GoDaddy Fails Crisis Communications Test
I’m a huge fan of WordPress for building web sites. I’m also a fan of GoDaddy, although I know many people don’t share my opinion. If you haven’t heard, WordPress and GoDaddy are very much in the tech news these last couple of days after a massive weekend hack attack that infected untold numbers of WordPress-based sites that are hosted on GoDaddy.
To read more about what happened, check out the coverage on the WPSecurityLock.com blog.
This hack hit me particularly hard, affecting five client sites — three that were live and two more that were being built. Fixing the problem was time-consuming but not terribly difficult once I figured out the problem. I’m not writing this post to compete with other coverage of what happened or how it happened. What interests me from a PR perspective is GoDaddy’s response to this attack. Here’s the statement from them that has been posted in many places:
Measures are in place to protect the overall security of the shared hosting server on which your website resides. The compromise of your account is outside of the scope of security that we provide for you. Virus scans are performed on the content that is hosted, but they may not pick up everything, largely due to the fact that hackers tend to upload custom scripts which are not picked up by traditional malware scanners. However, if a virus is detected, you will be notified. The overall security of your password and the content within your account is your responsibility, as password compromises and compromises due to scripting can only be prevented by you.
Corporate Apparel Client Site Live Today
I just finished up work on a new client website today, and I’m very happy with the results. The client is Corporate Apparel, Inc., a company based in Midlothian, Virginia that provides corporate apparel items such as suits, shirts, hats, and uniforms to businesses across the country. Until now, they had no website whatsoever (oh the horror!).
I worked the company’s owners from the very start of the process, consulting on the best URL to purchase and where to buy their web hosting. I even set up email accounts using their new web address! The site itself was built using WordPress as a CMS, much like I did with my own recent redesign. The website includes a blog, which they plan to populate with company and vendor news.
Check out the results here: www.corporateapparel-inc.com
And, if you’re looking to purchase corporate apparel for your business or event, please contact them. In addition to providing great products, they’re great people too!
WordPress Web Design and SEO Tip
Here’s a big tip if you plan to use WordPress as a CMS for your website, particularly if you’re working off of a fresh installation of WordPress:
As you might know, I recently redesigned the EndGame Public Relations website, moving it from being html-based to php-based and using WordPress as its content management system (CMS). The site was ranking extremely well for the keywords I targeted, falling in the top five on Google and Yahoo for all of them. Shortly after the redesign, however, I found that every time Google re-indexed my site, a few more of my pages would disappear from the rankings for my keywords. I figured they would return shortly and made a few moves to speed up the process.
My Experience with WordPress as a CMS
I just finished a complete redesign of this site, as I mentioned in the blog post previous to this one. As I also mentioned, it’s now build using WordPress as a content management system (CMS). I’m building a client site in a similar way right now as well, and will post about that when it’s fully finished. WordPress once upon a time was exclusively for blogging, but nowadays is so feature-rich that it can be used to build an outstanding standard website that either has or doesn’t have an actual blog.
First, the basics: To turn your WordPress blog into a website, first create a page that you want to be your home page. Then, create a page that you want to be your blog page. The blog page that you create should be blank, because the space where you’d enter information will actually be where your blog posts go. Once you’ve done those two things, go into your admin and go to settings/reading. You’ll see a place where you can designate your site as a “static site”. Use the dropdowns to pick your home page and blog page. That’s it! You’re done! It’s amazing that it’s so easy.
New EndGame PR Website Design
Surely you’ve noticed (unless you have a serious vision problem, or had never actually visited this site before today) that I’ve redesigned the entire EndGame Public Relations website and the Media Relations & SEO PR Blog. I’ve been working on this for about a week, and made the change for two reasons:
- This website hadn’t had a true redesign in about two years. That’s an eternity on the Internet.
- The original design was done in standard html with no stylesheet. That means it was a bear to update. This design is managed using WordPress as a content management system, or CMS.
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