There are two areas for general upkeep of the site – the WordPress website and IONOS hosting.

WORDPRESS

These are the main items that have to be dealt with (roughly in order of frequency)

• Watch for plugin updates. Ideally, if they affect design, see what the update is all about and try them on the dummy website first. Some updates, especially to do with forms, have been known to break aspects of the web site unless settings have been updated. An update to WordPress itself is usually straightforward and often requires updates to plugins and themes as well, but it is best to wait for a few weeks before doing this to allow time for bugs to be sorted and any updates to plugins to be available.
• Some plugins cannot be updated just with a click, and the software has to be downloaded from the software provider and then uploaded to our website. This includes Filebird and Search & Filter Pro. For the former find downloads at https://codecanyon.net/downloads, needs login, then go to myaccount, downloads and download). To install, go to ‘Plugins, Add new Plugin’ and find the button for ‘Upload Plugin’ at the top. Browse on your PC and select the downloaded zip file. You will need to confirm you wish to overwrite the existing plugin. [Alternatively, unzip folders and use ftp to upload relevant folder content to /wbtlive070923/wp-content/plugins/filebird-pro – it is fine just to overwrite the original files] The filebird plugins have been purchased as a one-off and can be used without further payment or support as long as they are manually updated in this way. For Search & Filter Pro (account details at https://searchandfilter.com/account/) there is an annual payment required of $30. Updating can be by either of the methods just outlined.
• Malcare plugin should provide an alert to problems with any plugin security. Occasionally (max. once a year) it sends emails saying that it could not check the site. Usually just login with the password at https://app.malcare.com to fix this.
• Attend to requests for registration. Check with the Beacon database to ensure they are bona-fide users. Only if they are genuine should they activated, via the WordPress ‘Users’ menu item. Otherwise, they should be deleted at some point – it is likely hackers will try to login even if not activated – such notification can be ignored. Wordfence has a section for blocking IP addresses which may/may not be useful. Just remember not to activate these signups.
• Backups. These are done automatically on a daily basis using the plugin UpdraftPlus. From time to time, it is worth making a backup which is held on your own PC. Use the plugin WPMigrate for this. This can be used to update the dummy test website at https://wbt150723.fairfordu3a.uk/ – 2 stages needed. First, on IONOS open the relevant database (dbs11509043) and drop every table. Then ‘Import’ the sql file made in the backup on your PC which will rebuild the tables. Second, use FTP to upload/overwrite the plugin files on IONOS with those made in the backup on your PC, and similarly for any new media files. It can be simplest just to delete the relevant folders (any or all of plugins/themes/uploads) in /wbteam150723/wp-content first (use IONOS webspace directly as otherwise it will take some time) and then upload. Or just use a ‘replace’ option for files (different size or more recent date).
• Annual change of footer to the correct year. Choose ‘Edit Site’ from the WordPress top-line menu, then select the ‘Footer’ section and edit the year.

IONOS

The control panel is at https://login.ionos.co.uk/

To assign/revoke u3a email addresses use the emails tab. Where required, any persons emails can be forwarded, but usually they can just sync emails using IMAP/SMTP. Instructions for users are at https://www.ionos.co.uk/help/email/general-topics/setting-up-email-programs/. The committee@fairfordu3a.uk email address can be accessed to add/remove committee members from the mailing list.

Under the Hosting tab are the facilities for creating/using databases. Only 2 are in use – one for the live website and one for the dummy testing site.

Webspace explorer allows you to manage the filespace. Only 2 directories/folders are really important – one for each of the 2 websites – wbtlive070923 is for the live website and wbteam150723 for the dummy site. Note that these do not have to reflect the names of the websites.

Domains and SSL are for creating subdomains. fairfordu3a.org.uk is the master domain of the account (but not used). Each subdomain will point to its respective ‘top-level’ directory

SFTP allows file transfers directly to/from the server without going through the IONOS interface. Account u1100164871 is really the only one used.