Creating a website and making it live on the Internet is just the start. Then the fun begins! This is because:

• web browsers change, and that can change website behaviour
• web server software changes too, and upgrades can break things
• WordPress and related plugins get upgrades, which can break things
• hosting companies can change too, especially when big fish swallow little fish
• there’s always someone trying to hack your website, usually through something that hasn’t been upgraded to the latest version

Good hosting companies will do their best to keep things stable for your website, and generally provide some level of backups to ensure that if something happens, your website can always be restored — to some point in the past. If something breaks due to an upgrade, however, they usually ask you to get a web developer to fix it for you.

We like to stay out in front of all that by offering a maintenance plan with every website we build. Since we built it, we know it well and we know how to safely upgrade and modify the website.

Our maintenance plans include:

• secure offsite backups with 1 year retention of weekly backups, 1 month retention of daily backups
• software updates tested in a development environment before deployment
• security scanning and vulnerability protection
• site uptime monitoring
• version control management of all website software

We generally only offer this service to websites we’ve built. This is because we have full confidence in our ability to maintain those sites. We don’t normally offer maintenance on other websites, although arms have been twisted before!