Fast Cloud Based Hosting
Our cloud based, dedicated server operates out of the Google Data Centre in Sydney and connects to a network of edge servers via a Stack CDN service. This gives load times of up to 60% faster than other web hosts.
Our Managed WordPress Hosting Partner is WP Engine with New Relic APM.
Daily Security Scans
To ensure the safety of your website we perform comprehensive, daily scans for malware and viruses. We also detect vulnerable plugin versions to minimise the risk from any software vulnerabilities.
Our regular updates keep your site pristine and running optimally.
30 Days of Backups
We store 30 days of backups of your site just in case something goes wrong, or went wrong last week – we’ve got your back!
Monthly Support Time
From adding content to changing your site structure and adding features, all of this can be done with our support plans.
What our clients are saying…
I found out about Blue Kelpie from a friend and sent Chris an e-mail describing what I was looking for. Within a couple of hours Chris called me and discussed my needs and how he and WP Engine would be perfect for me. This discussion was well and truly beyond any expectations I had and was truly refreshing.
A couple of days later I contacted Chris and decided to make the switch. Chris took care of it all from there and both of my websites were quickly transferred to the new server.
I’m a numbers guy, so I did comprehensive speed tests using GT Metrix before and after the switch, and my sites without any additional optimisation improved in speed by 60+%.
I can’t recommend Blue Kelpie enough!
Aaron Dowling,
Aaron Dowling Photography
ADP Pro
Got Questions?
There’s a lot going on in our WordPress Care Plans so here’s some answers to some of the questions you might have. Of course, please get in touch if there something more that you would like to know.
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Running updates and installing backup software is a relatively simple process; troubleshooting when an update goes wrong requires expertise.
We’ve been working with WordPress for a long time and have fixed many sites with all types of issues from plugin and theme compatibility issues to full site hacks and malware. Our WordPress Care Plans are mostly about prevention strategies and maintaining a healthy website but we also specialise in finding and fixing issues when they arise. More than just updating a few plugins, we scan for malware, optimise the database and run other tasks to keep your site in pristine condition.
We’ve also become the go-to guys for a number of other web design agencies in Perth when their clients have technical issues. This experience means that we’re often able to quickly find and rectify any issues and get you back online fast. This saves you the time and stress of trying to fix the issue or getting someone on short notice who doesn’t know your site.
If you’re a freelance web designer or agency ask us about our white label services.
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Our On-Site Support covers a wide range of services including:
- Adding/editing copy and images
- Image compression
- On-page SEO
- Adding/editing products
- Adding blog posts
- Creating Custom Post Types (CPTs)
- Third party integrations
- Contact forms and plugin configurations
- And, almost anything you’ll need with your WordPress website
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Building and maintaining an online store can quickly become very time consuming and getting it right is critical to running a successful business. Every additional second of load time can make a potential customer start to look elsewhere. So, what can Blue Kelpie do to help maintain your store?
Our advanced analytic tools show us where your customers are dropping off in your sales funnel and which pages aren’t converting.
We help you with your store’s configuration like setting up payment gateways, taxes, shipping costs and all customer emails.
We help you with some of the more advanced extensions like affiliate programs, up-sells and cross-sells, user subscriptions, variable and virtual products and downloads, booking systems and all premium Woocommerce plugins.
We have created complex membership and training sites using Woocommerce and other systems.
We have extensive experience in writing custom code to add to, and modify, Woocommerce’s core functionality.
We have written numerous custom plugins for many different applications, including complex third party system integrations for a number of clients, shipping plugins, data lookup tools, and PDF readers.
Do you have a custom Woocommerce project? We’d love to help!
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When we partnered with WP Engine it was part of a wider reaching discussion to provide our clients with the best service we could. Our dedicated hosting environments operate out of the Google data centre in Sydney which is fast, secure and well maintained. It comes with an SSL certificate and a custom Content Distribution Network (CDN) from Cloudflare that can reduce page load times by up to 60%. For added security we provide you with 30 days of backups which is great for isolating any issues that occur.
We also give you staging and development environments for safely making major changes and updates before going live. That’s three environments in one! Finally, and quite importantly, we don’t just provide web hosting. We run daily security scans of your site to detect malware and other security issues. We utilise the WP Engine support staff to help with any problems that arise – with 24/7 chat support that you can access yourself. It’s a premium digital service on the fastest architecture we could find. We wanted to provide our clients with the best solution and we believe we’ve found it.
We also offer an exclusive premium Woocommerce hosting solution for stores that are mission critical and require a faster hosting service. Our Woocommerce hosting also includes ElasticPress. This is a third party, dedicated server that contains an index of all the products in your store. The index provides super fast product category page rendering and even faster search results.
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A common response that we get when we tell clients our hosting comes with a CDN is, ‘..a CD-Whatnow?’.
This gets a little technical but keep reading, we’re going to keep it brief.
When WordPress displays a page (or post) it runs a loop that queries the database and retrieves the content for that page. This requires some processing by the server which takes valuable time before sending the content to render in the site visitor’s web browser. A CDN or Content Distribution Network captures the rendered output as pages without the need to query the database each time. The rendered pages are then stored across a network of Edge servers, across Australia, and all around the world.
When a visitor comes to your site they are actually seeing the cached pages from the Edge servers, cutting down server time and also sending the data from a closer location than the Sydney data centre. If you’re getting lost here don’t worry too much, the main point is how this improves performance.
The first consideration in how fast a site loads is how well it is built. We’ve spent a long time getting this right. We’re super proud of the results and we’re often getting sites loading in under 1 second, even Woocommerce sites.
Our custom Cloudflare solution reduces load times by a margin of around 15-25% from our tests. For a site that previously took 6 seconds to load this can take a further 2 seconds off your page load time. Faster loading pages have a much higher conversion rate than their slower competitors. A study by Hubspot showed that:
- Websites the load in under 1 second had a conversion rate 3x highter than one that loads in 5 seconds
- Pages that loaded in 2.4 seconds had a 1.9% conversion rate
- At 3.3 seconds, conversion rate was 1.5%
- At 4.2 seconds, conversion rate was less than 1%
- At 5.7+ seconds, conversion rate was 0.6%
Just how fast is our hosting? We’ve found most sites load in around half to a third of the time as other hosting providers. This matters, a lot! Not only do your site visitors have a better experience with higher conversion rates but Google ranks you higher too – it’s a major factor for SEO. If your site loads slower than your competitors you will be losing customers.
How would an increase in conversion rate by 2 or even 3 times affect your bottom line?
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Everyday when we work on our clients’ websites we have a priority system based on the urgency of the work. Adding content to your homepage is not as urgent as fixing your site when it’s down, and we extend this courtesy to all of our clients. When your site is down, we know you will appreciate a faster response.
‘High Priority Service’ means that you have paid to be kept at the top of the queue. This makes a big difference when you are running an online store and a plugin has prevented your customers from reaching the checkout. With a high priority job and as a high priority client we do everything we can to make sure your site is back running again as soon as possible!
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There are many factors that can lead to sites going down or being hacked so it is impossible to guarantee your site won’t be affected. However, we are able to take all reasonable efforts to minimise the likelihood of your site being impacted and, with 30 days of backups we can get you back online as quick as possible with the most recent stable version.
We are experts in WordPress maintenance so we prevent your site being impacted. If it is, you have some of the best support on hand to get things right again, fast!
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We update all themes, plugins and WordPress core files. Some plugins and themes require a more involved update process than the standard WordPress update function. Many third-party plugins and themes require an active licence with the developers. When we start maintaining your site we’ll let you know of any issues and work with you to keep your site updated.
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Our WordPress Care services are all pre-paid month-to-month plans, with no lock-in contracts. We find that our clients are happy with the service and love the peace of mind that comes from knowing there are experts looking after their websites, leaving them more time to focus on running their business.
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For optimal security we have our own dedicated hosting environment that enables us to run our own scripts and gives us greater control over the security of your site. We cannot run all of these scripts on shared hosting servers.
We have worked with many of the largest hosting companies in Australia and many US, Asian and European based companies as well. There are many factors that can impact the security and performance of your site; being on a large shared hosting environment is one of them. While hosting on other servers can restrict some of the services we provide we can certainly help to keep your site secure.
Our cloud based hosting is also one of the fastest hosting environments currently available in Australia.
Contact us to find out how we can work with your current hosts.