WordPress 1-1 training
Because of the popularity of WordPress and its place as a default web design tool in the services of many UK hosting and internet service providers, these days I regularly provide support for people who are using WordPress to create and maintain their own web sites. If you can master the intricacies of WordPress it’s a very powerful and cost-effective way to manage your web site, but it’s also quite easy to accidentally delete a bit of important code and see your pages fall apart before your eyes. I don’t do training seminars, but if you have hit a problem with your WordPress site – such as a widget or plugin that’s misbehaving, or you can’t get the sidebars or page styles to behave the way you want, please get in touch. If you are in the Cheddar (Somerset) area you can come to me (cheapest) or I can travel to your premises, and work with you to unravel the problem you have encountered. We can also do a remote desktop session if you prefer.
Site maintenance
Copy editing and proofreading
Part of my work involves checking written copy sent to me by clients for use on their web site, and this can also be provided as a stand-alone service depending on other workload. Copy editing typically involves correction of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and clarifying or reformatting the text before publishing the site. Proofreading of documents such as PDFs which will be attached to a site, which may or may not have already been copy-edited, and/or which may subsequently be turned into print, can also be carried out.
Bandwidth monitoring
A recent development in the area of web hosting has been issues surrounding bandwidth usage. Hosting companies are making sure that businesses whose sites make the greatest use of their resources in terms of data transfer, foot the bill. This is done through assigning monthly bandwidth limits to hosting accounts, and then if you have a really busy site, or do lots of large file transfers, or send and receive lots of emails with large file attachments, these can push you over the bandwidth limit and lead to excess fees. There is scope within my own hosting framework for up to 3GB of data transfer on a web site account each month which is normally plenty.
However part of what I do for my customers is to monitor bandwidth usage to spot unauthorised bandwidth usage. A typical example recently experienced was where Google had indexed an image from a customer’s web site. Funny or sexy images are popular search targets from Google image searches, so they then get massively downloaded from people hotlinking to the image (not visiting the customer’s web site but just fetching the image thousands and thousands of times). Also recently someone created a Facebook app which again pulled content (without authorisation) from a customer’s web page. Another client’s email account was compromised and used to send out a large volume of spam email. All of these show up as spikes in bandwidth usage and for all my clients I keep tabs on such situations and take necessary actions to stop this leeching of their site’s bandwidth.
Site plug-ins
As well as content management via Contribute and e-commerce through Actinic I can also connect other packages to your web site, such as WhosOn (for customer tracking) and phpBB (discussion forum) – ask for more information on these and others.
IT support
I can also advise on general internet, Windows, email, spam combat, VOIP telephone and other computer-related matters. I’m not a hardware or networking expert but can certainly propose some solutions regarding problems you may be experiencing. If it turns out you need the heavy artillery, I generally pass all requests for a “man with a screwdriver” – computer repairs, parts, networking, software, security and other IT needs – to Peter Holmes at Wedmore IT - and for a fully-managed service, try PC Dial. Tell them I sent you.
