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Every website needs a tune-up

Remember the first day you took a spin in your father’s Oldsmobile? You were taught to change the oil and filter in the car every 3,000 miles, right? So maybe most of us actually learned on a Saturn instead of an Oldsmobile. And the quality of oil has improved so it might not need changed every 3,000 miles. Yet you were taught that by taking care of your car you would extend its life and hopefully keep from being stuck on the side of the road. It’s the same with your website. It needs a little TLC and a tune-up from time to time. Is it time to update your website?

CMS Updates

WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal – all release regular updates. All three platforms will alert you when a new update is ready to install, however, novice beware. While all updates go through rigorous testing prior to release, every website is different. There is always the possibility that an update with fail or there will be a conflict with your specific site. We recommend working with your IT, development, or design partners to ensure upgrades are done without any hiccups. Speaking of updates, here is what we learned are the latest from the top three:

WordPress

According to the WordPress Blog, WordPress 4.8 Beta 1 is under development and now available for download. This release promises improvements in the visual editor experience, a redesigned dashboard, and enhancements to media widgets including upgrades to their visual text editing.

Joomla

As of April 25, 2017, Joomla released version 3.7. Touted as a major upgrade that includes over 700 improvements, Joomla is highlighting the top three enhancements as the new ability to add custom fields into content, their “Multilingual Associations Component” that should be highly useful for sites needing to serve our diverse global market, and improved workflow and developer features. You can read their full press release here.

Drupal

On April 5, 2017 Drupal released version 8.3 (which has also had a few subsequent security add-ons). Drupal is touting improved authoring, better site administration tools, and a “stable version of the BigPipe module” as its top enhancements. In layman’s terms, better copy and paste functionality from Microsoft Word (everyone has to love that – right?!), some very nice drag and drop features with your images, and better display of dynamic and personalized content. If you like to start your copy in Microsoft Word, like this blog was started, you’ll want to check out these improvements.

Widget updates

Just like your core CMS platform, widgets also frequently have updates. Of utmost importance are security updates, but there are also enhanced features that improve performance, integration, and utility. Just like with CMS upgrades, there is always the possibility of an upgrade failure or conflict. Thoroughly testing a widget updgrade in a stage environment is always recommended if available.

Changes to phone numbers, addresses, personnel, privacy statements…

Finally, when was the last time you took a hard look at your evergreen content on your website. Have any personnel changes? New phone numbers? Did you open a new location? What about changes to your company’s privacy statements? I am always surprised when I am trying to do business with an organization and I find a phone number on their website is no longer in service, or maybe they moved their location. There is nothing worse than wanting to spend money for a product or service and not being able to do so.
Is it time for a little spring cleaning of your website?

WARNING – IN CONTENT ADVERTISEMENT AND SALE

ReversedOut can help! We are platform agnostic, and while we have our favorite(s), we can help any organization upgrade to the latest CMS, widgets, and do a little site maintenance while we are at it. For the months of May and June we are running a Spring Cleaning Special. We’ll update your CMS and corresponding widgets plus give you custom recommendations on how to improve your sites’ performance for just $1,000. That’s a 30% savings. Take advantage of this sale by contacting us today.

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