The Original Problem – an out of date and insecure website
The Boot and Shoe, Greystoke had a perfectly good website but it wasn’t being actively maintained. It hadn’t been updated for many years so was running out of date code (PHP and WordPress). Many of the additional functions delivered by plugins were also out of date, and the website didn’t have a security certificate. I was approached to take a look at the website and recommend how to proceed.
The Solution
The first step was to produce a website health check report. We agreed that the website would be migrated to my hosting provision. As part of the migration I updated the backend (PHP and WordPress), added a security certificate and improved site security. I updated plugins and replaced any unsuitable ones.
All of this was done on a ‘staging’ site so that the website could be thoroughly tested. Amongst other things, I added an invisible recaptcha to the contact form to reduce spam, upgraded the mail technology behind the scenes to make it more secure, and added a dedicated login url.
After all the updates I was able to confirm that the theme (look and feel) was working fine, and we agreed it was not best use of money to migrate to a newer website theme.
The website was upgraded in early 2020 with only a small, but necessary, interruption to service as I switched on the security certificate.
Improvements going forward
Ben and Jan, and the rest of the team at the Boot and Shoe are now able to request functional updates to the website whenever they want. Some recent examples include adding a table booking system to the website; updating the front page with covid-19 status updates, and moving to a dedicated menu page (rather than PDFs) which will allow the team to make changes more easily.
A refreshed design for 2023 and more live music
In November 2022 we quickly redesigned the look and feel of the site to modernise it. Adding live music events to the front page will improve search rankings. We also added google customer reviews, and refreshed the events page.
If you have an old website, please get in touch to discuss your options.
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