As part of JDay USA, Watchful hosted an Ask Me Anything session focused on website maintenance. We invited a panel of Joomla and WordPress experts to help answer your questions. The session was a great success. The questions and discussion points covered a broad range of topics well beyond simply Read more…
Watchful generates a lot of data about the WordPress and Joomla websites added to your account. This saved information, with a variable retention time, forms the activity logs. Next week we will release a revamped logging system. This post describes the change and what to expect as a Watchful user. Read more…
For those who don’t know me, I’m Victor Drover, the owner of Watchful. Next week is my birthday — the BIG five-oh! To celebrate I’m hosting an Ask Me Anything session focused on website maintenance. When and where The AMA will begin Friday, April 23rd at 8:00 AM UTC-5 (check Read more…
The Watchful dashboard stores specific information about a website in its humble little feature called website notes, which aren’t stored or logged elsewhere. Common examples include site-specific upgrade steps, client preferences, a record of site milestones or 1-off site maintenance tasks such as modifying the .htaccess file. When you open Read more…
If you’re managing Joomla websites and using extensions by Akeeba, you may be familiar with the FOF and FEF plugins that typically accompany their software. Like all of the software on your site, updating Akeeba is an important step in keeping your website secure. Historically, these files have been classified Read more…
Inspry is a digital consultancy based in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). They opened their doors in 2011 in the wake of the Great Recession with a mission to build tailored, technical web development solutions that help their clients succeed. Founded by Matt Schwartz following a year of freelancing, the company name Read more…
It’s a scary and all-too common story: a WordPress plugin update has taken your website offline and you don’t have a recent backup to revert the changes. Now you’ve got to spend a bunch of time troubleshooting and fixing the problem on the live site before your clients start calling. Read more…
Watchful includes a built-in backup monitoring system that keeps an eye on the age of your website backups. And when a backup passes its useful “shelf life”, stale backup notifications can be sent by email. Stale backup warnings are also placed in convenient places throughout the Watchful platform to help Read more…
Automatic software updates can speed up website maintenance dramatically. So, managing automatic updates in bulk — enabling and disabling them across many websites at once — is a critical tool for any digital agency. For instance, you may discover that a WordPress plugin breaks your sites or installs a backdoor. Read more…
A year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic forced most in-person conferences to either cancel or move online. Web design conferences were no exception. The coming of age of truly engaging online conference platforms seemed to portend a bright future for online meetings. But here in the spring or 2021 it feels Read more…