SmarterTanks is our newest service offering. It brings monitoring and automation to domestic water reclamation (septic tanks). Residents now have the peace of mind from continuous automated monitoring and alerting and service providers have an instant view of the condition of their client’s installation.

Previously, checking the condition of a tank means a visit from the service provider, now the data is collected every minute and available as a dashboard type view. Equipment malfunction can be detected earlier and service calls scheduled, perhaps even before the customer is aware of a problem.

The best part is that no changes are required to the existing installation, beyond fitting a sensor station to the top of the tank. Connection is either via the domestic WiFi, or a dedicated mobile-data connection.

SmarterTanks will be available from December 2022.

Many businesses get started online with a free hosting programme, but after a while the limitations become too onerous, so they consider other options. Either they can pay for hosting or do it themselves. So let’s look at the options:

Why would you host?

For the majority of businesses using WordPress, technology is probably not their core strength, and not meaning to offend, but WordPress on any scale is not for the faint of heart.

A quality service provider should be able to give you a turnkey solution, which is patched and ready to operate. They should handle things like domain registration, SSL certificates, backups, maintenance, load-balancing and all the usual behind-the-scenes work.

If the above doesn’t sound like something your business wants to get involved in, contact us about hosting for you.

When DIY Makes Sense

The strongest reason to consider running your own installation is because you need add-ons that your service provider won’t allow. This is becoming less likely more components are widely supported, but if your provider can’t help you then you can either find another provider, or go it alone.

Another good reason is that of scale. Most service providers will bill for inbound traffic, because they are getting billed for it as well. So they might place restrictions on the amount of inbound and outbound data each month. Likewise the amount of storage may have limits in place to ensure fairness for all clients.

So what are the downsides?

Put simply, there is additional administrative work you need to do. Let’s break that down into categories:

• Domain management (let’s put certificates here too)
• Database installation and management
• Server installation and management
• WordPress installation and management
• Patching of Database, Server and WordPress
• Backup
• Scaling and Recovery

If you want to go it alone, we’re here to help. We have years of experience in rolling out WordPress for customers, and we can show you what needs to be done to make your system run well. If you want to skip some of the ongoing management, consider LightSail from Amazon Web Services. LightSail offers WordPress as a deployment option, and this takes care of the Server and Database maintenance and updates for you.

As always, we’re here to help. Just ask