all of our clients, we need to understand what CMS is. According to Wikipedia, it is a system in-placed for your website to manage your website’s content. In other words, CMS simplified how you make changes to your website. So for example, in your main navigation instead of “Contact”, you want it to say “Contact Us”. The old HTML editing way, you need to change its main navigation label in every single page of your website.

For a company profile that consists only of 5-8 pages, it may take several minutes and not as much work. But how does it compare to a website like cnn.com or amazon.com? These websites have millions of pages. Therefore, it is inefficient to change every single page of that website. This where CMS shines, it allows you to have a managerial back-end to make your website updating faster and simpler.

So, Why WordPress?

There are at least hundreds of CMS available today, but only selected few that is popularly known. According to websetup.org’s article, WordPress is the most popular CMS used today (about 60% of the market share). The closes second (Joomla) has only 1/10 of the active websites compare to WordPress.

Due to the fact of WordPress being the most popular, it has numerous advantages because of it. Let’s discuss some of them here.

1. It is Open Source, Free, and Developers All Around the World is Contributing

WordPress is an open source platform, this means it is free to be used and modified. It is absolutely legal to make custom edits to the WordPress platform. If you happened to know some basic PHP and HTML coding, it is possible to create your own CMS using WordPress. But, that’s not what we will be discussing in this article.

Open source also means whoever has the capability to contribute and make WordPress a better platform are welcome to do so. For example, WordPress may already be translated into your native language, you can check the translation progression here, and you will be able to contribute today! WordPress uses the user base to empower back the platform.

In addition to that, the advantage of an open source and the most popular platform is developers from all corners of the world are contributing to making WordPress a better CMS. One of the benefits having countless developers to WordPress, it is constantly pushing updates and unlocking it to unlimited possibilities.

2. There are Over 50.000 Plugins Available

Being an open source platform allows WordPress to grow and evolve at a tremendous pace. In a daily basis, there are new plugins being listed at WordPress plugins page. So what’s is the advantage of having this plenty of plugins options?

Well, think of plugins like the software you used on your computer. So for example, you are using Windows as your Operating System, a vanilla Windows (the term we used to describe of default settings software without any modifications or software involved) will only have limited capabilities. You will still need to install Google Chrome, iTunes, Steam, PowerPoint, Excel and so on to really make your computer to be useable.

Same with WordPress, plugins are like the software you can install to the platform. Though, if you master programming languages for websites (PHP, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML), you will be able to make any kind of expansion to your website. However, learning to code may not be in your bucket list, or you simply do not possess the time for it.

Not to worry, WordPress plugins are freely available and able to minimize the coding process for your website. Plugins are really useful if you want to add a feature such as; adding your Google Analytics Tracking Code, Website Backups, Chat, Contact Form, SEO and so on. With plugins, you simply just download and install, the feature will be live within seconds. Many of them eliminate the coding process for your convenience.

Almost any feature you can think of is available at WordPress plugins. Some developers also decide to make their plugins under the “Premium” categorization, this means you may need to pay to get that particular plugin.

Check out our article 7 Free & Essentials WordPress Plugins to learn more about what Plugins you should add in your WordPress.

3. It’s Community Driven, Any Troubleshooting Problem You Encounter, You Will Find It with a Simple Google Search

Having the perks of being the most popular open source CMS, WordPress has active users and developers out there. Their forum is very active. Most likely any problem you encounter may have been resolved by someone else. Try to Google something like “How Do You Install Chat in WordPress”, guaranteed you will have different solutions to choose from.



4. Many Other Third Party Application Supports

WordPress has received tremendous support all around in developers’ community. Including from Google. For instance, you want to monetize your WordPress blog, in the official help of Google AdSense, there is a handy guide on how to install it on a WordPress website.

WordPress Google AdSense

Even at Google’s AdSense guide section, Google wrote a help guide how to integrate their service with WordPress

We also find WordPress is supported in many third party payment gateways (especially in Indonesia) such as Doku, Duitku, and Midtrans. WordPress has plenty of room to grow, this means you can transform your website to handle your blogging and commercial transactions. Though, you will need Woocommerce plugins to handle your eCommerce.

5. It is Easy to Find Video Tutorials on Youtube

Being the popular kid on the block means this platform is well-known to the public. Therefore, if browsing around the forum is not your thing, Youtube will give you a great alternative to find your WordPress’  tutorial videos. Having several years providing website services in WordPress based, we still use resources such as Youtube to troubleshoot some of our WordPress problems.

6. It is SEO Friendly

As of writing this article, WordPress has reached 16 years of age. This means there has been 16 years worth of improvement by developers all around the world to perfected the WordPress coding. WordPress coding is clean and simple, which makes the website is easy to be indexed with Google Search Engine.

The recommended plugins to make your website even more SEO friendly is Yoast. Yoast has the capability to make your website even more search friendly. As mentioned in our previous article, it is a must-have plugin for your WordPress website.

7. There is a Sea of WordPress Templates to Choose for

One of the systems implemented by WordPress to customized your aesthetic is through templates. By default, you will be given a free template upon installing WordPress. However, if you want to your website stands out, you should consider a premium template instead of the free ones. With a premium template, your template has been pre-designed by a group of developers to reach a certain aesthetic standard. It is also most likely to be bug-free, due to the intensive testing they have gone through.

Usually, a premium template comes with basic customization such as color changes, font, and options layout for your website. These templates are aimed toward the non-coding WordPress users, therefore it will minimalize the coding needed.

Themeforest WordPress Tempalte

You have many selections of WordPress template available – photo credit to ThemeForest

And your website is not restricted with just one design, using the template system you can always change the template whenever you want. By just changing the template you will be maintaining your settings, pages, and blog posts. This is made possible with WordPress

You may choose your premium template in a website such as ThemeForest. However, if you really want to really stand out in the crowd and you may also able to create your own custom WordPress template. WordPress provided a dedicated and well-documented support whats called WordPress codex that you can always refer to when needed during the template development.

8.Managing Admin Users Inside the Website

When you are website is using WordPress, in order for you to enter and make changes to your website, you will need your WordPress credentials. We call this the admin user, he/she will have the full control of the website. WordPress can handle an unlimited number of admin users.  This means you can collaborate with other developers, share your account with your clients and assign as a webmaster using a custom made login details.

WordPress User Page

In WordPress user page you edit, add and delete your users.

Having a separate admin account details will allow you to manage users for your purposes. For instance, this is particularly useful when you need to suspend an admin user, you can always demote a particular user to restrict their access to the website.

WordPress also records any activity happening inside the website. For example, if a user made changes to a particular article in your blog section, it is recorded and gives you the ability to revert back those changes. So you will know if other users are making changes to your website and prevent it if it making bad changes.

9. You Can Setup an Automatic Backup

Just like files in your computers, a website also needs a regular backup for your rainy days. You will never know when you need your older version of the website, this can be caused by hacking, outdated plugins, or even human errors. A website is made of many files, database SQL, images, text and coding, one element did not synchronize correctly can cause the website to break. This also makes backing up a website more complicated.

Through plugins in WordPress, you can easily set up an automatic backup. This means your website is automatically generating backup as you sleep. You can set up a weekly, monthly or even yearly backup this one is fully customizable to your preference.



10. One-click Install from Your Hosting Service

The modern way to put WordPress inside your hosting service is very simple to compare to the old days. In the past, you will need to have a basic understanding of adding SQL database and make a couple of setup routine to run your website on WordPress. But today, many modern hosting have integrated one-click install WordPress service due to the popularity of WordPress. It is hassle-free, within minutes you can have a website up and running (an empty website, you will still need to populate the content.

cPanel Look for One Click Install

Inside your cPanel it is fairly easy to add WordPress installation nowadays.

11. Options to Make Your Website to be Secure

Notice we didn’t say WordPress is secure? Because by default, it is possible to hack a WordPress website and it has commonly happened. However, the developers at WordPress has been diligently pushing updates to address these vulnerabilities. In addition to that, there is a 3rd party plugin that can make your WordPress extra secure, and it is free.

The recommended plugins for security is WordFence.

12. Capability to Transform Your Website to an eCommerce Website

Say for example you already have a blogging and company profile capabilities in your WordPress website. But your business has expanded and now you want to sell products on your website. Well with WordPress there’s no need for you to scrap your old website. WordPress is able to handle it.

The known plugins for eCommerce is WooCommerce (also developed by the same team who brought WordPress). Basically, it is a free plugin to transform your blogging website to an eCommerce website. WooCommerce is known among the developers’ communities, same as WordPress it also has an active community.

13. You’ll Find Many Resources to Learn WordPress CMS

Another great thing working with an open platform CMS, everybody can learn it, because the resources are available for free on the internet. You do not need to get a bachelor or a master degree or any formal education to master it, after all, all of the resources you need are available for free.

As a web consultant service provider, we are still also learning WordPress. Because the more we understand about the system the more questions and discovery we have, and the resources are pretty easy to find through a Google search.

Conclusion

WordPress is a versatile platform, whether it is for a company profile, eCommerce or blogging needs with WordPress it would be able to handle it.

As a website consultant, we will face a diversity of website needs from our clients, with WordPress capability we can ensure whatever the needs of their website can be handled with WordPress.

And some of our clients also do not like to keep in the dark, they wanted to understand what is happening behind-the-scenes to their website. And perhaps they want to understand how to make small changes to their website. Sometimes teaching them a full course on how to program may be impossible. But with WordPress, we would be able to provide all of the learning resources for our clients.

One final reason why we love WordPress is it allows your future improvements to your website. A particular problem most of our clients have, they do not like to swap from system to system. Or particularly re-train their employees and re-familiarize their people to a new system. Plus, most of the time it will require more budget and effort to swap to a new system. Therefore WordPress would make it be a wise choice for our clients and the most effective choice business-wise.

We have shared 13 reasons why we always recommend WordPress to our clients, we would like to hear from you. Do you agree or disagree with our statement? Let us know and comment below.

April 11, 2019

Our Chosen 7 Free and Essentials WordPress Plugins

There are many plugins available in WordPress. As an open source CMS, WordPress developers all around the world are contributing to make WordPress a better platform. If you have experience in WordPress you will know, out-of-the-box WordPress is like a blank canvas. There are some further “tuning-up”  required to transform the website into a functional one.

What makes WordPress powerful is the Plugins. It empowers them. In this article, we will look further on our hand-picked essentials plugins. Additionally, we will also share our thoughts and experience why we think it is beneficial for your website.

Our target audience for this article is for an average non-website savvy user, therefore the focus is on the plugins that require minimal coding.

GA Google Analytics 

Your website traffic is one metric that determine the effectiveness of your website. The one and only analytical tool you should have in your website is Google Analytics. However, many users are turned off by the implementation of it. According to the instruction the user need to inject code to every of their page (confuse already?), which is true but us the developers we know our way around it. The official Google Analytics tracking code would look something like this:

Google Analytics Tracking Code from Google's Dashboard

For non-techies user coding looks like this can be confusing

With this plugin, you will be able to bypass the code injecting process. The plugin will be able to do the hard-lifting part, all you need to do is provide them the “GA Tracking ID” and that’s it. Easy as A-B-C. No FTP file update nor updating your header/footer.php file. It saves time.

WordPress Plugins Google Analytics

Inside WordPress’s backend login, installing Google Analytics code looks so much simpler

Backup Plugins: UpdraftPlus & WPDuplicator

Website backup function is like insurance for your website. In other words, if your website is infected by malware or any kind, you will always have the healthy version of the website to restore to. In order to do so, we use the combinations of 2 recommended plugins.

Learn more the 6 reasons why you need to backup your website according to Edward Aryana Design

UpdraftPlus – Free Version

Using UpdraftPlus it allows automation in your backup process. You can set your backup frequency according to your preferences (every week, every 2 weeks, every month and so on). UpdraftPlus will backup your Database, Template, and Plugins in a separate zip file (this particularly useful when we are troubleshooting a website). Additionally, this plugin can automatically save your backup files to a remote server (cloud server) of your choice; such as Dropbox, Google Drive, AWS, Remote FTP and many more.

However, the free version only allows you to restore the website to the same domain, you will need the pro version for restoring to a different domain. This is where we use Duplicator to compensate on this limitation.

Duplicator 

Essentially, Duplicator is a cloning tool for your website. For instance, you wanted to develop a feature to your website, but you want to do internal testing before the feature is live, then, Duplicator will come in handy. It allows your website to be duplicated to a different domain or to your localhost machine (Yes you can duplicate a website a runs it in your PC or Laptop).

Unlike Updraftplus WPDuplicator will put all of the files related to your website in one bulked ZIP file, so there is less file management required.

Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator

We have been using this feature far long before we decide to standardized WordPress as our CMS. RealFaviconGenerator is a website where you can automatically generate favicons into a string of code to be injected to your website. Injected to your website you say? This is mostly a challenge for non-techies users, if you encounter this problem then RealFaviconGenerator is the solution for you.

This plugin bypasses the code-injection process for favicon implementation, it simplifies the process. The plugin will do the coding process within a press of a button, all we need to do is just providing the right file format for your favicon.

WordFence 

We have saved a couple of our clients’ website using this plugin. WordFence nullifies any malicious hacking attempt (or also known as brute-force-attack) to your website. It is also logged any malware attempt. This tool provides us developers to evaluate where any potential threats to our clients’ website.

This plugin will also provide a firewall feature to your website, this means the website is significantly harder to hack. Moreover, WordFence has been acknowledged by the WordPress community as THE security plugin for WordPress. Users can also opt out to a premium feature that gives them access to priority customer service.

Contact Form 7 (and the extensions)

Arguably the most used and popular plugins in WordPress today. Contact Form 7 (or CF7 for short) is a powerful additional plugin in your website. The conventional way of building HTML form is far more complex than you think. CF7 made the form building is easy even for someone without a coding background. Some of the major highlights of CF7 are the following:

  • Custom Field for your from
  • You can specify a particular form to receive a piece of particular information. For instance, if you set a field as an “email field” in CF7 the form won’t submit unless the user inputs his/her email address. The plugin will know if it is in the wrong format.
  • You can set the form to send an email. For example,  you want your assistant to be notified whenever there’s an incoming inquiry from your website. No need additional coding for CF7, by default it has email sending capabilities
  • Due to the popularity of it, CF7 has many extensions to browse. Think of it a plugin for a plugin. One of our favorite extension of CF7 is Contact Form 7 Database Addon – CFDB7. This extension will have an internal logging system to whoever used your form. This means if some technical difficulties occurred in your website somehow they are not sending emails, the query would not be lost but instead recorded inside the website.
  • It is 100% free



JetPack

We only recently implement JetPack to be a compulsory plugin to all of the websites we managed. One of the selling-point of using JetPack it was developed by Automaticc, the developer who actually build WordPress. So you can consider this as “Official Plugin” for WordPress. Though JetPack offers many features in its self, there are several features that we love the most.

One Click Login 

With JetPack your website is connected to WordPress.com server, this means you can implement one-click login to your website without having to memorize every single admin username and password of all the WordPress websites you managed. As a prerequisite of this feature, you may be required to register in WordPress.com. This proved to be extremely time savings and convenience for a website consultant like us.

One Click login JetPack WordPress

Conveniently using one-click login in WordPress website

Auto Plugins Update and Plugins Management 

When you have run WordPress long enough, you will know how important is to keep your WordPress updated for a security reason. Many vulnerabilities mostly come from outdated Plugins or outdated WordPress version. Managing multiple WordPress websites can be a laborious work, one website can range between 5 – 15 plugins, updating every single one can take hours. Additionally, you will never know when the update is available. Some developers can push 2 different updates in a day.

Through JetPack you will be able to manage every single plugin in YOUR EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE you managed. Yes, you heard that right, everything is under one service. Essentially, JetPack sends commands to your connected website to do the update, this feature has helped us tremendously to cut time and effort for managing our client’s websites.

Plugin Manager WordPress using Jetpack

We can easily see which Plugins need an update, with one click the plugins can be easily updated

**Note: We do not recommend to enable the auto-update feature, as updating plugins has proven to break websites from time to time. Therefore, never do a major update before backing up your website. That’s why we love the next feature of JetPack.

You’ll be Notified When Your Website is Not Loading 

A down website may be costly for a business that heavily relying on their website. Having this notification will minimalize the downtime for the website, then the webmaster would be able to diagnose and implement solutions to your website. Think of it like you have assigned someone to look after your store, whatever happens to it you will always be notified.

Email Notifications from JetPack

Notifications from JetPack straight to your inbox, in some cases it may resolve by itself

Really Simple SSL

It is exactly like it sounds, it is really simple. You may need some technical understanding to implement SSL to your cPanel. In addition to that, you will need some major understanding of what to tinker for implementing SSL to your website. But not in WordPress, using this plugin it bypasses all of the .htaccess file editing and coding related changes you have to make to activate SSL.

As mentioned in Neil Patel’s article, we understand the role of SSL in SEO. Using this plugin will definitely save time and makes it easier to be activated on your website.

SEO Yoast

We save the best one for last. If (God knows what) for some reason you want to minimalize your plugins usage, the one you shouldn’t rule out is SEO Yoast. This game changer plugin will provide all the tools you need for your internal Search Optimization work. Some of the major highlights of this plugin are as follow:

  • Custom Meta Description of each page
  • Keywords Targeting
  • Readability Analysis – Help the flow of your content
  • In-page checker to evaluate whether the page you published is search-friendly compliant
  • Detect any SEO related problems on your website

Basically, if you want to be on top of your game in your website SEO, Yoast is a must have plugin.

Last Words

We have shared our most used and recommended WordPress plugins. The great thing about WordPress it is community driven, therefore do let us know what plugins you’ll find useful and compulsory for your website in the comment below. We love to hear from our readers.


April 10, 2019

Why Niagahoster is Our Choice of Hosting

There are dozens of Indonesian local hosting companies available today. When we google “Hosting Indonesia” you will be overwhelmed by choices of hosting that is available on Google first page. For a non-savvy average user, we understand this can be very much overwhelming. We have tried almost all of the local Indonesian hosting services and yet we still recommend Niagahoster as our choice of hosting, here’s why:

We wrote this article based on our experiences of handling our clients problems particularly in hosting department. -Ed

It Offers Unlimited Space, Bandwidth and Email Accounts

This is the major advantages that make Niagahoster attractive, the space that you are paying for is unlimited. But you may ask

“Why I need unlimited? My website is simple it shouldn’t take that much space isn’t?”.

To answer that argument, yes that’s true but did you know that limited space is shared with your custom domain email addresses? For argument sake, say you are renting a 1 GB storage

Say you are a 3 person company running a small consultancy business, you have a website of www.bnxconsultancy.com, and you are using about 100 MB (that’s a fair size of a website) for the website. That means your admin@bnxconsultancy.com, rob@bnxconsultancy.com and zoe@bnxconsultancy.com are left with 900 MB divided among them (300 MB each). That’s pretty small. Unless you can monitor all the email activity and clean any incoming junk emaill  (Trust me your time worth more than that), it is labor intensive to do so and unnecessary.

And on the downside, when your hosting account occupying at 80% of the available space, you will start to see a throttled performance in your website, this means your website may load slower. We have seen an eCommerce website is failing to load at checking out process caused by server timeout, God knows how many customers they are losing because of this.

Usually other hosting services will offer around 5 email accounts (give or take) for a budget plan of a hosting, using Niagahoster we will be able to setup our clients different emails for different purposes to help them filter out all of the incoming emails; such as enquiries@bnxconsultancy.com | jobs@bnxconsultancy.com | booking@bnxconsultancy.com, you get the idea.



It is Fast! They used a Singaporean Based Server

Minimalising server distance is the best way to achieve the fastest connection. Meaning, when a server physically located near to the user it requires less time for the information to travel. So, for example, you are running an eCommerce website targeting Indonesian and a bit of international market, you may be recommended with an Indonesian hosting service location to achieve fast loading website when it is being accessed with the Indonesian users.

However the drawback of having exclusive Indonesian hosting, connections from outside Indonesia may be significantly slowed down, the trick is we put the server in Singapore because Singapore has many direct connections to Australia, Japan and the United States. This makes hosting Singapore is ideal for those who want to get the best of both worlds, local and international connections to the website.

Internet Direct Connections Concentrated in Singapore

Taken from https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ to show how many connections Singapore has

Quick response Customer Service 24/7

When you pick a hosting service, you need to pick the reliable one. The one that is able to respond to your inquiries whenever needed. You will never know when problems occurred on your website, downtime on a website may be costly for a business that relies on the income the website generated.

The customer service is the department where we make a lot of interactions with. Niagahoster has been proven to be 100% reliable and helpful in our experience, their customer service is well trained and they used a systematical ticketing system to ensure every single enquiries is being addressed.

Competitive Price and a Free Domain

Niagahoster will always give a promotion to the new user, heck their customer service was even kind enough to give a coupon code if you chat them directly. Whenever we are renewing their services we always check via the chat feature what coupon we can apply to get a discount for our renewal, and they always reply.

No running promotion? Don’t worry you can always use my affiliate coupon a-edwardaryana upon checkout

Instant Activation – Credit Card Payment

Some hosting service we worked with can take several days to be activated from the payment received. Some require us to manually send the “transfer receipt” for activating the host.

But Niagahoster accept all of the major payments including Mastercard and Visa. Using an electronic payment such as Mastercard and Visa will activate your hosting account instantly!*

*We heard some customers not being activated instantly, but it was always on a same-day activation

Affiliates Program

This is something that we never seen before and it is game changing, they are offering a generous 70% commission (before tax) to whoever use their referral program. So every purchase made by your referral you are entitled 70% of the amount they paid. We did not believe this at first, but they are legit. We have been getting a couple of millions by just referring Niagahoster. So you will be able to build a small passive income.

But the referee need to be in their service minimal 30 days and you will need 2 referrals by minimum for them to transfer you the money.

Proof of Payment | Bukti Transfer Niagahoster

SSL Compatible

You will be surprised how many budget hosting did not have SSL service in their cPanel settings. Your website may not need an SSL encryption service, but it surely bring benefit to your website.

Google will more likely to favour your website if it is “secure-website” by implementing SSL. This will have a positive impact in your google search ranking. Even though it is a rare small-medium website that handles payment gateway internally (what SSL majorly used for), but SSL will give you search ranking advantage.

Niagahoster has 2 options for SSL; Let’s Encrypt (Free) or Comodo, click here to learn the difference.

Last Words

This article is not in any way paid-promotion by Niagahoster, yet this review based on our experience dealing with mediocre hosting services in Indonesia that we think Niagahoster is a superior hosting service that available today.

Hosting Unlimited Indonesia

April 9, 2019

6 Reasons Why You Need to Backup Your Website

In this article, I would like to share my perspective and experience as a website consultant professionals, why backing your website is important. I will also break it down what are the common threats and mistakes of having a website.

Your website is open to everyone including cyber threats

Having a website opens your business to the worldwide public, this can be both negative and positive, on the negative side your website is vulnerable on many levels to so-called hackers or cyber threats

You may forget to renew your domain or hosting

One of the common problems owning the website you may forget when your domain or hosting service is due, whether it was your old developer did not inform you or you do not remember which email it was registered under, when hosting and domain are not renewed on time, by system your website will be erased and gone forever.

You are just unlucky

Hackers today deploy what we called “bot”. This bot will jump from website to website to look any loophole in your website, you may not be targeted but your website may have out of date plugins or WordPress, this bot is specifically targeting website with vulnerabilities and once your website is infected it is almost impossible to remove it.
It may come from your internal organization

Whether it is a sloppy employee or employee with the negative intention towards your business, we’ve seen all sort of efforts made as an inside job to create damage to the business, do not rule out this possibility.

Your website may be secured, but the server you are using may not be

You took preliminary precaution by putting all of the bells and whistles for your website security, however, your hosting still can be vulnerable with cyber attacks, even Google, Facebook and Twitter have been hacked at one time.

*Pro Tips – Use hosting such as Niagahoster to minimalize the riks of hosting hacking

You made changes to the website all of a sudden the website is not working

This one is a classic problem, for a non-savvy user you may have the basic understanding but you are limited to what you know. In a website environment, there’s no undo button, once the changes are submitted to the server you are overwriting the previous setting. To troubleshoot a website that we have no idea where it was changed, by experience it is almost impossible to fix it, rather it will make the problem worse, the easiest method is to restore the website.



How Did We Backup Our Client Websites?

We are using automated backup every 2 weeks* for minimal 1 year contract

Using a special setting we will apply automated backups for every 2 weeks, this will ensure we will have a copy of your website every 2 weeks. This means for one year we have 26 different backups of your website to choose for.

*Usually we are flexible upon client’s request

We are using UpdraftPlus (WordPress Only)

The plugins of our choice is UpdraftPlus , this plugin will allow our client’s website to be backed up automatically to our secure cloud storage. Eventhough the free version is enough for backing up your websites the paid version will unlock more settings and customisation. For clients that wanted more backup customisation we will subscribe the Paid version of UpdraftPlus

Its like insurance but for website

Your website is working hard 24/7 to generate leads, sales or empowering your business and you probably spent some monetary value, time and effort into it, don’t risk losing it.

We will put your backup in secure off-site cloud storage, using 2FA (two-factor authentication)

Meaning we are eliminating equipment failure and loss of equipment factors. So, for example, one day our backup computer breaks down or stolen we will still have your website secure in the cloud storage.

“But you said anyone can be hacked? Wouldn’t putting our website back up on a cloud-storage will compromise our backup too?” You may ask. The ugly truth is yes it is, knowing this fact we take the security of your files seriously, our cloud storage is secured with what called 2FA or Two-factor authentication. It is similar method to OTP when you made a credit card purchase but it is more sophisticated. This will ensure only user with the authenticator be able to access your file.

Additionally, your file is encrypted in a zip file, even a breach has been made they will have no idea if the file is a website backup, it will take time and manual scanning (hackers hate that!) to make them realize its for a website, then they also still need to break to your website in order to manipulate the backup. In our experience, this is the most secure method for website backup.

Conclusion

Those are some of the methods we found to be effective to be implemented to our clients. These methods has saved numerous of our clients website. Having a healthy website will give your website a better chance to be organically ranked in Google Search Engine, an infected website will definitely punish your website ranking in Google, plus Google also can flagged (user will get a warning when opening in Google Chrome) your website that will significantly drop your website traffic. If the infection is severe, even a topic containing your business in Gmail can be automatically put into junk mail by google.

Share and comment here below if you have other website backup method that works with you or your website hacked experience.

 

August 16, 2018

8 Tips on How to Brief a Designer for Your Creative Projects [To Get The Best Price for Your Design Quotation]

Briefing a designer for your creative projects can be tricky.

You may feel you are being taken advantage of because you are in the area of your comfort zone.

Or you feel the designer did not get what you wanted and pricing the project not according to your desired needs.

I’ve personally done many meetings with numerous clients during my career as a self-employed consultant, so speaking from my own personal experience, here are tips you can use to during your first initial meeting with your designer.

1. Avoid Question Like “How Much is a Logo” or “How Much is a Website” or Anything Like it

Be very very worried if a designer throws you a number straight after the question, most likely the service providers are not identifying your needs and it is an “Assumption Price” that he/she gave it to you. The number is not accurate for your situation.

Think of it like this, the question “How Much is a Logo?” is the same as “How much is a House?”. Well to know the real price of a house you will to measure the premise, see what facilities are provided (such as a garage, swimming pool, number of rooms) and where is the house located; good suburb or high crime neighborhood. All of those factors into the price of the house.

Same with Logo Identity project, there are factors that can determine the project fee, such as; Where will the logo be implemented on? How many business cards you will be implementing your new identity? Do you need assistance with the printing? and many more.

Instead, the question should be more focused and informative like

“I have a restaurant business in Kuningan, Jakarta, and has been operating in the local area for 10 years, we start to realise the benefit of rebranding could be beneficial for us, I was thinking to re-do my logo, menu and business card for a rebranding project, how do you approach such situation?”

Remember the designer is only as good as the information you give him/her.

2. Get a Face-to-Face Meeting, or at least a Video Call

It is always preferred for a client to and the service provider (designer) are to meet in person. With the intention of conducting business, we need to build our trust relationship little by little. A meeting is always a preferred method because it will eliminate any miscommunication. A good designer will not only received communication through verbal, as we know most of the communication happened together with body language.

Communication through a meeting (verbal and body language) is far more superior to communication through instant messaging (SMS or WhatsApp). As lengthy messages in instant messaging are prone to misunderstanding.

We as the creative service provider is appreciative towards the client that willing to meet us in person, it’s showing the particular client is serious and channeling his/her attention to the project. Usually, this kind of client qualified for my best pricing.

3. Show What You Have Done to the Project and Get any Related Files Ready

When you first meeting your designer, have your supporting documents and marketing materials (company profile, rough concept, documentation) ready for the meeting. This will communicate the current progression of your business, a designer will pick up a thing or two by seeing all of your materials. Usually, this is the first inspiration spark occurred.

Secondly, get your logo files ready. No, not in JPG format. When we asked for logo files it is preferably served in either PDF, Ai (Adobe Illustrator) or EPS file format. Not having the right logo files will not allow us to use your logo properly or as it intended, we may need to recreate your logo files that can affect your project fee.

It is a standard delivery for any logo to be provided in PDF, Ai or EPS file format. Any competent designer should have delivered this even when the client did not ask for it.

4. Be Prepared to Shift Your Deadline if Necessary

A logo did not take 2-3 day to make, or a website did not take 1 week to finished.

Any experienced designer will have their own unique design process, we are constantly challenged with our client’s problem, therefore, we have our own “successful recipe” to overcome that problem. And a successful solution that can withstand over time, will need time to produce it. (Ironic isn’t?

Therefore limiting us within an unrealistic delivery date, will discount our design process and no doubt will discount the quality we are delivering. Does your business deserve the attention and time for the idea to mature? Oftently fast delivery will cost the client more fee but receive a less superior final product.

Every designer will work on a different timeframe, make sure you ask for estimated delivery time for a given project before working on your deadline.



5. Show Respect, Make the Designer want to Work with You

A genuine honest compliment from the client can go a long way with us. Showing your professionalism, respect, and compliment to your potential designer will leave a good taste in their mouth.

This will give a positive impression to them and no doubt it will leave them wanting to work with you. To make that happened designers are willing to take less profit with a chance of a pleasant client and designer working relationship.

6. Avoid the Use Manipulative Notion of  “There will be More Projects if You do this Project for Cheap or Free”

An experienced designer is trained to detect such client. We encountered this type of manipulation all the time. Because most likely there won’t be next time.

Discounted the fee meaning the service you get will be discounted too.

7. Build a Connected Tissue for Future Communication

Make sure to ask when you can expect a follow-up communication from the designer. Do not leave the project hanging, always build a connective thread towards your communication.

By implementing this you can save time, effort and money.

8. Give as Much Information on the Project

My last tip would be, give as much information on the project as much you give. Remember We are only as good as the information you give us. The more information provided to use the more chance you will spark inspiration to the designer.

Be very descriptive when briefing your business situation, use visual aid whenever possible.

Final Words

The bottom line a designer only as good as the information you give him/her, this includes maximizing the communication through a face to face meeting, having all of your materials ready (files, logo files, and document), the time your business deserved and making sure that information is communicated with a kind and pleasant mannered.

If a client did at least 50% of those 8 tips above, it is almost a guaranteed that the client will get my best price for he/she creative projects

Do you have your own tips you want to share? Please comment below

Write personally to me design@edwardaryana.com or visit my portfolio at www.edwardaryana.com to see my creative works

 

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