nublue

There should be no SEO impact moving a site, unless performance drops off.
Technically, most sites can be moved quickly & easily. An ecommerce site needs a holding page put up so orders aren't placed while it's being moved, unless so few orders are taken that you can add them manually to the moved site. DNS changes officially take upto 48 hours but usually just a few. If it's a static site then visitors won't see any interruption, just remember not to make any changes to site content until it's settled down.
A lot of hosts now provide Let's Encrypt free SSL certs, I'd choose one of those.

My first use of a computer was in 1979 at school, it was the BBC Micro. I remember we used to write small programs using Basic and playing Pac-man using our lunch time.



I have fond memories of my first computer at home in 1984, it was the Commodore Plus/4 that had 64k RAM, I can remember using a cassette to load games and save files. In those days a portable TV was the monitor which would give some eye strain after a number of hours of close use.

If I understand the concept, you are looking for a service that pushes a templated website to a new hosting package so it's ready for your client to just fill in the content? Interesting concept but I'm not aware that service exists, not even to push a base install of Wordpress onto a new hosting platform without some credentials. If you are going to let them use their own hosting, you'll need their logins.
 
Why not provide a bundled service with the hosting as well as the template? That would make it easier for you to manage in the future and an opportunity to upsell maintenance packages.

Depending how long this has been going on, the original host may still hold your site. Not all hosts delete sites as soon as they're cancelled, we suspend and leave them a period of time in case the client changes their mind, not unusual at all. They may also have their own backups going back even longer and could restore from those for you.

Yes, I find Opera to be one of the fastest browsers, too.

The OP's area of expertise is Designer (unless that's not correct and they are indeed a small business owner, in which case, they should have chosen Entrepreneur), so I would assume he would be willing to follow best practices. This is a professional forum and we're expected to give a professional advice, as we do. Hence, we would always advise against pre-made themes and plugins for basic functionality, simply because this DIY approach is unprofessional and most of the time works against the business.
 
Chances are, if you don't know what you're doing and are not willing to learn, taking security measures you don't understand (like simply installing a plugin or two without knowing how to configure them) will not help you much.
 
On topic:
- Outdated themes and badly written plugins are a major security hole. Delete all default WP themes and leave only the active theme + only one of the default ones, just in case you would ever need a fallback.
- As pointed out above, do not use plugins for basic functionality - other than security risk, they affect performance, slow your site down, often conflict with each other and you don't have great control over them. Plus plugins lead to more maintenance work, having to update them regularly, not to mention things often go wrong after a plugin update.
- Choose a difficult to guess username, other than admin, demo or identical to your website domain.
- Choose a secure password, 16+ characters long, including symbols and numbers. Change your password approx. every 40 days.
- Choose a secure FTP password and username
- Same for database user and password
- As pointed out above, password protect your /wp-admin directory - cPanel provides a quick way of doing it via its interface or alternatively you can do it with custom .htaccess and .htpasswd files in the /wp-admin directory. There's plenty of info and tutorials online on how to do that https://www.google.co.uk/?ion=1&espv=2#q=password%20protect%20a%20folder%20htaccess
- Protect your wp-config.php file via .htaccess - again, plenty of info online - https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-wp-configphp-with-the-htaccess-file-details
- Have a look at security tips from the WP codex - http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
- Installing Wordfence is actually a good idea, it's a very useful plugin which doesn't affect site performance. It scans, monitors and alerts you of any suspicious activity on the server.
- Limit login attempts to 3 in a period of 10-20 min. You can do this with Wordfence
- Temporarily or fully restric access to anyone who tries to login with usernames like admin, demo, etc. You can also do this with Wordfence
- Restrict access to certain countries. Either wp admin access or both wp admin and front end access.
- Advanced: Restrict access to spam bots via .htaccess - there's plenty of info online
- Advanced: Configure a "blackhole" for bots you don't want to give access to - again, plenty of info online, I can post some links if you're interested
- Advanced: Change your server root user's username to something else than root or r00t. You may need to talk to your hosting provider.
- Advanced: Another one for your hosting provider - make sure all software installed on the server is always up to date.
 
On top of my head, hope that helps

Whichever nameservers are used, they need to hold all the DNS records. If all you are changing is the domain, you could stick with Company A's nameservers and just update the A record to point to the website. That's the least hassle option.
 
If you switch to Company B's nameservers, you need to replicate the current DNS records on their nameservers before switching.

This is why you go for smaller hosts, who actually have to pay attention to their customer service

Thanks for your time just now Brian. Much appreciated

Lol love it ... shouldn't it be ...
 
"We're in a pub in Lancaster with canal views, I think we parked the servers somewhere in Manchester"

Thanks for the mention. Our servers are in Manchester and we're in Lancaster, next to the canal, and a pub.

Thanks for the mention. Our servers are in Manchester and we're in Lancaster, next to the canal, and a pub.

As far as I am aware, still using TSO, although I am looking into alternatives. I use Digital Ocean, but only for dev sites and experiments.
Someone recommended NuBlue to us - https://www.nublue.co.uk/ and I have been researching - http://www.reviews.co.uk/company-reviews/store/nublue

No. Wordpress was built to make blogging easy. There are plugins to do it but they are plugins all the same.
 
Use Magento or Joomla or something with some more oopmh under the hood.

Offcourse you can create ecommerce websites with wordpress. But if the site is a huge one I would suggest Magento.
 
Cheers!
Barry

Agree with Newman that it appears to be a website form which can be stopped with decent captcha. If you're getting spam through direct emails, there's various options available;
 
Redirect your emails to a gmail account, gmail's quite good at detecting spam.
Use a spam tool on your hosting account e.g. Spamassassin
Try a 3rd party filtering service such as http://www.spamihilator.com/en or http://www.mailwasher.net/
 
Good luck!

I really like it. I would be interested to see how the navigation will be handled on the internal pages. Do you have an example of an internal page too?

I think you miss my point. The reason I said price does not matter, is that everyone is basing there quote on what the finished product looks like.
 
What we dont know is what is happening in the back end? did it include a 6 year support contract? is it hosted on a big dedicated server setup? did the company provide all the copywriting in this cost? Does the cost cover a system purchase and stock photography purchases etc... Hence why I think price is irrelevant, as 19k is just a figure. Without knowing in great deal what the customer got for this figure it is not really worth dicussing imho

I think you miss my point. The reason I said price does not matter, is that everyone is basing there quote on what the finished product looks like.
 
What we dont know is what is happening in the back end? did it include a 6 year support contract? is it hosted on a big dedicated server setup? did the company provide all the copywriting in this cost? Does the cost cover a system purchase and stock photography purchases etc... Hence why I think price is irrelevant, as 19k is just a figure. Without knowing in great deal what the customer got for this figure it is not really worth dicussing imho

Back it up!
 
I would start with very simple things, and get them all down in writing. The first document should be a brief containing:
 

- Audidence Profile - who is going to use the website. Spend some time thinking about this as it is very important and should inform all future decisions on the website.
 
- Objectives of the Project - What do you want the website to do. What are the main reasons for this project? What are the key things you want your new site to achieve? How will you measure the success of your new site?
 
- Website Content - What is it going to be? What form will it take, will it be written, video, images, micture of everything.
 
- Style and Tone - This should be dictated from your audience profile.
 
- Competitor List - Who else is doing this or something similar. How have they approached. What has worked for them and what has not. No point making the same mistakes.
 
- Technology - Are there any specific technologies (DHTML, JavaScript, Real Audio) that you would like to use in the site? If so, how will they enhance the user experience?

 
 
After you have written this you can start on the specification for the porject which is the response to this brief. and then start to build up wireframes and sitemaps.
 
All good web projects are 75% planning and 25% implementation. making it should be easy if the plan is good.
 
I hope that helps and good luck with it

This is blatant self promotion but it is entirely free and just a little bit of fun.
 
ADMIN: If there is a more suitable place for this then please move it. I accidentally posted it in Forum suggestions! So feel free to remove it from there
 
Online Advent Calendar
 
At NuBlue we have just launched our Christmas competition where we will be giving away a prize EVERYDAY in December!! Many of the prizes aimed at web professionals such as your good selves.
 
http://www.nublue.co.uk/xmas-giveaway/
 
We have knocked up our very own online advent calendar for you to open every day and get you in the festive spirit – with the added incentive of some great prizes donated by ourselves and our lovely clients and partners!
 
The idea is simple – all you have to do is click on the relevant day’s date to see what the prize is for the day and complete the task to be entered into a prize draw for that day.
 
Whether you would like an early Christmas present for yourself or want a bit of help with your Christmas shopping we have some great prizes for you to win. These include…
 
Abode Illustrator CS5 or Adobe Photoshop CS5
M&S Italian Hamper
£50 itunes voucher
“Jennifer Jayne” Freshwater Pearl Earrings
13 issue subscription to Web Designer Magazine
Toshiba BDX1200 BluRay Player
£50 iStock Credit
Nintendo Wii
 
Visit tomorrow or anyday after to enter.

Very cool idea! I like the light box and envelopes a lot

NIce design, BTW.