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Website maintenance, explained

A website is not a thing you finish. Software gets updated, security holes get found, content goes out of date, and links to other sites break. Maintenance is the difference between a site that keeps working and one that quietly stops.

What actually needs doing

• Software updates. Whatever your site runs on gets patched regularly, often to fix security problems that are public knowledge the moment they are announced.
• Backups, tested. Taking backups is easy. Knowing they restore is the part people skip until the day it matters.
• Security monitoring. Unmaintained sites get compromised and used to send spam or host scam pages. Owners often find out when their address gets blacklisted.
• Uptime checks. Automated monitoring so a site going down is noticed in minutes, not when a customer mentions it.
• Certificate and domain renewals. Both expire. Both cause immediate, visible failures when they do.
• Content changes. Prices, opening hours, staff, services. Out of date information actively costs you enquiries.
• Broken link checks. Pages you link to disappear over time.

Why "set and forget" goes wrong

The typical story: a site is built, it works, nobody touches it for three years. Then the contact form stops delivering and nobody notices for months. Or the site gets compromised through an old plugin. Or Christmas opening hours from two years ago are still on the homepage.

None of these are dramatic failures. They are slow leaks, and the cost is enquiries that never arrive, which is exactly the kind of loss you cannot see happening.

How we handle changes

You can make changes yourself in the editor — have a go — or you email or ring with what needs changing. We do it, usually the same day, and tell you when it is done. There is no ticket system, no portal to log into, and no arguing about whether a five minute change counts as billable.

The reasoning is simple: if changing something is a hassle, people do not bother, and the site drifts out of date. Making it easy keeps the site accurate, which keeps it working.

Common questions

Is there a limit on changes?

Reasonable ongoing changes are included. Rebuilding whole sections or adding significant new functionality is a separate piece of work, and we would tell you that before doing it rather than after.

What if my site is not built by you?

We can often take over maintenance of an existing site. It depends what it is built on — some platforms make outside maintenance impractical.

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