WP Engine Overview & Recommended Practices

Our clients tell us they want websites that look great; are easy to use; and are fast, reliable and secure. At Tectalic we do all we can to design your website to look fantastic and to easily solve your customer problems.

When it comes to website speed, reliability and security the way we configure your site matters, but mostly these qualities come from your website host. That’s why we work with the WP Engine WordPress Digital Platform for website hosting.

WP Engine provide business grade hosting for WordPress websites.

What does business grade mean? Business grade recognises that in many cases your website is your income. Your website is central to the well-being of your business or organisation and it matters that your web visitors feel confident using your site.

For most visitors that means a seamless experience where everything looks and works the way you expect.

That’s why Tectalic chooses a host that has infrastructure and resources dedicated to the reliability and security of your website.

Read on for more details of the features and benefits of your WP Engine hosting service.
Learn about the administrative tasks you can regularly perform to improve the performance (speed, reliability and security) of your own website.
Know how to contact WP Engine directly about your website, should you ever need their 24/7 technical support.

WP Engine has technical support available via their online chat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

If you need problem-solving to keep your website available online, or if you have a technical issue out of Tectalic business hours, you can launch a chat with someone within WP Engine who can help.

WordPress Updates

WP Engine automatically keeps your WordPress software up to date. WordPress usually releases new versions once or twice a year and will issue other core security updates when necessary. WP Engine completes your security updates as soon as possible.

Theme & Plugin Updates

Smart Plugin Manager (SPM) is a WP Engine service that automatically updates website themes and plugins.
Tectalic client websites hosted within the Tectalic WP Engine account benefit from the SPM updating service.
Any Tectalic clients with an independent WP Engine account can arrange the SPM service directly with WP Engine. This action is strongly recommended. Tectalic clients with a website not hosted with WP Engine will need to discuss theme and plugin updates with their web host.

WP Engine automatically takes a backup copy of your website every 24 hours and stores up to 30 days of these copies. Those backups are accessible by you with a one-click restoration process.

You can take your own backup copies of your website any time you wish. It is recommended that you know how to create backup points and restore your Live website to a prior backup if needed.

Backup with off site storage

It is also recommended that you regularly log in to your WP Engine control panel and download a backup copy of your website to store it in a secure offsite location. Third-party services are available to assist with this process. For more information please view the Tectalic Terms of Service.

Have your own website restoration plan in place, and regularly test and verify your restoration process.

Read about the WP Engine Back Up and Restore Process.

In addition to your live or Production website, WP Engine offers the opportunity to create identical and independent Staging and Development environments.

Each website hosted with WP Engine has access to up to three environments: Production (your live website), Staging and Development.

These independent clones of your live (Production) website can be used for testing updates and for trialling new designs or development options. Each environment is independent, ensuring that changes to a single environment do not impact the other two.

Unsure of your WP Engine login details? Please contact [email protected] for assistance.

Read about WP Engine Sites and Environments

What are the important functions of your website? Do you have enquiry forms, eCommerce transactions, mailing list signups and other important product or service pages?

All of these parts of your website require regular testing. Testing is especially important after making significant changes to your website or when your WordPress, plugins or themes are updated.

If you have an online store, create a $1 test product and use it to check how your store functions. Include the shipping rates quoted during checkout. Purchase your test product and make a full payment so you can see the payment gateway and all email notifications work correctly.

If your website includes a newsletter or mailing list subscription feature, test it too.

Log out of your website whenever testing. That makes your experience like your customers’ experience. Also test your website using a mobile or tablet device.

Sometimes after installing plugin updates, your WordPress site may start showing 404 (File Not Found) errors. This can often be fixed by logging into Dashboard, Settings, Permalinks and saving the permalink settings.

This flushes WordPress’s internal page (permalink) settings, and is the most common way to solve a 404 error in WordPress.

Read what WP Engine says about 404 Errors.

If you want a high speed business website, you need to know the best way for your website to handle large files. Any images or PDFs accessed via your website must be optimised for the web.

If your website needs to access large files that you cannot optimise, make use of offsite hosting.

Read what Tectalic says about Optimising Large Files.

Read what WP Engine says about Bandwidth and Storage.

If your website appears to fail, check the latest WP Engine System Status announcements or contact WP Engine directly for assistance via their Support Team.

You also have the option of engaging Tectalic in a troubleshooting role. This assistance is billable at our hourly rate. Please see the Tectalic Service Policy for details.

Read this Tectalic summary of seeking help from WP Engine.

To contact WP Engine at any time, go to my.wpengine.com and log in. Click the message icon (bottom right) to initiate a chat with the WP Engine Support team.

Read WP Engine’s introduction to their service.

Special circumstances apply to updates on websites using the Bridge Theme.

Bridge Theme Updates