Frequently Asked Questions
General
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Your website’s SEO will remain intact, and your current search engine rankings won’t be affected during your migration to WordPress.
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Rest assured, all your data in its entirety will remain safe and intact during the performance optimization process.
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We shift your website to WordPress without actually pausing it in between, its traffic remains untouched, and throughout this process, your site remains live.
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Multidots uses each possible Data Security aid to make sure that the migration remains safe and fast. We can vouch for our quality of services and assure you that your data will be completely safe with us. So, you need not worry about anything.
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It is not essential. If you are satisfied with your current provider’s services and they can host WordPress websites (which most do), you can stay with your current provider. If you have problems with your current provider (say with regards to performance or ease of use), it’s a good idea to switch to a new hosting provider. For enterprise-grade websites, switching to a managed hosting platform like WordPress VIP can be an extremely wise investment.
In case you decide to switch from your current hosting provider, we can audit your current deployment and suggest the best hosting service provider for your WordPress solution as per your project scope and expectations.
We’re a featured WordPress VIP Gold Agency Partner, and we can vouch for WordPress VIP’s premium managed hosting quality, customer support, and focus on speed. We can help you with the end-to-end process of moving your WordPress website to the VIP infrastructure, following VIP coding standards, and meeting VIP plugin compatibilities.
We ensure everything moves over smoothly with zero downtime. Once the migration is complete, we also manage your hosting environment to ensure your website is maximizing its new, fast server. -
Our project and account managers will be your direct points of contact. You’ll have the choice between project managers in the USA and India.
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The work-hours are Mon-Fri 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific Time/Eastern Time for our team based in the USA. And Mon-Fri 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM Indian Standard Time for our team in India. We also provide support to your preferred time-zone.
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Yes, we provide 3-hours free consultation with domain experts. You can utilize these free consulting hours to brainstorm your ideas/problems, refine the requirements, discuss the possible solutions and approaches. You can schedule the meeting with the domain expert here.
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We accept wire transfer, Stripe, and PayPal from our global clients. For our clients based in the USA, we also accept checks and ACH as additional means of payment.
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Yes, we offer white-label services with 100% confidentiality.
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- Introduction/Discovery Meeting: The first step is to have an initial introduction meeting on phone/zoom to know more about your business and project.
- Proposal Presentation: Multidots team will present you a proposal that includes our understanding of the problem (scope of work/scope of engagement), solution, cost, timeline, and other terms.
- Finalize the Contract: If you are happy and ready to engage with Multidots, we will formalize the contract by signing a Master Service Agreement (MSA) and other on-boarding formalities.
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Our #wonderdots love open-source and WordPress. And we are proud that our team at Multidots consistently contributes to WordPress, WooCommerce, BuddyPress, and other open-source initiatives. This spirit of giving back not only makes us feel grateful, but also creates greatness within and around us.
- 89% of our team has contributed to core WordPress, WooCommerce, and BuddyPress releases.
- Multidots sponsors 7 contributors for a total of 28 hours per week for the “Five For The Future” initiative by WordPress.
- We are one of the lead organizers of do_action Ahmedabad – a hackathon to support non-profit organizations in the local community.
- Multidots is one of the lead organizers of the Ahmedabad WordCamp and Meetup group.
- We have sponsored several WordCamps around the world.
- Multidots team regularly attends and speaks at global WordPress events.
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Having a clear and detailed scope of work that should include: outline, key features, work-flow, wire-frames, and other key information is highly recommended. But don’t worry, we have a team of solution analysts who are trained experts to help you out with scope-of-work documents. You can hire them on an hourly basis to save your time.
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The introduction/discovery meetings help us understand your business and needs. The better we know your business, the better we will be able to help. There are a few key things that we will ask during these discovery/introduction meetings and ask for you to have this information ready for the discovery meeting.
- About Business – Team size, competitors, locations of operations, customers, and market that you serve, number of media/web-properties that you own/manage, financial and operational KPIs, etc.
- About the Project/Idea/Problem – Scope of work document, tentative budget, launch/completion timeline, references/competitors
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What sets you apart from other agencies offering web development and WordPress development services?
- 11+ years of experience in web development and WordPress development.
- One of the WordPress VIP Partner Agencies.
- 80+ globally distributed team available around the clock.
- Experience working with a small startup to large enterprise brands such as Accenture, Jumeirah, National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), and Sneaker News.
- Core contributor to WordPress and a variety of different open-source initiatives and events.
- Active and proud members of a variety of different industry associations and chambers of commerce.
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Yes, we have a team based in California, Austin, and Washington, DC area, and are available to talk at 646-586-5500.
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We provide 1 to 3 months of free support based on the nature and size of the project. After free support, we have separate retainer and maintenance services that will cover ongoing hassle-free support and maintenance of your website.
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- Introduction/Discovery Meeting: The first step is to have an initial introduction meeting on the phone/zoom to learn more about your business and project. Schedule a discovery meeting or submit the inquiry form here.
- Proposal Presentation: The Multidots team will present you with a proposal that includes our understanding of the problem (scope of work/scope of engagement), solution, cost, timeline, and other terms.
- Finalize the Contract: If you are happy and ready to move forward with Multidots, we will finalize the contract by signing a Master Service Agreement (MSA) and other on-boarding formalities.
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A/B testing refers to tweaking the various elements of your landing page one by one to determine which version performs best in terms of rankings and capturing leads.
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Yes, if you want to appear similar to other businesses that do so. Templates are common, hence commonly used. Hiring an agency, although more costly, will make you stand out from your competitors.
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It depends on the number of target personas and products you are selling. Usually, you should have at least one landing page for each user persona.
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A landing page is a page that exists with a singular purpose to capture leads or drive sales by relaying your brand’s value proposition to a defined audience.
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It depends on a lot of factors. In short, your landing page should clearly convey your value proposition and what visitors should expect upon converting without creating information overload.
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As there is a huge variety of potential technical SEO issues, finding them requires different techniques. Some issues like a missing “/” in robots.txt are easy to find, whereas others such as wasted crawl budget require the assistance of paid tools like Ahrefs.
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You can use a tool like SEMrush to determine your SEO competitors, their backlink profile, and performance on Google.
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It can be a lot of things. Maybe your pages are not being indexed, loading slowly, or you have a spammy backlink profile. A complete SEO audit is necessary to find out any and all of the culprits.
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A Google penalty means your site is either no longer listed on search results, or that your ranking for your desired keywords has dropped dramatically. It could be due to a new algorithm update targeting poor page experience, technical SEO issues, or implementation of black-hat SEO tactics.
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Keyword stuffing, misleading redirects, and cloaking are some of the black-hat SEO techniques that must be avoided.
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Yes. Because rankings require consistent work and the algorithms of search engines are constantly updated.
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We provide a quarterly report (monthly upon request) of your website’s performance related to SEO written in plain English containing numbers that make sense.
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Multidots’ WordPress expertise is second to none and our reviews speak for themselves. News, media, performance marketing, and other associations trust Multidots for all their content and SEO needs. We always strive for perfection and get things done on time.
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It depends on the scope of work and numerous other factors that are unique to each business. On average, you can start to see the results of our work within 4-6 months.
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You can get a comprehensive overview of your website performance with the help of a performance audit. While many companies prefer to conduct it themselves, it is always a good idea to have a team of specialists do it, so that you can get helpful insights and suggestions.
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Core Web Vitals (CWV) show how a specific URL is performing based on the perceived experience of the users. Together, the Core Web Vitals indicate how a web page fares in terms of aspects such as visual stability, interactivity, and load time.
These parameters are measured with the help of three metrics — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
You can get a detailed report on your CWV performance when you get an audit done by us, along with insights on other crucial areas of your website.
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While the Page Experience update that introduced Core Web Vitals definitely impacts the way search engines rank your website, it is not a standalone ranking factor. In some cases, having an average score for Core Web Vitals might still be okay.
But if your website relies heavily on user experience, consider having a good CWV score that will help you impress your users and the search engines.
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Legacy code refers to the existing coding of a website that has been written in a different language or framework. The term is also used to describe code that is inherited from another programmer or coder.
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The process of code review includes diligently going through code to identify any errors or bugs that may cause issues. In our Performance Audits, when we conduct a code review, we also consciously check adherence with the defined standards and best practices.
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The code behind your website defines its structure, flow, and performance. Performing a code review can help you get feedback and advice from senior and experienced engineers who have extensive expertise in writing exceptional codes. It will also help you identify any errors or issues that may eventually lead to major bugs in your website.
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As your business grows and you continue to make changes or additions to your website, it is natural to overlook the technical aspects that get impacted in the process. While this might not have an immediate impact, it is detrimental to your website performance going forward.
To ensure that your website is always up and running smoothly regardless of how much you evolve or scale, conducting regular website performance audits is a must. Doing so will help you identify the primary areas of imprert any issues or threats that may affect your website.
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If you have a WordPress website that has been around for a while and is planning to scale up, this would be a good time to opt for our WordPress audit services. Even if you are a growing company and expect to make significant changes or additions to your website, conducting a performance audit will help you understand the status quo and plan your way forward.
More importantly, if you are facing persistent issues or performance issues in your website, and want to identify the root cause, a performance audit will help you do so effortlessly.
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When you get your Website Performance audit done by us, you can expect a detailed analysis and performance overview of your website. This would include a comprehensive review of the front-end, backend, and hosting sides of your website. We will also assess your adherence to best practices, and offer actionable suggestions to improve your website performance.
Technical & Process
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Screen Resolutions (Pixels)
375×667, 1024×768, 1,334×750, 768×1024, 1536×2048, 410×730, 1080×1920, 1440×2960, 1920×1080, 1920×1080Browser compatibility
Windows:
Google Chrome Version – 74.0.3729.131
Mozilla Firefox Version – 66.0.5EDGE – 42.17134.1.0Mac OS
Google Chrome – 74.0.3729.131
Safari – 12.1 (14607.1.40.1.4) -
80% of our team are WordPress experts. Being a WordPress VIP Agency partner, WordPress is a strength of our team. Many of our WordPress developers are core contributors to WordPress and speak at a variety of local and international WordCamps and WordPress-based events and conferences.
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- Kickoff & Project Plan – We divide the project into multiple milestones based on modules or sitemap pages and schedule the delivery milestone dates accordingly.
- Development Milestones – Development team will code based on the milestone feature list.
- QA Milestones – QA team will perform the quality testing for each development milestone before the client demo.
- Client Demo – The project team will arrange a milestone demo to showcase all the features under each milestone with the client.
- Final CAT with client team – When all the milestones are done, the project team will provide a staging copy for Client Acceptance Testing (CAT).
- Pre-Launch checklist – After the completion of the CAT, we will set a launch date and perform a pre-launch checklist.
- Post-Launch checklist – Once the website is live, our team will perform the post-launch checklist.
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Every project we deliver has to pass through our security checklist. During the security testing we make sure the following things apply:
- Using the latest version of WordPress core and plugins.
- We do data escaping to prevent cross-site scripting.
- Data sanitization and validation to prevent CSRF and SQL injections.
- We strictly comply with coding standards such as PHP_CodeSniffer, WordPress-VIP-Minimum.
- We utilize security plugins like WordFence & JetPack to protect websites from DDoS and malware attacks.
- Apart from that, we have several other rules and standards like changing wp-admin URL, limiting the admin login attempts, implement two-factor authentication for admin, using strong passwords, using SSL, etc.
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Yes, for the majority of the projects we create, we follow the Bootstrap Framework if the design files are compatible. If not, we will do custom development to avoid unnecessary CSS overloading.
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Yes, 50% of our team has experience working with Angular and React. We have good expertise with the New Gutenberg Block Editor, which is built on top of React. Many projects we have been doing for clients over the course of the past several months have required us to build custom blocks for Gutenberg based on our client’s specific needs.
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Yes, we follow WordPress-VIP-Coding standards, where code commenting is one of the mandatory rules.
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We use Github Private repositories to manage code. On Github, we follow the standard branch structure as follows:
- Master for production
- Development for staging
- feature-<feature name> for each unique feature
- hotfix-<bug/fix name> for each quick fix
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We have a robust process for verifying project requirements, which also includes design specifications. We have the entire team involved from the project kickoff meeting, including Front-End Developers and QA. Before delivering to a client, we run internal-UAT, where our QA team checks each aspect of the design specification. With multiple rounds of internal testing and the attention to detail, we can ensure design fidelity.
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To ensure code quality, we follow many different standards for quality and performance.
- PHP_CodeSniffer for PHP code
- WordPress-VIP-Minimum for WordPress code
- W3C Validation with CSS Lint for HTML & CSS code
- JSLint for JavaScript code
- WordPress Coding Standard
- We extensively use PHPStorm IDE with code check integrations. Besides, we have our GitHub repos, integrated with Travis for pre-hook commit check with PHPCS
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Yes, we do have an in-house QA team (of 12 QA engineers) who focus on project quality. To test the design with exact pixels, we take the help of our experienced QA, who has a keen design eye. Also, we use online tools like “PerfectPixel” Google Chrome addon, BrowserStack for browser compatibility, online tools like CSSPrecise, and https://zeplin.io/. Often, we allocate one of our design team members to review the final webpage.
Staff Augmentation
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Yes, we source the developers to your location/on-site. Contact our sales team or account manager to discuss the details.
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We provide an account manager in our staff-augmentation model. They will assist you for any operation, escalation, and any other aspect of the contract. Our account managers are available in the USA and India currently.
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Yes, you can communicate and provide instructions directly to each developer. The developers will be available on slack, zoom, and email.
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Yes, you can hire as low as one developer and as many as you want.
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- Our hire a developer model is 100% white-label
- We provide (3-4) hours of developer availability in your preferred time-zone
- You will be able to directly communicate with the developers on Slack, Zoom, or email on a daily basis
- There will be a one-week free induction time to get the selected developers familiar with your process and culture
- We also offer a one-month trial, and due to any reason, if you are not happy with the developers assigned to you, then we do a free replacement, If you are not satisfied with the replacement, we give a full refund
- We have US-based account managers for easy communication and coordination
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We have a fairly open and straightforward selection process where you have total control in the process.
- You will get CV’s of developers that match the description
- You can do a quick-assessment interview, code interview, and other types of interviews that you would like to conduct
- Once you find the developers you want to hire, you will get a one-week free induction period so the developers can get familiar with your business and processes.
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Our WordPress certified developers work closely together with the WordPress VIP’s engineering team, which strictly audits the codes. This enables us to maintain and improve code quality day by day. Our developers also contribute regularly to WordPress releases. To ensure code quality, we follow coding standards for each technology:
- PHP_CodeSniffer for PHP code
- WordPress-VIP-Minimum for WordPress code
- W3C Validation with CSS Lint for HTML & CSS code
- JSLint for Javascript code
- WordPress Coding Standard
- We extensively use PHPStorm IDE with code check integrations. Besides, we have our GitHub repos integrated with Travis for pre-hook commit check with PHPCS
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- Level 1 (L1) – Up to 2 years of experience.
- Level 2 (L2) – Up to 4 years of experience.
- Level 3 (L3) – Up to 6 years experience.
- Level 4 (L4) – 6+ years of experience and ability to do customer support, documentation, front-end, back-end, and QA tasks.
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Yes, based on your needs, we can make our developers available in your preferred time-zone.
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After the free one month trial period, we ask for a minimum commitment of 3 months from you.