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Creating a backup/snapshot of your WordPress website

First you’ll need to log into your cpanel account.

http://yourdomain.com.au/cpanel

Then look for ‘JetBackup’. This is your self service panel for managing backups. We performance the daily backups. But you can download them or restore from them at your leisure.

To create a backup, they are called ‘snapshots’ . You’ll need to look for ‘Snapshots’.

WordPress Snapshot

Then you need to click on ‘create snapshot’

WordPress add Snapshot

 

How to select php version in cpanel

It’s called ‘MultiPHP manager’ in the Software section of cpanel.

Once you click on it, you can choose your php version.

php5.6 is the most compatible version.

php7.0 is the fastest version of php – about 3x faster than php5.6 – which makes a huge difference to wp-admin.

How to determine if you are using production or staging for a particular site

When you have a few sites, some on staging, some on our production cluster it can get confusing what is where. Especially if you haven’t made a lot of changes for a particular site in a while.

We have a few ways you can use to determine your current site’s location.

use this php script

make a new file called serverIP.php (or what you like), put it in your root web folder (the same folder as wp-config.php).

Now use your browser to display the file http://sitename.com.au/serverIP.php

If it says ‘error 404, file not found’ – perhaps you need to add it both staging and production.

<?php
$serverip = $_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR'];
echo "".$serverip."";
  if ($serverip == '203.98.65.2') {
        echo "looks like staging";}
  else{
        echo "looks like production";
  }
?>

use this external tool/website to test

https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/

put your domain name in the first box, use www if the site is a www, or else leave it out. It does matter if you get this correct.

leave the second box blank

you’re looking for your ‘IN A’ record, here it is 203.98.65.47 – which is production. Staging is 203.98.65.2.

screenshot-toolbox-googleapps-com-2017-03-01-12-28-14

Automated WordPress updates

WpDone will automate updating your sites for you.

You can choose weekly on Sundays, or Monthly on the first of the month, or none at all.

We’ll iterate all your accounts under your reseller, and then update the WordPress install in public_html/. If you have multiple installs, we assume it’s a developer account and ignore the rest. If you need more sites updated less up know via support.

We are aware that some updates will break sites, and take reasonable steps to prevent downtime.

We take a WordPress backup of the site to be updated. We update everything we can, themes, plugins and the core. Then we check that the site still looks likes it working OK. If it doesn’t look OK, we’ll restore the backup we made at the start of the process.

We are also looking at automating adding your sites to UptimeRobot. That way all your sites will be checked, with the alert going to both our support, and yourself. This will also help to find those instances where upgrades break a site.

Sometimes the sites are partially broken after the updates, like a CSS not processed correctly and the site is a mess, or 1 function fails – like an email function. If you have issues with the site, you can self restore a back via cpanel, or contact us on support.

We have a blacklist for sites that you don’t want updated.

At some stage we’ll release a cpanel plugin to help manage which sites are updated. But for know, any changes need to go via support.

Create a free SSL https certificate

If you want the certificate for the live cluster, please lodge a support ticket with the exact URL you want the certificate for.

If you are on staging, then use the cpanel plugin called ‘lets encrypt’, it looks like this:
screenshot-192.168.2.32 2083 2016-07-26 11-27-02

If you using cloudflare, you’ll need to set the encrypt option to ‘full ssl’. See the image below, it’s on the crypto tab, the first option, drop it down and sell ‘full’.

screenshot-www.cloudflare.com 2016-07-26 12-07-01

 

Development workflow options

Customers often ask me ‘how do I access staging’ – and if there was a best way that suits everyone we wouldn’t need this post. Here are a few ways to manage your development.

You should use staging for large development, to testing upgrading core, plugins and themes. Sometime large scale page/post changes need to be done in staging.

You should write most blog changes and page changes directly to the live site.

But be careful no to change both live and staging servers at the same time, as you’ll lose 1 set of changes.

If there has been recent changes in ‘live’, like blog posts, you’ll need to ‘copy from Live to Staging’ before you start. So you have an updated copy to starting your development.

Edit your hosts file

You can use your hosts file to ‘trick’ dns to point to a different server – in this case the staging server.

203.98.65.2     clientdomain.com.au
203.98.65.2    www.clientdomain.com.au

You can do this manually, or use an app, here is a Mac osx app (I know bad name right) https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29949/gas-mask , and here is 1 for windows http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman

You disable the hosts change, or make this change, to switch back to the live server.

203.98.65.47      clientdomain.com.au
203.98.65.47      www.clientdomain.com.au

You still use your browser to surf to http://clientdomain.com.au/wp-admin/  –  you just have to remember if your working on staging or on the live server.

This works well if it’s just 1 developer, and the client is unlikely to need to review the site (as they’d have to edit their hosts file also).

Change the staging WordPress site name

The idea here is you have staging.clientdomain.com.au and clientdomain.com.au.

You do your development work on staging.clientdomain.com.au. And when the site is moved to live, we automagically change it to clientdomain.com.au.

There is a downside, careless coding can hardcode staging.clientdomain.com.au into the site, and it’s hard to see when you are testing. You need to make sure you anchor link to / instead of http://staging.clientdomain.com.au

All uploaded resources get named staging, and during the transfer to live we attempt to rename them all, but it may not be perfect.

This solution is best when there is a lot of development, changes, and client reviews. As there is no need to change the hosts file.

Here is the FAQ related to setting up the staging subdomain.

Use Hosts.cx

Hosts.cx masks the sitename with a hosts.cx reference.

This is good for small development changes, or infrequent access.

Use 203.98.65.2 as the ‘server ip’

How to add a new account

We create all our users as ‘WHM resellers’.

Each reseller can add ‘cpanel accounts’.

You’ll need to access WHM first. see icon below, it’s in the ‘advanced’ group of icons.

screenshot-192.168.2.32 2083 2016-02-26 05-13-50

Or you can access WHM directly from this URL : https://cpanel.wpdone.com.au:2087.

Then under ‘Account Functions’ , use ‘Create New Account’.

What a new reseller should know

How to migrate your cpanel account

The main login url is  https://cpanel.wpdone.com.au:2083.

This will allow login to the staging server.

From there, you can send your WordPress website from staging to production/live.

If you are a reseller, you can access WHM as well, from this URL : https://cpanel.wpdone.com.au:2087. You’ll use WHM to create cpanel accounts (see icon below, it’s in the ‘advanced’ group of icons). Then under ‘Account Functions’ , use ‘Create New Account’.

screenshot-192.168.2.32 2083 2016-02-26 05-13-50

Once you’ve created a cpanel account, you can use the WPDone cpanel plugin to ‘Import Account from other Cpanel’. You need to use your reseller cpanel account, and select the new account that you created above. This will take a few minutes depending on the size of the backup to transfer, please be patient as currently their is no progress output.

screenshot-192.168.2.32 2083 2016-02-26 05-12-26

 

preparation list for migrated sites

  1. turn off your caching plugins
    • we don’t support plugins that write to disk
    • we do however support anything that uses memcached, so we do support w3tc using memcached page cache
    • we don’t support object caching (they generally aren’t cluster aware).
    • database caching to memcached does work, but it doesn’t help the speed much
    • we find our servers are so fast, that you won’t require caching in most cases
  2. turn off your CDN
    • in most cases a CDN is not required
    • we use memory caching, which is as good as a CDN, for Aussie websites, for Aussie customers.
    • we use cloudflare as  CDN – but there are some cloudflare short falls
  3. we don’t support plugins that write to disk in production
    • we’ve seen some themes write css cache to disk
    • we’ve seen some plugins writing their own database to disk
    • writing to disk during wp-admin is OK
    • if your comfortable with command line, use this command to see if your wordpress is writing to disk
      • find ./ -mtime -1    (this asks linux, for any files written in the last day)
  4. Turn off backup plugins
    • especially those writing to disk locally
    • you’ll see in cpanel that we keep a lot of backups for you
    • if your writing to dropbox or similar, that is OK
    • read more info on backups
  5. Turn off your firewall plugins
    • our security is super tight you don’t need them
    • we use mod_security which is doing as good or better job than the plugin
    • we use a read-only WordPress system, so that hacks can’t be written to your site
    • you can leave the firewall plugins installed if you like

How do I setup FTP access for support or a developer ?

It’s a smart idea to make a new ftp account for each developer/support person. After they finished their task, you can delete their accounts.

  • click on ftp accounts, should be in the files section near the top
  • enter their username
  • give them a strong password, or you’ll get hacked, we STRONGLY suggest you use the password generator
  • change the directory to just  public_html/  so the new ftp user can access all the files on your website
  • then click ‘create account’

When the account is created, it gets created as   username@yourdomain.com.au  . This is a bit tricky, its not their domain name. Reading the screen is the easiest solution.

Onboarding Procedure

General Overview

The onboarding process is several steps, over days or weeks, depending on the number of sites, the complexity of the sites, and the response of the client approving the steps.

This procedure is for both the staff of wpDone, and for the new client.

 

How Clients should use this manual

The client should be aware that it’s a multi step procedure.

That their co-operation is required, for approval of steps.

There is no need to read this manual in its entirety (it would actually be pretty boring).

 

Expectations

At each step we will take all precautions to minimize downtime of your websites. But we do expect some small downtime of your sites and email. We can schedule those steps with you to minimise disruption. Should you have any active marketing campaigns please alert us, so we can ammend those distruptions.

At the end of each step, we will provide test results, and take the next step.

It is expected that there may be some issues with each step. We will check each step. Should an issue arises, we will back out the change. We have set the DNS times to minimal caching times, 1-5 minutes, so the changes can be quick.

 

Step 1 – ready DNS TTLs

Risk

  • minimal risk

Obtains passwords to:

  • client’s domain manager – to adjust dns delegations
  • client’s cpanel
  • list of domains/sites to be transfered from the client

Adjust TTL’s to 180 seconds, 3 minutes.

This can be done the day before,  readying the domains for transfer.

Tests

for each domain

  • dig @z.au domain.com.au
  • dig @8.8.8.8 domain.com.au
  • test that the TTL’s are correct
  • record the IP address of the source cpanel server, this can be used for fail back later

Step 2 – transfer cpanel backup

Risk

  • minimal risk

try the ‘cpanel cpmove’ from whm on wpdone whm server

If that fails, create a manual backup on the client’s cpanel server, transfer to /home, perform the import

use CXS scanner manual scan to check the customer’s account

repeat for additional accounts

check the transfered DNS zone files, they should have:

  • www as a CNAME to the domain.name
  • mail as an A record to 203.98.65.2
  • other records that are CNAME, change to mail.domain.name
  • check addon domains as well

Tests

  • dig @203.98.65.2 www.domain.name  –  should be a CNAME and final answer of 203.98.65.2

Step 3 – test staging site

Risk

  • minimal risk

change hosts file to :

203.98.65.2 domain.name

203.98.65.2 www.domain.name

Test:

  • copy server.php, chown user:user server.php
  • check domain.name.com.au/server.php
    • it should respond with 203.98.65.2
  • check the website from a browser firefox, chrome, internet explorer
  • record a screen shot

Client Approval

  • send all screen shots for the client to review

Step 4 – transfer DNS to wpdone cpanel

Risk

  • medium – part or all of a website may be broken.
  • recovery – adjust DNS in wpdone cpanel server, back to the client source cpanel server, recorded earlier
  • recovery time – the TTL will need to expire 1-5 minutes the site should revert to the source cpanel server

schedule with the client the cut over of the domain. Tell the client there is a medium risk that a site might break.

Login to the client domain manager

change the domain delegation to:

  • ns1.esxhosting.com.au ns2.esxhosting.com.au ns3.esxhosting.com.au

Test:

  • remove entries from /etc/hosts
  • dig www.domain.name
  • dig domain.name
  • check that the answer is 203.98.65.2
  • check the website from a browsers firefox, chrome, ie, iphone
  • record screen shots

Client Approval

  • send all screen shots for the client to review
  • let the client know, so they can test the site

Result

  • the website is transfered to our cpanel staging server
  • ask client to check all website features
  • ask client to check email and other web software

 

Step 5 – transfer to production

Risk

  • minimal risk

check the site for plugins we don’t allow

check the site for plugins/themes that write to disk  – find ./ -mtime -1 (find changed files less than 1 day old)

Use the client’s cpanel account, click the ‘wpDone – send to cluster’ button

change hosts file to :

203.98.65.40 domain.name

203.98.65.40 www.domain.name

Test:

  • check the website from a browser firefox, chrome, internet explorer
  • record a screen shot

Client Approval

  • send all screen shots for the client to review

Step 6 – go live in production

  • medium risk
    • site might not display correctly, and error in CSS, or javascript
    • site security might be tripped
    • recovery procedure – change the DNS back to 203.98.65.2
    • recovery time – the TTL will need to expire 1-5 minutes, the website will return to running on staging

schedule with the client the move to production. Tell the client there is a medium risk that a site might break.

create a password on haproxy for the client to use, email to client

Test:

  • remove entries from /etc/hosts
  • dig www.domain.name
  • dig domain.name
  • check that the answer is 203.98.65.40
  • check the website from a browsers firefox, chrome, ie, iphone
  • record screen shots

Client Approval

  • send all screen shots for the client to review
  • let the client know, so they can test the site

Result

  • the website is transfered to our production staging server
  • the website should be much faster
  • the website owner will need to test all functions, including email contacts, product purchases

Step 7 – enable cloudflare

Risk

  • low risk – cloudflare might disrupt the website
  • recovery procedure – using the client’s cpanel account, disable railgun and restest, or disable cpanel for the given domain
  • recovery time – instant

use the client’s cpanel account

using the cloudflare option

  • enable cloudflare
  • enable railgun, railgun1

Test:

  • check the website from a browsers firefox, chrome, ie, iphone

Client Approval

  • let the client know, so they can test the site

What about support?

WordPress support is a sticky subject. Everyone expects everything, and wants it included.

What we’ve learned is:

  1. most support issues can be corrected with restoring backups
  2. a reasonable maintenance plan reduces most of the need for support. Like good security, recent updates, good backups, central management (if you have more than 1 site).

So our main form of support is pro-active, making sure your site is reasonably maintained. Poorly maintained sites are just everyone’s support nightmare waiting to happen.

For small business customers, we’ll put your site under our maintenance plan. We’ll support your site to keep it working, safe, secure, fast. If your site breaks it most often means recovering a backup to bring your site to a working state. If you’re struggling with getting a new page/plugin working, you have a few options:

  • go back to your developer/designer
  • continue to muck around yourself (really ?)
  • or use our pay-as-you-go support. It is $20+gst per instance, and we’ll help you with 1 task, 1 page, or 1 plugin. We think this is a reasonable approach, a reasonable balance between poor support that is free, no support, or a more expensive plan.

For wholesale customers, we expect that you are managing wordpress for your clients. We’ll help you recover backups. Make general recommendations, help you get new sites running in production, help you setup some form of central management. We’ll also help you with 1 larger issue per month. After that, we’ll put you on the pay-as-you-go support as well – but realistically that’s still very cheap wordpress support.

For medium/large business customers, we include whatever support you need. We will still require your developers for new pages, or new plugins, but keeping pages working – we’ll be there for you, keeping stuff working. We’ll give your developers reasonable access to level 3 tech support (these are the real deal techy support geeks).

On all plans, we’ll make sure wordpress and plugins are up-to-date, and that backups are in place (see here about backups).

Once you’re a customer, we’ll give you an interface to lodge support tickets.

What backups are there ?

Currently we are focussing mostly on backing up staging. This is what we are doing for staging :

  • We do full cpanel account backups daily – that are stored on a different server. We are doing daily for 30 days, 4 weeklys, and 12 monthlys. This means you can go back as far as a year, and recover your data. You can manually download these backups from your cpanel account if required.
  • For our resellers to show a bit extra love, we can send all your account backups offsite to your choosing – ftp, amazon s3, dropbox, scp, sftp. As you add/remove accounts they are automatically added to your offsite backup – no need to touch a thing. Just let us know where you want your data sent. We can also use our own amazon s3 account if you’d like, and we can give you web access to that.
  • the accounts backups are stored on our SAN using RAID storage.
  • we are sending all the accounts backups offsite as well, just in case.
  • plus the cpanel server is on our SAN, and it has daily snapshot backups, with offsite copies.
  • You can download these backups through cpanel, and restore files yourself
  • or you can submit a support task, and we can restore the files for you
  • Soon we’ll have a self support cpanel plugin to restore these backups

For production

  • There are nightly ‘restore points’ created for the live/production WordPress sites. This includes the WordPres files, contents, and database.
  • Every time you update the live server from your staging server, we add another ‘restore point’.
  • We have a cpanel plugin you can use to instantly recover these restore points. So if you send a new site from staging to production, and its an oops, just recover to the known working restore  point.
  • Again we have  30 days, 4 weeklys, and 12 monthlys. And we can automate offsite copies for resellers.
  • The portion in our own data centre is in snapshots, and offsite replication
  • the portion that is in amazon also has snapshots, and is sent to amazon s3

How do I install wordpress ?

Log in to your cpanel account.

Under the heading ‘software and services’ you’ll see ‘site software’  (ctrl f is your friend here).

WordPress is the only option (I wonder why)

Fill out the page , a few tips:

  • dont use admin as the user – that is what the hackers guess at
  • under ‘installation URL’ – you’ll usually want to clear that field out so that its blank. This will put wordpress as your primary website.

 

Are there any known issues ?

We are still in beta, here is a list of things we are still working on 

– currently its 1 wordpress install per domain, or add-on domain. We’re still testing wordpress on subdomains.

What should I expect from the production cluster ?

The first time you push a site to production a few things might be different.

Firstly, the first visit to each page type will be noticeably slower. We use a php compiling technology from facebook, called HHVM, that does a lot of thinking ahead of time, in order to make each web visitor page impression super fast.

Secondly, our security might kick in, your page will appear as blank, or an error 404. Log a support request and we’ll review that immediately for you.

Thirdly, we use google’s mod pagespeed. This also crunches pages, and makes them smaller, and more optimized. You’ll see URLs of images/css/js change to include pagespeed. Some URLs might disappear completely as pagespeed puts some images inside the webpage.

And lastly, your site should go faster, be more reliable, and never get hacked.

There is also a plugin in the cpanel interface, under wpdone, called ‘speed report’ – this shows how superfast your site is for customers.

What does ‘push to production’ mean ?

Your wordpress site starts like on our staging  server. The cpanel/WHM server is the staging server. This gives you lots of control and access to your site, including ftp access and password control.

You should use a URL like staging.mydomain.com.au for your site on the staging server. We have another FAQ on that.

The staging site is where you should:

  • make development changes
  • trial plugins
  • update wordpress
  • update plugins
  • major changes to content
  • if you only rarely make changes to content, make them here as well

When you are happy that everything is working on the staging site – we’ll push the site to the production cluster. The production cluster is where your wordpress site will reside that the public will see. It will use a url like www.mydomain.com.au.

To achive this, you should use the wpdone cpanel plugin, ‘send to cluster’. Leave all the defaults to Yes, this should take about 15 seconds on existing sites. If it’s the first time, it takes about 45-60 seconds or so.

How do I enable cloudflare and railgun ?

There is a cpanel plugin for cloudflare.

Click on it, and register your site (its just a 1 click process).

Then click on the ‘cloudflare performance’ tab. It should say, at the bottom, ‘Powered by Cloudflare ‘ . If its not turned on, click the little cloud logo on the right hand side at the bottom.

You can click ‘settings’. for further functionality.

You can purge the cache from here, which is rarely needed.

You can also enabled ‘railgun’ from here, you should choose ‘railgun1’. This will make your site even faster.

After installing cloudflare – it configures cloudflare to use that staging server as the source of web pages.

If you want to use the production cluster as the source for web pages, use the ‘advanced dns zone editor’ and change this entry

cloudflare-resolve-to.wpdone.com.au. 1400 IN CNAME failover.esxhosting.com.au

failover.esxhosting.com.au is a mechanism to find the favoured hosting cluster member.

Some short falls of cloudflare currently:

  • they only support the www site, and not the root site.
  • they don’t currently support ssl via the cpanel plugin. If you have a separate cloudflare account ssl will work.

How do I add my staging URL to cpanel ?

cpanel is mostly concerned with domain names, like  mydomain.com.au

So you first add your domain as a cpanel account.

Then you click on ‘sub domains’ on the main cpanel menu. (eg. staging.wpdone.com.au)

You enter ‘staging’ as the subdomain name.

cpanel will prompt a suggest ‘Document Root’, but you change it to ‘public_html’.

Then you can install wordpress – see a different FAQ.

I’ve been adding this to wp-config.php as well

define('WP_HOME','http://staging.wpdone.com.au');

define('WP_SITEURL','http://staging.wpdone.com.au');

what it does is this:

  • wordpress get installed, and assume www.wpdone.com.au, or wpdone.com.au
  • you can actually change this site address from inside wordpress
  • or you can override it in wp-config.php – which is more definitive
  • when we push your site to production, we look for this, and change it to www.wpdone.com.au (or whatever your site is called).

 

Are there any restrictions ?

No backup plugins – unless you get it checked with us first. We have extensive backups, including cpanel backups, and SAN backups, that are both offsite. If you’re a wholesale customer we can organise an additional backup for you.

No caching plugins, other than w3 total cache. We also used redis object cache – but we install that automatically.

Plugins that write to the filesystem won’t work too well, or at all. Like backup plugins, or older sitemap plugins.

cron functionality is limited. But we’ve found most customers use it for backup plugins and older sitemap plugins.

we do have the ability to schedule cron tasks on the admin server – it requires a support request to enable. We might to enabling this for all customers at some stage. This will fix things like old sitemap plugins, or older plugins that write to the filesystem.

cron does work perfectly well on staging. So things like automated updates occuring on staging only is a good things. You can review there, and push to production as appropriate.

Your wordpress website can only be used as a website, and not an internet backup storage server. We wont accept huge catalogues of images or video – reasonable business images for websites is fine. Video should be on youtube or vimeo in most cases. We won’t accept files that are not used on your website.

How should I build my wordpress site ?

“We started to build a website ourselves on WordPress but it has been far too time consuming. I would also like to know what price range I should be looking at to expect a quality professional looking page. Content is written, layout is mostly planned, and photography is in progress so it’s just the putting it all together we need done. Any and all advice welcome.”

This is sort of ‘how long is a piece of string problem’.

The cost of your site is a function of a few decisions

1. Do you want something truly custom, that reflects your brand ?
if so, start with a psd from a good designer
if not, perhaps aim towards someone that can use templates

2. do you want to ‘Do It Yourself?’
I think this is the worst strategy, takes too long, looks like rubbish when you’re finished.
if you do, invest in a recently built theme – don’t pick a popular but aging theme – because they are likely to come with security problems.

3. You want someone to look after you, make all the decisions, and just give you the finished product ?
– look for a real agency, not a web developer.
– have a budget of atleast $3k, but $5k+ is more likely
– ask me directly to refer you to some good guys, that will look after you.

4. Do you have experience with off shore, or managing contractors ?
– this can cut the cost dramatically, like by 80% cheaper
– it can also lead to a bit of mess if you aren’t used to managing it
– you can put up each piece of the project for auction on freelancer or elance.
Some general advice from me,
– spend what you can afford this year. Your site should have a life of 12-18 months, as you learn more about what you want to achieve, more about your brand, just rebuild every few years. This saves spending too much at once, and getting too attached to your investment.
– a designer is not a developer, they know how to make stuff look good, but cant build it.
– a web developer is not a designer, they can build stuff, but it looks awful.

depends if you’re after truly custom, including a custom design, or you’re happy with templates. And if you want to use local Aussies, or you have experience with off shore.

This is my structure
– get a psd from a good designer – make sure it reflects your brand, colours etc
– get a quote for css/html cut up
– get a quote for wordpress template build
– I use freelancer.com.au for my quotes.
– I use asana for managing tasks

How to stop google indexing my staging site

If you’re not careful, google will index your staging site, causing reduced SEO, plus other issues. Here’s how to stop it. Put this code in your header.php in your theme, either before the <title> tag, or after the </tilte> tag.

<?php
if( strpos ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] , 'staging') > -1 ) {
echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">' ;
}
?>

So how does it work ? it looks for the word ‘staging’ in the server name, and displays the noindex rule for google. But when your site is pushed to production, and loses the staging in the server name, the noindex is also removed.

Why do I even need to worry about security for wordpress ?

I’ve heard it loads of times ‘my site has nothing important, no-one would want to hack it’

The truth is cyber criminals and bot networks don’t know you, or care about your site.

They are interested in hacking your site to

  •  use it to hack others – they build up a huge network of hacked sites, to use as weapons
  • deface your site, and extort money from you to repair it
  • just causing mahem

What I find interesting is small companies paying $5-$15/month in hosting that does not have good security. You’ll find your clean up bill for a hack will run into the hundreds. I’ve even seen people lose their website, and have to start again, as they find out their backups also contained the hack.

Do I get a free cpanel account ?

Yes, you do ,  you get a free cpanel account to match each paid wordpress install.

Wholesale customers get a reseller account.

It does include all the cpanel features, but it’s meant to only host wordpress websites.

We encourage you to use it as your DNS server. We have 3 clustered DNS servers.

We have the cloudflare plugin installed as well. The cloudflare plugin will sign up your www.hostname.com.au to cloudflare, and direct the traffic back to the production website cluster. There is a simple button to turn off cloudflare if its causing an issue.

You can use email and other features on cpanel, but we discourage it, and support is limited. We recommend you use gmail. You can setup a ’email forwarder’ in cpanel, that will forward your email to your gmail account.

If you start doing things we dont like, we’ll have a chat to you. Like storing gobs of email, or uploading a backup of your family photos.

Do you have a staging site ?

Yes we do, we give you a free staging site to match each paid wordpress site.

The staging site is on cpanel, so you can manage things like ftp users and uploading files.

Once your happy with your staging site, you can push it to our production web server cluster.

We have a cpanel plugin that helps you manage push your site to the production cluster. This includes both the database, and the wordpress files (you can choose either or both).

You can still log into your production site, and make changes directly if you like.

You can also use the cpanel plugin to ‘copy back’ all your data (database and files) from production back to staging.

WIll it have enough CPU and memory for backups ?

“I’ve found with my VPS ,  and other web hosting, that I run into limits for scheduled backups”

  • I’ve seen this before also, php limits on memory, php limits on execution time

Well, one of the things we do is limit what sort of backup tools you can use.

We put a lot of effort into backups. And give you a non-wordpress web interface to restore those backups.

We also let you download backups whenever you like.

I also understand that you want a backup somewhere not under our control (which makes sense, I would). We can also schedule an upload of the backups, for all your sites, to either ftp, ssh/scp/sftp, or to amazon s3.

In a pinch there are a few backup plugins we will allow.

When we do schedule backups, or a backup plugin, it does not run on the main web server cluster. It will run on the admin wordpress server, and on the staging wordpress server. This allows us to schedule the backups during the day as well.

How can wpDone offer unlimited wordpress hosting ?

A lot of what we’ve done to make wordpress faster and more secure has driven our costs down. For example, hacking and password guessing was taking around 90% of the CPU usage of wordpress. Once the security measures stopped the hacking attempts, we have a lot less CPU usage.

Same with the CDN and page optimizer, together they eliminate up to 80% of the internet traffic. Then we became CDN optimized partner (and have cloudflare railgun), that can eliminate another 80%+ percent of the traffic that was left.

So with less web hits – comes less database hits.

Add to that computers and the internet get cheaper every year.

Also our experience with clients shows a reduction in the costs over time.

So we are passing the savings on to you, in the form of unlimited everything – hits, internet, database, and storage.

We do have some limitations – larger companies need to go onto a different plan (they can afford it, they still get unlimited usage), plus we have ‘reasonable limits clauses. Like you can’t plonk non website files on your site. We aren’t going to allow anyone with insane sized digital assets (like say a professional photographer to keep a massive portfolio of raw images), or for someone to distribute video downloads.

Our unlimited plans are for regular Aussie businesses.

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Email or call, and we can arrange a time to chat call 0412927156 or CONTACT US TODAY!