Throughout the time of running Petersweb, we have released multiple websites, mainly small blogging sites, and resource sites. Over the Easter weekend, 2020 one of our clients released a Web-site powered by Woocommerce. This was our first large e-commerce site released by a client. We have written other articles regarding getting your website ready for Black Friday. However, releasing your first e-commerce website is somewhat more tasking. Here are our top tips for getting started with eCommerce!

1. Make sure you make full integration with Cloudflare. We normally recommend doing a partial integration, however, this only protects the www.yourdomain.com. This, in turn, leaves the site without the ‘www.’ Portion vulnerable to web-based attacks. This is normally a reasonable level of protection, however, with an eCommerce site, it is advised to not take any chances with the protection of your assets.
2. Make sure you are comfortable writing simple firewall rules for your website. We have an article linked here on how to prevent invalid logins to Wordpress, which is a good start for added protection. However, with eCommerce websites, you will find more and more attacks trying to get around this protection methodology. Don't be scared to add extra challenges to certain countries of IP origin. I would recommend looking at the incoming traffic activity through the plugin ‘Wordfence’. We strongly recommend having the Wordfence plugin installed! Look at what countries are accessing your website, are any of these countries displaying malicious trends in their traffic patterns?
3. Use a good caching plugin. If the caching plugin is set up correctly it will help to speed up the loading time of your website. This will help your customers get onto your website even faster! Taking this action combined with the use of our Cloudflare CDN will make your website run at a good pace.
4. Do not use Jetpack. Woocommerce will keep asking you to install Jetpack to add additional functionality. However, this majorly slows down your website and doesn’t actually add a lot of additional functionality that you can’t get from other plugins.

Our general advice for releasing an eCommerce web-site is to consider security and speed above other factors such as the design of your web-site. We are not suggesting that design is unimportant, however, would you rather have a pretty website that takes 10 minutes to load or a slightly less aesthetically pleasing website that takes under 2 or 3 seconds to load. (OK 10 minutes may be a slight exaggeration, but you get the gist). Also, another key piece of advice is, on the day that you release the website, you can be tempted to start altering content. Try to avoid making changes on the day of release, the last thing you want is your new website to break on release date! If you are interested in the particular web-site that inspired this article feel free to check it out: www.prettymama.co.uk

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you think we can help get your Ecommerce web-site up and running!

Often when we are travelling around we see a lot of small businesses saying “contact [email protected]”, in another article, we have already discussed how companies can avoid the corporate curse. The admin for these email addresses is very generic and does not convey any personality and in some regard, makes you feel like a very cold business. Here are my top tips for making your email user friendly but also professional at the same time.

1: [email protected] – This immediately feels a lot more inviting, yet it is still a generic email so you are not giving away your name. This can be a great friendly option for a contact email.

2: [email protected] – Now I am not saying that this one should be plastered over the side of your van however, this may also work. This format works particularly well on business cards because you are saving what little space you have on business cards you have by having both your name and email address in one.

3: [email protected] – Yes, this one is still very generic and maybe my least favourite however, I like to use this one on contact forms, not necessarily on the side of your van. By having a separate email for different contact points you are able to track which methods are working the most effectively for your business. 

Your email address is often the first contact that people see so by having the right email address it sets the tone for your business style and the correct email address may help attract customers to your website.

As always we are happy to chat if you have any questions relating to this article (or if you just fancy....a chat). Please get in touch via a support ticket (open a ticket) to our hosting department and we will do our best to get back in touch with you as soon as possible.

Most websites will get attacked at some point. Most commonly this is invalid logins on Wordpress websites. Checkout some ways to help keep your site safe in 5 easy steps to keep your Wordpress site safe although wordfence relies on people getting on your sites login page then failing three times.  . Under heavy attack this process can slow (or even take ) your site down. This got us thinking what if you could block the invalid login before they hit your site, perfect right? So we know that the attack is looking for /wp-admin or /wp-login, ok, how can we limit the traffic to those URLs, we also want to limit who can access these pages, Ips can change so this would be too complex to implement. But you know you will login from the UK (or which ever part or the world your in). So now we have something like “only let the UK access /wp-admin or /wp-login”. Follow us?

So how do I implement this, we recommend Cloudflare there fire wall allows you to set thease conditions with ease with the following rule

((http.request.uri.path in {"/wp-admin" "/wp-admin/" "/wp-login" "/wp-login/" "/wp-login.php"} or http.request.uri.query contains "wp-admin")and not ip.geoip.country in {"GB"})

Then block

This will block anyone that is not in the UK from accessing wp-admin or wp-login. This simple rule means less attacks on your site, and better performance. If you should have any issues or have any questions regarding this topic please contact us via a support ticket (open a ticket) with our hosting department and we will get back to you as soon as possible