Freshen Up Your Website & Hosting for Peak Performance
Spring is here: Now is the time to clean up your hosting environment, security and ecommerce operations to ensure a smooth, high-performing year ahead. Staying up-to-date also helps maintain compliance with various industry standards.
Use this checklist to refresh your digital infrastructure:
1. Hosting Environment Optimization
- Eliminate digital clutter: Identify unused domains, orphaned databases and outdated server configurations to free up resources and reduce unnecessary costs.
- Update software: Ensure your CMS (Magento, WordPress, etc.), plugins and server software are running the latest, most secure versions.
- Backup with purpose: Keep only what you need. Remove outdated backups, verify recent ones and ensure they’re stored securely.
2. Performance Tune-Up
- Speed matters: Audit caching settings, compress images and clean up bloated code to keep load times lightning-fast.
- Prepare for traffic spikes: Test hosting scalability to handle seasonal rushes, promotions or unexpected surges.
- Optimize your CDN: Fine-tune Content Delivery Network (CDN) settings to improve page speeds for global customers.
3. Security Hardening
- Review access control: Remove inactive user accounts with admin privileges to minimize security risks.
- SSL check-in: Ensure SSL certificates are valid and up to date to maintain trust and security.
- Scan for threats: Run malware scans, check for vulnerabilities and reinforce security layers to keep your site safe.
- Remove outdated access points: Clean up unused SSH keys, admin accounts (Magento, WordPress, etc.) and leftover firewall entries to reduce security risks.
4. eCommerce-Specific Refresh
- Declutter product listings: Remove outdated products and set up proper 301 redirects to preserve SEO.
- Audit the user experience: Test checkout flows, refine site navigation and improve mobile usability to reduce cart abandonment.
- SEO refresh: Update metadata, product descriptions and structured data to improve search rankings and visibility.
5. Smarter Data Management
- Streamline databases: Optimize queries, remove unused tables and archive old records to improve efficiency.
- Monitor logs: Check server logs for anomalies, errors or inefficiencies that could impact uptime and performance.
6. Evaluate Your Hosting Plan
- Ensure compatibility: Make sure your server matches the software you are running. Check that you are on the right version of PHP, OpenSearch and other key components for your Magento or CMS version.
- Are you on the right plan? If your business has grown, you may need dedicated servers or cloud hosting. If resources are underutilized, a leaner setup might be more cost-effective.
- Reassess service needs: Ensure you’re getting the right level of support, security and scalability from your hosting provider.
How JetRails Helps
At JetRails, we specialize in fully managed ecommerce hosting, ensuring that your infrastructure is optimized, secure and ready to grow with your business. Whether you need a hosting assessment, security audit or performance tune-up, we’re here to help.
🔹 Ready for a fresh start? We’d love to talk.