We have been monitoring the most popular WordPress plugins in the Watchful platform for the last 2 years. For each plugin, we measured its usage on thousands of websites and calculated the change in 2021 compared to 2020. Our analysis shows that page builders —like Elementor and WPBakery — and Read more…
Cloudflare is an incredibly powerful tool. When a visitor to your website makes a request to view a page, Cloudflare is the first to intercept it. If your website is a busy intersection in a big city, Cloudflare is the the officer directing traffic. In their role as gatekeeper to Read more…
How much do websites cost? This metric is one of the most common tools that potential clients use in the early stages of selecting a vendor. And this is the question that is answered in every proposal you deliver. But to answer this question we must consider many variables. This Read more…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Aside from all of the uncertainty and change brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been an eventful year for Watchful in terms of new features and improvements in the platform. This was especially true for some of Watchful’s core features such as updates, backups and reports. But we Read more…
Managed website services have exploded across the hosting industry in the last decade. And while they are clearly suitable for many sites, managed WordPress hosting has a number of potential drawbacks that agencies should carefully consider. If managed WordPress hosting is not a good fit for you, or simply outside Read more…