The Difficulty of Open Source Site Updates

To begin fairly, this is not an attempt to demonize open source. Currently, about three quarters of the top 10,000 highest ranking websites in the world happen to be drive by open source software. Open source certainly has proven merit, but much like a garden, open source sites must be constantly tended to so that they may live.

There are plenty of risk factors within an open source site that’s been neglected with even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant mistakes. The viral security hazards that are created from outdated, poorly structured open source sites aren’t just capable of inconveniencing the owners but also visitors as well. In the context we’re concerned with right now, we’ll focus on the consequences impacting your site’s performance and profit more than just the odd DDoS attack or brute force hacking attempt.

By 2016, over 50 million people had been alerted to some kind of attempted security breach or virus infection upon browsing certain websites. The risks of poor cybersecurity are well-documented, but the ways that simple web design deficiencies can self-sabotage online business owners’ success are less widely known and potentially even more problematic. Only a couple dozen decimal points more than 11% of small businesses have a website that meets the bare minimum for responsiveness.

Anything done for purpose of online profit is a game of millimeters. Soasta reported that even a single second of wasted time spent loading pages can cost over a quarter of your total profit. The Ironpaper agency found that over half of those who own small or medium-sized businesses reported wanting to invest in an upgraded, more secure website in 2017. Most driven business owners are definitely aware of how important it is to stay on top of website modernity, but for owners of open source sites with no advanced professional developing experience, it’s immensely easier said than done.

Naturally, manually upgrading a website’s speed, defense and visibility on a regular basis demands a certain level of expertise. Anyone who isn’t an experienced tech professional will likely find it more than just challenging to navigate all the hoops, hurdles and potential unforeseen complications involved in a completely comprehensive open source update procedure. Even with expert-level skill in the equation, manual open source site updating also entails extreme vigilance.
Not even world-class skills are enough to compensate for the failure to constantly stay on top of any and all new potential problems that may pop up on the open source horizon. In many cases, even business that do have the right talent on the team to tackle this task  just lack the ability to make the kind of time commitment necessary for it.

Though manually managing all the necessities of an open source site update certainly isn’t outside of the realm of possibility, the most common hurdles to expect should be understood intimately. The following will address some of the challenges presented by open source in terms of simple website infrastructure and search ranking level.

Layout designing difficulties

Even the most talented developers around understand the value of cutting out unnecessary time spent in their workflow. As fickle as computers and connectivity can be, it may not always be a matter of just having the right HTML prowess and eye for aesthetics to complete a layout project without complications. Manually updating your theme and optimizing the layout, after a while, can begin to feel partly like a web development project and partly like an exercise in testing the upper limits of human patience.  

In addition to the designing tasks, there’s also compatibility mismatches to be on the constant lookout for. To keep with the tide of new devices and operating system upgrades on the market, you have to make sure that whatever medium that the majority of your target prospects use to digest content is supported by your open source site.

Because there oftentimes isn’t a uniform, cut-and-clear path to ensuring that your particular site’s design fits the mold of emergent device display orientations, understanding to how to meet those display requirements manually can be quite the task to keep up with consistently.

HTML editor issues

Having to constantly get rid of messy HTML elements in your emails and word documents can feel a bit like shoveling snow and just having it pile up behind you. The task is simple on paper, but the constant jumping back and forth from your email clients and documents to Notepad can become very tiresome very quickly.

Even if the nature of the task itself isn’t terribly complicated, it’s a matter of the margin of error to be concerned with. Even diligent workers can wind up missing just a character or two out of carelessness after performing the same repetitive little operation ad nauseum.

Struggles with updating SEO factors

As you likely already know, SEO isn’t just an option when it comes to your site’s power to make an impact with genuine presence; it’s an absolutely necessity. About two billion search queries get submitted on an average day; that’s about 80.3 million searches an hour, 1.3 million searches a minute, and about 11.5k searches every half-second. In terms of the context of open source site updating that we’re dealing with here, search query frequency isn’t the only kind of frequently occurring event that we need to be conscious of – there’s also the fact that the rules of the SEO environment itself are constantly in flux.

The fundamental rules of the SEO game may not necessarily happen in as high volume as global search query submission, but at the same time, the importance of staying conscious of the state of these rules cannot be overstated. Much like page editing and compatibility adjustments, consistent code and tool adaptation to new SEO rules can be done manually but demands an astronomical level of effort to keep up indefinitely. From tags to backlinks, so many factors play into pleasing Google’s constantly changing algorithms that the entire thing can eventually start to feel like rolling dice.

Lightening the load with Limecube

Though manual open source updates may be difficult, there’s no rule that you have to rely on an open source model in the first place. With a smartly user-optimized CMS solution in place, you can take down the difficulty involved in direct website management down by dozens of levels; that’s where Limecube comes it. By using a CMS like Limecube, you can confidently take on all website defense, design and maintenance priorities without needing to spend more time and energy than necessary. There’s no way to put every single website maintenance priority on autopilot, but with the way that Limecube can lighten the load of your conscious efforts, the whole process can feel as intuitive and effortless as breathing.

Tech-based benefits from Limecube

Limecube can help you tackle the most troublesome yet important web design elements of your site with no more effort than what’s required to write basic meta entries. The solution makes it very easy to develop accurate descriptions and Google Priority reports for all website pages so that Google’s indexing algorithm has certifiable evidence of their importance.

In addition to seamless SEO design features, Limecube also automatically erases any unsightly HTML elements you don’t want that have been pasted in from an email or file; this is accomplished through its WYSIWYG editor. With the WYSIWYG editor in place, you can rest assured that everything from table formatting codes to section headers are kept clean and properly deployed.

The Limecube platform not only keeps your website’s vital core operations smooth but also keeps it more attractive with less work. Thanks to the style editor – compatible with all modern devices - adjusting themes styles of Limecube-supported sites is quick and simple.  Limecube allows users to easily customize everything from page border colors to fonts for any campaign or style preference.

Constant access to support

As quickly as automated solutions may be growing these days, we fully understand that value of good customer service hasn’t gone away. People rely on personable professionals who directly provide personalized assistance. With Limecube there’s access both to direct 1-on-1 troubleshooting help with specialized support staff and a chatbot in place to provide immediate answers to the simpler questions about the platform. A lot of overzealous open source developers can get so wrapped up in the complexity of their creations that they fail to make help available for casual users running who run into problems that call for specialists. Limecube provides users with two essential types of support: thorough human communication for personalized problem resolution, and immediately accessible insight at all times.

Summary

Simply maintaining a secure and stable site should be something that you can accomplish without exhaustive effort. The peace of mind in knowing that your site’s platform will always be kept current and properly supported can make it easier to fully devote your attention to other urgent priorities that actually fall within your expertise.

Layout functionality, error-free HTML formatting, and algorithm-friendly SEO are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the things that need to be tracked consistently. If you let a platform Limecube do the heavy lifting, you won’t need to lose any more sleep than necessary over any of your website’s pages and parameters.

Primary Sources

Ironpaper cotribuors. (Published: 2017). Websites for growth. Primary reference retrieved from: http://www.ironpaper.com/webdesign/

Soasta contributors. (Published: 2017). The Performance Beacon. Primary reference retrieved from: https://www.soasta.com/blog/mobile-web-performance-monitoring-conversion-rate/

Sucuri contributors. (Published: 2016). Website Hacked Trend Report. Primary reference retrieved from: https://sucuri.net/website-security/website-
hacked-report

Webspand contributors. (Most recent update: 2017, August 18). Nine Unbelievable Seo Statistics for 2017-2018. Primary reference retrieved from: https://www.webspand.com/seo/seo-statistics/