Magento Maintenance – Security & Performance Package

Keeping Your Magento Website Running Like a Champ

Magento is a powerful and widely used e-commerce platform. Like many well-designed software platforms, Magento uses a system of extensions to provide specific functionality for tasks that it is capable of, but not configured to do “out of the box”. Like most software, Magento’s core software and extensions need to be updated regularly so that they don’t create security vulnerabilities. We also evaluate extensions regularly to ensure that they are compatible with the most recent core release of Magento software.

Our monthly Magento maintenance package (Magento Security & Performance plan) includes security and functionality updates (including PCI compliance scans and maintenance for stores that accept credit cards directly, as most do), as well as on-going digital marketing.

Magento Security & Performance

1. Apply Magento 1 / Magento 2 security patches, in most cases on the same day that they are released. This is a crucial part of our approach to Magento maintenance. Because the bad guys learn about security flaws at the same time that everyone else does, it is important to get them installed as quickly as possible. We run thorough flight tests before making changes live and after, of course.
2. Perform a detailed scan of site for malware, and correct any existing issues.  Evaluate all Magento native and custom logs as well as Linux error and access logs for presence of malware.
   This item is preventive maintenance designed to quickly identify and resolve vulnerabilities that may lead to malware issues down the line. It acts as insurance in the sense that if you have a monthly maintenance plan with us, we do not charge for cleaning up malware. We are very confident in the quality and systemic nature of our maintenance plan and its power to keep your site safe from hackers.
3. Lock down administrative interface and other common targets for hackers. In other words, our plan attempts to anticipate the most common inbound vectors for hackers before they become a problem.
4. Review Magento native and custom logs as well as Linux error and access logs and custom logs for recurring errors and resolve root cause.
5. Evaluate site load speed and take corrective action to ensure that site is loading quickly and reliably. This work can be oriented toward using a CDN, evaluating the current caching configuration, optimizing images, refactoring Magento extensions / plugins – just to name a few.
6. Update, configure, and test Magento core and extensions (where appropriate).  Generally speaking, it is best to have the latest version of all extensions and core software installed on the site.  With some extensions, this is not practical due to customizations and / or other technical considerations, and we explain this in detail when it occurs.  Each month we will do a detailed scan of each extension and software package to make sure it is healthy and compatible with the version of Magento installed on the site.
7. Perform World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) code validation on the site to ensure any newly added content/code meets standards (this is important for forward compatibility and for search engine’s ability to recognize targeted content, as well as for WAI accessibility).
8. Review server statistics such as CPU faults, disk space, memory utilization, bandwidth utilization, io trends to ensure current hosting package is appropriate, and investigate and correct any issues (core dump files, error logs, etc.).
9. Perform a PCI scan and / or penetration testing and take corrective action where necessary.

Nobody Sees a Billboard in The Desert…

Magento Digital Marketing Review

Our maintenance plans are designed to keep your site healthy, and that includes regularly evaluating the efficacy of key phrases, incoming links, and other strategic factors that affect digital marketing strategy. Below are a few of the items that we commonly assess during the maintenance period:

1. Establish and monitor digital marketing goals, including reports on page rank, traffic, conversion, domain authority, competitive position rank, and more. We are most interested in measurable impact to site conversion, and recurring maintenance is extremely helpful in accomplishing this. One of the measures that Google and other search engines use to rank your site, in fact, is how frequently it is updated. So our updates combine SEO intelligence with frequency, and the result is a much more competitive ranking for your site. Combined with our evaluation of site load speed and W3C validity (above), our monthly maintenance plan is a significant step to maintaining healthy digital marketing for your store.
2. Ongoing SEO work to include: adjustments to known Google algorithm changes, page content keyword analysis and recommendations (includes file names, header markup, keyword density), schema.org markup for addresses/business name/etc., competitive analysis and recommendations.

Each month we provide you with a detailed report on the above items and a list of recommendations.