As a business owner, your website and domain are crucial assets in your digital presence. There may come a time when you decide to terminate these services. Before you do, it’s essential to understand the consequences of this decision, not just for your immediate operations but for your long-term digital footprint. In this article, we’ll explore what actions may happen when a website and its associated services are terminated, cancelled, or abandoned, focusing on aspects like email services, domain name status, data backups, and more.
Loss of Website Access and Functionality
When you terminate your website services, the most immediate impact is the loss of access to your website. Depending on your service provider, this may be immediate or at the last day of your contract. This may also include loss of your content, graphics, images, software, and functionality. In some cases a backup or transfer can be requested, but it will need to be performed before the termination.
Other actions may include:
No More Content Updates: You can no longer update or change your website’s content
404 Errors for bookmarked or externally linked pages
E-commerce Operations Cease: If your site includes e-commerce, these functions will stop, affecting sales and customer interactions
User Access is Revoked: Customers or clients will no longer be able to access your site, leading to potential loss of business and client trust
Disruption of Email Services
If your email is hosted through your domain provider, terminating your website may disrupt sending or receiving emails. Depending on how your mailboxes were setup, you may not retain a copy locally on your device(s) of your mailboxes. People who try and email you may receive bounce-backs or undeliverable messages. Ask your provider first about options to archive, download, or transfer your email and mailbox folders. If you have P.O.S. (Point of Sale) systems, calendars, they may need to be reconfigured if they utilize an email account with your domain name. Another thing to consider is logins to banks, government agencies, or other third party institutions, you’ll want to change your contact email to another address that you have access to or getting it updated after you lose access to the registered email account may be difficult to support.
Domain Name Release and Potential Repurchase
This is a big one that not many people realize. Your domain name, the digital address of your business will be available for anyone else to purchase and register. Depending on how much traffic your domain received and it’s ranking, it may be on the radar from some bots and software that are waiting for the chance to scoop it up and hold it or resell it for a profit. There’s very little legal obligations to get a released domain back. Though not impossible, but may be costly and avoidable by just keeping the domain registration active with a nominal annual fee.
Grace Periods and Redemption
Typically, there’s a 30-day grace period during which you can renew your services without losing your domain. Check with your service provider before you close your account to ask about this. Reactivating your domain post-grace period can be costly and is not always guaranteed.
Data and Backup Deletion
The termination of your website services also impacts your data. This includes but isn’t limited to any content, graphics, images, and photography. Unless you have a backup, you will lose all the data on your website. In some cases you may want to ensure you have a recent backup or copy of your website, because having one from a long time ago may not contain any recent or updated content. Some providers may offer data transfer services or backup and retention services for a fee. There is a nifty website that we use occasionally to research an archived timestamp or snapshot of a website through The Wayback Machine.
SEO and Online Presence Impact
Many business owners invest a lot of time and money on improving their online presence and search engine results page (SERP) ranking. To lose this may be detrimental and not a first thought when considering terminating your website and domain services. The SEO ranking you’ve built up over time will be lost, affecting your online visibility. Any external links or references to your website will lead to dead ends, potentially harming your brand’s reputation.
Legal and Compliance Issues
Depending on your industry, there may be legal ramifications to research and consider. Certain states, governments, and/or industries require data to be kept for specific periods, even after a business ceases operations. You might need to inform clients or users about the termination of your website and services, and give them a means to respond and record or document that response.
Wrapping this up, I want to leave you with some key takeaways to remember. Terminating your website and domain services is a significant decision with far-reaching implications. It’s not just about losing a site; it’s about disrupting your business’s digital presence, losing critical data, and potentially harming your long-term online reputation. Before making this decision, consider the consequences, explore alternatives, and ensure you have a plan for data backup and migration. If you would like help with this, promptly contact us so that we can act quickly and potentially save you money and peace of mind.
As the internet continues to evolve, website security has become a crucial aspect of ensuring a safe and trustworthy online experience. One of the most significant developments in this regard is the use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates. In this article, we’ll explore the reasons why it’s essential for websites to have an SSL certificate and why Google requires it.
What does it mean?
First, let’s define an SSL certificate. SSL is a standard security protocol that establishes an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data transferred between the server and the browser remains private and secure. SSL certificates are digital certificates that are issued by trusted third-party providers, known as Certificate Authorities (CAs). These certificates verify the authenticity of a website and encrypt all data transmitted between the website and the user’s browser.
Now, let’s get into why SSL certificates are crucial for websites
Data Protection One of the most significant benefits of SSL certificates is data protection. Without SSL, all data transferred between a user’s browser and a website is transmitted in plain text. This means that anyone who intercepts the data can read and use it for malicious purposes. SSL encrypts all data, making it unreadable to anyone who intercepts it.
Authentication SSL certificates also provide authentication. They verify the identity of the website, ensuring that users are communicating with the website they intended to. This helps prevent phishing scams, where attackers create fake websites to steal user information.
Improved SEO In 2014, Google announced that HTTPS (the secure version of HTTP, which uses SSL) would be a ranking signal in its search algorithm. Websites with SSL certificates are given a higher ranking than those without. This means that having an SSL certificate can improve a website’s visibility on search engines, which can lead to increased traffic.
Trust SSL certificates also create trust between websites and their users. Seeing the padlock icon in the browser bar and the “https” in the URL reassures users that their data is secure and that they can trust the website they’re visiting.
So let’s talk about why Google requires SSL certificates. In 2018, Google started marking all HTTP sites as “Not Secure” in the Chrome browser. This was part of Google’s plan to make the web a more secure place. Google wants to encourage all website owners to adopt HTTPS by making it a standard for all websites.
Google has also stated that websites without SSL certificates may be penalized in search rankings. As we mentioned earlier, SSL certificates are a ranking signal in Google’s algorithm. Websites without SSL certificates are seen as less trustworthy, and their rankings may be lowered as a result.
Our agency, Design Theory, has been informing our clients about a campaign we’re performing to have all of our client websites configured with an SSL Certificate. Great news if you’re already a client of ours, and if you’re not but want to get your SSL Certificate installed on your website, give us a call or email and we’d be happy to help you!
To wrap things up, SSL certificates are crucial for website security, data protection, authentication, SEO, and trust. Google requires SSL certificates to make the web a safer place and to encourage website owners to adopt HTTPS. If you’re a website owner, it’s essential to obtain an SSL certificate to ensure your website’s security and to maintain your search rankings.
A couple of weeks ago I presented at WordPress Orlando on Client Transparency in Creative Development. For those of you who weren’t able to attend or wanted to watch the presentation below is the video. Be sure to watch all the way to the end as the Q&A session was also recorded at the end of the video, as well as some commentary from other members of the WP Orlando community. Of course if you have any questions please feel free to Contact Us and we help.
Earlier this week I did a presentation at my local WordPress Orlando MeetUp about Client Transparency. This talk was a really open look at what it’s like being a creative, dispelling some perceptions on the creative lifestyle, as well as some insight into the thought process of a designer or developer working with the average client. I’ll be honest and say that most of these views are my sole perception, however many other creatives have echoed the same emotions and feelings.
The purpose of this though was to bring some light and understanding to both sides of the table when it comes to working through creative projects. The better both creatives and clients understand and respect each other, the better the development process will be and increase working relationships for long terms.
If you were unable to attend the live presentation, it was recorded and will be shared soon.
Have you ever come across this error message after updating a few things in your WordPress Dashboard?
Well don’t panic, there is an easy way to clear this, and get your website back online.
First you need to launch your FTP application. Some use FileZilla or maybe even Dreamweaver. Either works fine, or you can use your hosting providers File Manager to access your server files. Once logged in and you can view your files on the remote server, you’ll need to navigate to the root directory of your website.
Once there scroll up and look for the .maintenance file. It won’t have an extension.
I highlighted the file in red. You’ll just need to click that and choose a delete option to remove it from your server. Once removed navigate back to your website and refresh your page. You should be able to get back to your WordPress Dashboard like normal.
Over the past few months we’ve been experiencing some issues with our current hosting company. Before I start throwing them under the bus, let me first say that we’ve used them for almost 10 years and didn’t start having issues until this year. What were those problems you ask? Let me explain.
Server Processes
Something I will admit that I really didn’t know much about. I’m not a server guy, and no one in our agency is either so this server technology really wasn’t a topic for our meetings. Well with some hosting companies they actually have a limit to how many processes can be running on a server at any given time. Our partner company 1and1 didn’t inform us of this until a solid month of random site performance issues. Our HTML sites were fine, but our WordPress sites where the ones creating these processes that at times would halt their server. In most cases it could have been from adding plugins, new pages, new posts, updating theme settings, etc. It really was random and no thanks to the language barrier of 1and1’s off-shore customer support that (by procedure) blames you first unless you request that they look at their system for errors.
Memory Usage
Here at Design Theory, we manage many websites. Since end of last year just about all of our new sites coming online have been in WordPress. WordPress runs on MySQL, and thus a new database is needed for each site. Each of those databases have an amount of memory usage depending on how much content the site has. So having upwards of 70+ databases and you’ve got a perfect storm just waiting to flood the server your sites are on. The amount of memory the hosting company allotted for your websites is limited. Each company may offer a different amount but it isn’t much when you’re on the economy hosting companies like 1and1, GoDaddy, Blue Host, and others. I suggest you either give them a call or do an extensive search through the fine print to find out what yours is.
Price
I can’t stress enough how you get what you pay for. For those of you that pay for your own hosting for your one main site, for now you may be safe. But isn’t the idea of a business website that it will continue to grow? Aren’t we doing things to boost traffic to our sites to promote our products and services? Well if you’re doing it right you should notice an increasing number of visits each week and month. At some point you’ll need to make the decision to move away from the economy hosting options to either higher cost VPS (Virtual Private Servers) or to a hosting company that specializes in WordPress – Like Media Temple. (shameless plug)
Performance
If you’ve had your WordPress up for a good few months, you may start to notice things running a bit slower than it did when you first set things up. You’ve added a ton of great content, images, pages, posts, plugins, etc. Nothing wrong with that if you’re creating value for your visitors. Until it takes them more than a few extra seconds to pull up your site and pages. The decrease in performance could be due to your site or other sites on the same server (unbeknownst to you). A better hosting plan or company will have optimized servers that don’t:
Throttle your bandwidth
Force a site shut down (Error 403)
Service Temporarily Unavailable error
WordPress Security & Automatic Updates
There are are some hosting companies that actually offer automatic updates to WordPress while also taking preventative measures to keep their infrastructure secure from malware and attacks. If you think about it, it actually benefits those hosting companies a bit more than you as their customer; mainly because they can assure version control and scheduled updates for off-peak times. Some even vet the updates prior to making them live to all of their hosted WordPress sites.
What’s To Come
For a lot of those sites staying on economy $10/mo hosting run the risk of these types of errors above in the very near future. For the amount of websites currently online, 20% of them are WordPress sites according to w3techs. Looking at the chart below, you can see that in a year there’s been substantial growth. Imagine what percentage of site will be on WP by the end of next year and beyond if it keeps growing like this.
I actually had a client just recently had their website taken down for what the hosting company (Blue Host) said that she had used up too much of their server. Are hosting companies preparing for the increased stress on their servers? You have to wonder right? To most you’re just an account number that is being billed regardless of the level of service. There probably are hundreds of site owners that can may not even notice if their website goes down for a few hours or days. But for those of you that have frequent traffic to your site for your great content and resources, and those of you that are working to be the authority figure on your industry, you really can’t afford to have your website go down for something that could be easily avoided sans frivolous predetermined hosting restrictions.
As always your thoughts and point of views are appreciated. Lets continue the conversation below in the comments.
![Developer and Client Transparency Presentation [VIDEO]](https://jpdesigntheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Client-Transparency-WP-Orlando-Jeans-Picture-1080x675.jpg)
