Site Security, Ecommerce, SEO, and More
You did it! Your website is live, so what should you do next?
First, you'll want to protect your site against cyber attacks. Then you will want to attract visitors to your new secure site. Finally, you can monetize your site through e-commerce and start making money. It's also a good idea to learn some technical information about websites.
You've come to the right place because all of this is covered in this article:
- Protect your site⤵
- Get visitors to your site⤵
- Start selling online⤵
- Getting support⤵
- Additional learning⤵
Protect your site
Once you have a site you are happy with and proud of, you want to ensure security. All kinds of issues can damage a site, from regular content updates, security patches, testing new plugins, or even malicious users and external threats such as malware.
That's why HostGator offers a complimentary backup service but can only keep your backups for one week. Additional fees are required if these backups are needed to restore your site. Because unexpected problems with your site can go undetected for much longer than a week, it's a best practice to regularly back up and save your site data.
HostGator highly recommends using a tool like CodeGuard for regular, incremental, reliable backups of your site's content. When you have a good backup, you're prepared to recover from even the most catastrophic failure. To learn more in-depth about CodeGuard, please refer to What is CodeGuard?
To prevent your website from falling victim to a cyberattack, HostGator recommends proactively protecting your site with a security plan from SiteLock. SiteLock solutions can help you detect malware, identify vulnerabilities on your site, and address them before becoming an issue. You can save up to 80% off the retail price by taking advantage of our SiteLock Special Offer.
Get visitors to your site
If you have a website, usually you have something you want the whole world to see. Or maybe you want a select group of people to see it. That's what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about: Helping you be found by who you want to be found by.
We offer SEO services, both do it yourself and managed, to help your website get traffic. Good SEO can even ensure that you don't just get random traffic but the type of traffic you want.
If you're interested in a managed SEO service, please contact us via phone or chat and ask about purchasing managed SEO services to speak with a Sales representative.
Start selling online
Everyone can monetize their online presence. To get started, you need an excellent way to accept money. From there, you can develop your tools for arranging invoices and shopping carts.
The key things you'll need to accept payment online are an SSL for secure connections for your website so that people can make payments through your website without going to a third party:
Next, you will need a merchant account, the service that accepts credit card payment through your website.
And finally, you will be able to install and set up shopping cart software to list products online, act as a payment gateway for your merchant account using your SSL, and sell your products online:
Once you have all of these setups, you are ready to go and set to sell online and make money doing it. We provide all of the tools and services in one place to do everything you need.
Getting support
HostGator is here in case you ever have any questions. We have our team of customer service representatives, server administrators, and sales professionals staff available at all times.
The article below will provide tips for the best methods for taking advantage of our support when you need help:
Additional learning
cPanel
cPanel is a web server control panel developed and maintained by cPanel, Inc. Its primary purpose is to manage servers that provide web hosting services with a user-friendly interface for an everyday hosting tasks.
For more detailed information on cPanel, please refer to the official cPanel manual.
Domains
Here is some additional information for managing and using domain names and extra learning about the subject of DNS.
- Understanding Domain Registration
- View Domain Names
- I purchased my domain name from HostGator. How do I log into that account?
- Domain control panel - Password reset
- WHOIS Information & Domain Privacy
- How to Update your WHOIS Information
- Renewing Domains, Expiration & Redemption
- How do I renew my domain name?
DNS
Here is some additional information regarding changing DNS and propagation information for when you do make DNS changes: