Our platform is specifically tuned to the needs of legal blogging authors. In addition to a simple content-editing interface, regular users can access unique resources directly from the platform, including:
- LXBN latest posts to know exactly what colleagues and competitors are publishing
- LexBlog insights feed (including Real Lawyers Have Blogs and Please Advise)
- Knowledge base and community search for 24/7 help
- Email subscriber insights such as most opened notifications and subscriber list
Behind the scenes, we use a layered technology approach to deliver you enterprise speed, stability, security and scale with both our own infrastructure and technology specialist partners.
Speed
Your blogs, as managed by LexBlog, operate with superior speed and load times, well under the internet standard of sub one-second server response times. This helps with search engine optimization as search engines prioritize sites that load quickly. We also build our blog pages for optimum performance for readers and site branding.
Most importantly, we coach our authors on how to post for optimum site performance. The use of smaller images, proper embeds and continue reading links all help our bloggers keep their sites loading quickly.
Stability
As experts managing your blogs, we take care of the latest software changes, plugin updates and server hassles. Through our management, LexBlog sites experience better than 99.95% uptime. Even during a rare outage, popular blog content will load for your readers in an offline mode to lessen the impact.
Security
Our expert staff of seasoned veterans work constantly to ensure there is no better home for your blogs. In addition to our beautiful, on-brand designs and blogging best practices coaching, we maintain an unparalleled record of security and a robust “no corners cut” approach. Specifically:
- We use an enterprise grade infrastructure with:
firewalls, DDoS mitigation, IDS-IPS functionality (we block and log security attacks before they start), network analysis monitoring tools and a secure SAS70 Type II data center with monitoring and intrusion protection. - We employ conscientious plugin management and in-house development.
Unlike a hosting company, we maintain and fully support not only the servers but the applications running on them. So while there are more than 35,000 plugins in WordPress’ plugin directory, we often find it’s best to develop our own purpose-built plugins with the options that our clients need. As applicable, we activate and configure plugins to make sure they work as intended and that they continue to work in harmony with the rest of the software powering blogs on The LexBlog Platform. - Our software stack is properly configured for optimal performance of The LexBlog Platform.
When default server software environments are not properly configured, security and performance problems can arise. Our software stack includes special provisions to ensure optimal performance of our WordPress-based platform. - We use a prudent deployment process when adding code.
Whenever development work is done to your blog during launch, redesign or an upgrade, our team thoroughly test and re-tests to ensure no risks are associated with the new code on your blog. With our replicated testing environments, backup, restore and versioning tools for deploying functionality, we keep the LexBlog platform stable and performant. - We update plugins and themes on a rigorous schedule
to ensure risk is low and plugin updates keep pace with platform-wide updates, leaving no security holes or risk. - We cautiously keep pace with platform versions.
Before each update, we thoroughly vet and test public WordPress changes in the context of the proprietary LexBlog platform and plugins upon which our clients rely. This ensures that as WordPress increases security and continually improves code, LexBlog clients reap the benefits. - We enforce strong password management rules as brute force or “dictionary” attacks are increasingly common.
- We have a robust backup system.
The worst can happen to even the most seasoned IT teams with the biggest data centers. Our blogs are backed up off-site and on schedule so even if disaster strikes, your blog data will be there. - We regularly scan with third-party vulnerability software to discover any hidden or hard-to-discover security issues.
Scale
When a blog post goes “viral” with thousands of unexpected visitors after you cover a particularly newsworthy event, you do not need to worry about overloading your site causing it to go offline. Our high-capacity servers are built to handle the load of your fame multiplying.
Support
Website hacking and vulnerabilities are an everyday occurrence online today. LexBlog is poised 24/7 to respond to threats. We actively work to maintain platform accessibility and uptime for you and your blog visitors.
If my blog goes down, which it rarely does because of the built-in redundancies, [LexBlog] has a team that jumps on it any time of day or night. They are responsive and accountable. – R. David Donoghue, Partner, Holland & Knight
In the event of a service interruption, we quickly respond and provide updates to interested members who subscribe via the LexBlog status page (status.lexblog.com). We also post notices of upcoming maintenance there as well.
We also support everyday platform use. In particular, we provide thorough self-paced training resources available in our knowledge base.
Search Engine Optimization
We are committed to building a technical foundation for blog success, so you can focus on what matters most: crafting helpful content that fosters relationships to grow your online reputation.
LexBlog is committed to best practices in the following areas of technical search engine optimization:
- Inbound referral links from reputable sources
- Keyword-rich title tags
- Permalink structure
- Sitemap structure
- Duplicate content prevention
- Semantic HTML markup
- Sitemap submission directly to search engines
- Geographic targeting
- Domain choice
- Image use
- Page load speed
- Mobile-friendly design
Why WordPress?
We selected WordPress as the foundation for our proprietary LexBlog platform because:
- WordPress powers 23.9% of all websites and is supported by an enormous open-source community
- Continual improvements are introduced that we can build off of and deliver to our members
- WordPress started exclusively as a blog platform, unlike other systems originally positioned for website content management
- WordPress delivers unparalleled functionality as a blog platform