What website maintenance includes, and what happens without it

A website or business system keeps changing after launch even if nobody touches it. The software it’s built on releases security fixes, browsers change, the hosting provider updates its platform, and certificates and domains come up for renewal. Maintenance is the work of keeping up with those changes so the site keeps working, and it’s easy to forget about until something breaks.

What maintenance usually covers

The details vary, but a sensible maintenance arrangement covers these things:

• Security and dependency updates: applying fixes to the framework, plugins and libraries the site is built on, and testing that nothing broke.
• Backups: regular copies of the site and its data, kept somewhere separate, and checked now and then to make sure they can actually be restored.
• Uptime monitoring: an automatic check that tells someone when the site goes down, ideally before your customers notice.
• SSL certificates, DNS and domain renewals: the pieces that make the address work and the padlock appear, which cause an outage when they lapse.
• Small improvements: a set amount of time for the changes your team asks for, such as new content, a form field or a fix to something that’s been annoying people.
• A named contact: someone who knows how your system is put together, so a problem doesn’t start with an hour of working out how everything fits.

What happens without it

Skipped maintenance rarely causes a problem straight away, which is why it gets skipped. The cost shows up later. Updates that would have been small one at a time pile up, until bringing the site up to date becomes a project of its own. Known security holes stay open in the meantime. And when something does break, nobody is responsible for it, so the fix happens in a rush, often after customers have already found the problem.

The other common gap is access. Businesses often find out they don’t know where their site is hosted, or who holds the domain login, at the moment they need to change something. Part of maintenance is simply keeping that information written down and in your hands.

Questions to ask whoever looks after your website

Whether you already have someone or you’re choosing a provider, these questions are worth asking:

• Who owns the domain and the hosting account, and do I have my own login to both?
• How often are backups taken, where are they kept, and when was a restore last tested?
• How will I find out if the site goes down, and who fixes it?
• How are security updates applied, and how quickly after they’re released?
• What happens to small change requests, and how much time each month is set aside for them?
• If we part ways, how do I get everything handed over?

Clear answers to those questions matter more than the size of the plan. If you’re not sure how your current site is looked after, or whether it’s being looked after at all, a free assessment is a good way to find out.