The news area at Watchful focuses on updates to the platform, new features, and company announcements.
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…
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…
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…
The ability to schedule client report emails was first introduced at Watchful last Spring. We’ve now refactored the report scheduling and delivery system to make it more reliable as well as easier to use. Why schedule client report emails in the first place? Recurring maintenance plans are responsible for a Read more…
Version 3 of Google Analytics is called Universal Analytics. It provides traffic and keyword data that are popular in the white-label reports here at Watchful. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) launched recently, but for the foreseeable future most client reports will require Universal Analytics. Here’s why. How does Watchful obtain site Read more…
Version 4 of Google Analytics launched recently. We’ve followed the progress carefully as traffic and other site data appear in the client reports at many web agencies. But for a host of reasons, updating to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) requires careful consideration even now, nearly 5 months after its initial Read more…
After November 28, 2021, PHP 7 will only receive security fixes. And while PHP 8 barely registers in the current usage statistics of WordPress and Joomla, it will be the only actively-supported version after that date. So now is a great time to test your website with PHP 8, including Read more…
ke many communities, Joomla users pine for the return of live events. And we grew tired of Zoom conferences many months back. A new and innovative event called Joomla Day USA will be held on April 23-24, 2021 that hopes to address both issues. It is a refreshing and exciting Read more…