We all do maintenance for our WordPress website clients, right? But what do you cover and what does a client expect? That's the basis of the podcast today... There are many things that you 'could' cover, but many things that perhaps don't want to. Perhaps you know that you're not a security expert, or that configuring your server is a little out of scope. So how do you decide what's in and what's out? Also, we're in an era of 'no-code'. Clients are constantly being bombarded by messages saying that you can have a website which you can build yourself with no experience. How does this play into the equation of what a client will expect from you? Solutions like Wix and Squarespace make this promise a reality and it's no doubt a conversation that you're going to need to combat at some point. Join us on the podcast today to see what we think about this and what we've done in the past...
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. We are on Season 4 which is a short season looking at training clients. Today we are talking about website documentation and support. When we hand over a website, are we obliged to support it into the future, or can we just hand it over and be done with it? If we are going to support it, is there some standard of documentation we need to provide? Paper based, videos, in-person. I suspect that we've all got different ways of handling this, so check out the podcast to see what we do. BONUS, it's a short episode and you'll be done with it in no time!
Today on the WP Builds podcast we're talking about health. Not your health, but the health of the WordPress sites you build or manage. Turns out that there's a boatload of things that need to be done regularly to keep your sites fighting fit. From backing them up to monitoring their uptime. Checking that they're okay after updates to keeping up with the latest SEO trends. I could go on for a lot longer, in fact David and I do in the podcast. From an agency perspective, this episode is particularly interesting because many of the things that we discuss today are areas which you can productise and sell to your clients; because honestly, they're unlikely to be something that your clients are interested in, they'll just want to know that it's done. Go check out the podcast today.
Where should you go for support for WordPress plugins, themes and blocks? This debate was partly prompted by a WP Tavern article regarding what can be done about the WordPress.org forum being used to support premium versions of plugins which are not in the repository. There seems to be a lot of complexity to this due to the varying expectations of support and the vast difference in what plugin and themes do. We are probably better for having both types of support, but perhaps polarizing these can help explore the topic. Find out which is the best way to receive support on the WP Builds Podcast today. Go listen...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 7th September 2020
I got into building WordPress websites because I like building websites. Now that is a breathtaking insight I know! But it's important to think about this for a minute. I have no metrics on this, but I know for certain that I spend quite a but of my week just patching up and maintaining websites that I've already built. This is covered by my care plans but I'm not all that sure how profitable my WordPress website care plans are, one month I might do very little, another, I'm inundated! Today on the WP Builds Podcast we have Brad Morrison from GoWP who is here to tell us how they can take this support burden away from you. They'll do all the maintainance, support, updating and content edits for you. Their new service will even build your webpages for you! Have a listen and see if it's for you...
WordPress is a huge community, and in that community there are people who need help and support. WP and UP is a charity that I'm involved with which offers that help. It's a truly great vision, but, as with all things it takes time and money to make it happen. Some of us at WP and UP decided to ride from Berlin to Portugal in 2020 to raise money for the charity. That's nice you say, what a jolly thing to to... erm... no. It's 3,000 km (nearly 2,000 miles) and it goes over a mountain range! In this episode I speak to my fellow riders, Dan Maby and Carole Olinger about why we're doing it, how we're doing it and why they don't appear to be scared as I am. Have a listen and perhaps even support the project?
Should we be available on the phone to deal with client issues for our WordPress website business? I have had this conversation so many times in the past with so many people! We all know that, in the right hands, a phone can be one of the best ways to engage with your clients. But, in the wrong hands, the phone can be a scary thing that wastes your time and causes you stress and anxiety. See what we think...
No guests this week. Just Nathan and David. Two guys in their middle youth chatting about stuff we love.
Ok, there maybe little bit of venting, but actually this is quite a nice topic.
Happy “Knowledge Base” day ;-)
In this, the 7th episode of the WP Builds podcast, David Waumsley and Nathan Wrigley discuss web site care plans. We discuss what we both do to create recurring / passive revenue for our web design businesses, what works and what does not.
There's so much to this topic, support requests, backups, security...
