05 / Service
Maintenance
Nobody has logged into the site in eight months. The last backup is whatever the hosting company happens to keep. You found out the contact form had stopped sending because a customer rang to ask why you never replied.
Definition
A site that keeps working, and a person to email when it does not. Updates tested before they go live, backups that have actually been restored at least once, and a warning when something breaks quietly.
Fit
You are probably in the right place if:
- Anyone whose site has nobody looking after it.
- A business that cannot afford a quiet outage.
- Sites running old software with no update plan.
- Anyone who has never tested whether their backup works.
Scope
- Updates tested on a private copy before they touch the live site
- Backups kept off the server, with a restore actually tested
- Monitoring on both uptime and form delivery, so a silent failure is not silent
- Security patching and a locked down setup
- Small content changes without a quote for each one
- A short monthly note in plain language saying what happened
Sequence
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01
Take stock
What it runs on, what is out of date, what is already broken. Most sites arriving into maintenance need a catch-up first.
-
02
Set up the safety net
A private copy to test on, backups kept elsewhere, and monitoring on both the site and the forms, which fail quietly more often than hosting does.
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03
Run the cycle
Update, check, put live. Backups verified. Anything unusual gets an email, not a line in a report.
Effort
What actually moves the number.
The honest answer to what it costs is that it depends on these. Read them and you will know roughly where your job sits before anyone quotes you anything.
- What the site is built on
- A hand-built site has almost nothing to update. A WordPress install with thirty add-ons has a great deal.
- How far behind it is
- A site two years out of date needs a catch-up before a routine cycle makes sense.
- How often it changes
- A site that changes monthly is different work to one that changes daily.
- Whether it takes payments
- A store carries more risk and more testing on every update.
FAQ
My host says they handle backups. Is that enough?
Only if the backup lives somewhere other than the server it is backing up, and only if someone has restored one. Host backups are a reasonable first layer and a poor only layer.
What if I need a change that is bigger than a small change?
It gets quoted separately and you decide. The line is stated up front rather than discovered in an invoice.
Do you maintain sites you did not build?
Yes, after a look at what it runs on. Some need a catch-up first, and occasionally the honest answer is that rebuilding costs less than maintaining.
Next
Tell us what is wrong with it.
The quote form arrives with maintenance already selected. It starts with the site rather than with you, so the first step costs you nothing.