What does website maintenance cover?

Your website changes after launch even when nobody touches it. WordPress, Elementor and the plugins behind your pages all release updates, and each update can change how the site behaves. Website maintenance is the work that keeps up with them.

A site left alone for a year is running either old software with known security holes, or new software nobody has checked it against. Neither shows on the home page, and when an enquiry form stops sending, the visitor sees nothing wrong, and the people who would have told you are the ones whose messages never arrived.

Website Care is the monthly arrangement that looks after this, for owners who would like the site to keep working without learning WordPress to do it. The work takes about thirty minutes a month, and each month runs in the same order.

Most of it applies to WordPress, where the moving parts are. A static HTML site has no plugins to update, and Canva keeps a Canva site current, so the monthly work on those is lighter: the link check, and the form test where there is a form.

Every update starts with a backup

WordPress is the system your site runs on. Elementor is the page builder the pages were designed in. Plugins add the parts WordPress does not include, such as the enquiry form or the tools that help search engines read your pages. All three are updated by their makers, on their own schedules.

Before WordPress, Elementor or any plugin is updated, the site is backed up. If an update breaks a layout or a feature, the backup puts the site back as it was, and the update is looked at before it goes in again.

WordPress can run some updates by itself. They run with nobody watching, so when an update breaks a page, the first person to notice is often a customer. With a backup taken first and the site tested afterwards, the problem is caught by the person doing the update, before a customer finds it.

Keeping the software current is the part visitors never see. It also closes the security holes that older versions leave open. You do not need to do anything while this happens, and your pages look the same afterwards.

Each month the enquiry form gets a real test

After the updates, a test message goes through your enquiry form, and I check that it arrives. A form can fail without showing the visitor any error, so the test happens every month, whether or not anybody has complained.

For a site whose job is enquiries, this is the check with the most money attached to it. It is also the easiest check for an owner to forget, because an empty inbox looks the same as a slow week.

Broken links get found and fixed

Links break over time. A page gets renamed, or a partner moves the page you linked to. Each month the site is checked for broken links, including links out to other websites such as a map or a booking page, and the ones on your pages are fixed.

A visitor who clicks a dead link rarely reports it. They leave, and a broken link on a services page can lose you the enquiry that page was built for.

You get a short note at the end of each month

The note lists the updates, the result of the form test and any links that were fixed. It is written for the owner, in everyday words, and takes a minute to read. If something needs a decision from you, such as a plugin that has been retired or a licence due for renewal, the note says so.

Keep the notes together and you have a record of the site’s health, month by month. It helps if you ever change hosts or bring in another developer, because the history is written down.

Thirty minutes sounds small. It works because it happens every month, so a problem gets caught before a second month goes by.

What sits outside website maintenance?

Website Care keeps the site you have working. These sit outside it:

• Hosting and your domain
• Premium licences
• Changes to your content. A new page, new photographs or a rewritten service is content work, planned and agreed on its own.

Plenty of content changes are yours to make. At the handover walkthrough after a build, you are shown the everyday edits you can make yourself, and the settings to leave alone.

Keeping these apart makes the monthly investment easy to read. You know what the thirty minutes are for, and anything larger is agreed before it starts.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Website Care is an investment from $129 a month. You can stop with a month’s notice. If I did not build your website, I look it over first, then confirm the investment or quote a different one before anything starts.

The fair comparison is with what the site brings in. Put a figure on a month of lost enquiries, and set it beside a month of care. Then ask who, today, would notice first if your form stopped sending.

Questions people ask about website maintenance