Website Maintenance & Support

Keeping your site up to date

I can perform regular maintenance of your website, ensuring it runs smoothly with a continuous great experience for your visitors and potential customers.

Managing a website is more than simply keeping it online, your site can be greatly improved by regular performance monitoring and expert support services.

I can undertake design alterations, add new functionality, optimise the website for Search Engines… plus much more.

Essential maintenance

Depending on the way your site has been built, there are some tasks that are essential to ensure the safety, security and smooth running of your site.

If your site uses a database (all sites running the WordPress management system do) then these are some of the tasks that need completing on a regular basis:

• Management system updates (eg. WordPress)
• Theme updates
• Plugin updates
• Database backups
• Security management
• Contact form testing
• Any Ecommerce system tests
• Checking layouts in desktop, tablet and mobile browsers

Why does a website need maintaining?

It may seem strange that a new website, or one that’s been running well for a period of time, could need regular maintenance. The fact is, the internet changes, server configurations may change, web browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox etc) may change, they are constantly updated… and your site needs to update with them.

These aren’t usually big changes, but the web has changed a lot in only the last few years, just through small updates and added functionality options. There are so many more things that a website can now do, and usually much faster than ever before.
All this extra functionality requires that code works efficiently and resources load well.

So, if left unmanaged, your site could find itself in an environment that it wasn’t initially built for, things that once worked well could become broken.
Regular maintenance goes a long way to preventing issues like this from occurring.

Who is responsible if my website has a problem?

If your website encounters a problem and things stop working, you might assume that whoever built your site is responsible.
Well, no… it’s the responsibility of whoever is appointed to maintain and manage the site systems. The site owner needs to make sure there is somebody doing this.

It’s your website and it’s ultimately your responsibility to ensure it’s not going to fail you, key functionality and security should be checked and updated regularly.
The fact is, unless the site is maintained effectively, there are more chances of a problem occurring.
There are a number of reasons why a site might experience problems, from minor issues with the hosting server to a full on malicious website hack.

After your site is launched, you might choose to keep the maintenance of the website within your company. Giving the task to your most qualified employee.
This can work well, but do consider what you would do if that person were to move on from your business, do you have someone else who could carry out the same tasks as effectively?

It’s often easier, and more future-proof, to have a web developer/designer professional do these jobs for you.
That’s were my monthly web maintenance packages come in.
They allow you to outsource the work to a reliable professional, as well as be proactive about keeping your website running well, rather than reactive when problems happen.

If you did have issues with your site and required emergency action.. this may not be possible, data could be lost and the bill to rebuild and fix things could easily outweigh monthly support costs.
Much better to prevent issues from occurring in the first place and safeguard your best marketing asset.

Keeping your site secure

Websites continue to be targeted by new threats from hackers and attackers looking to hijack site resources and steal information. These threats can come from automated attack bots that search the web looking for vulnerabilities in website code.
Sometimes websites get hacked. The malicious attack could cause a number of issues; destroy your site files, delete pages and data, replace page content with unwanted adverts, it could even change passwords and lock you out of your own website.

Regular updates to your website admin files, themes and plugins (especially the security plugins) ensures they are running the latest versions, helping to defend your site against new types of attacks.
These updates are necessary to keep your website secure, in a similar way to updating software on computers and updating the apps on your smart phone also keeps these systems safer to use.

Website backups

As for website backups, they are as important as the backups you make of your own computer.
Sometimes computers, systems and servers fail… it’s rare, but can happen.
It’s always a good idea to make sure your website data and content is safeguarded against loss.

While website hacking is unlikely, especially with well managed security features, it can still happen.
Website hacking is usually carried out by automated programs that will install redirects, links and ads, and can remove and delete all your content.
Preventing your site from being hacked in the first place is the best policy, this can be achieved by hardening your system and adding good login security.

If you do lose your site and have to restore it, you need to have regular backups of your database at the very least, so that your pages, text & settings are not lost forever.
Restoring your site from a backup can be done quickly and with minimal fuss, just make sure you or your appointed website maintenance people have those backups when you need them.

Who should do website management?

Only people with experience and knowledge of the system, the web and the functionality of your website should carry out and manage these tasks.

This could be you or a member of your team if you feel it is within your capabilities. Please be aware though, should mistakes be made by you or a third party that required fixing, you should expect to pay for the time required to get things back on track – and this can often be urgent work, charged at a premium.

Most businesses will appoint an experienced professional to manage the tasks of maintaining their website, allowing everyone to continue to concentrate on what they do best, including you and your employees.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your website management and support.

Get in touch about your website maintenance