Keeping your website running

Sites do not fail all at once. They lapse — a form that stops delivering, a certificate that expires, a layout a browser update quietly breaks. Here is what to check, how often, and what to pay for.

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Website maintenance desk setup — a laptop showing a 100 percent site health dashboard with uptime monitoring, updates, backups, security and performance all green, a Website Maintenance checklist reading monitor, secure, update, backup, optimize, a phone confirming a completed website backup, spanners and a maintenance today better site tomorrow card — What maintenance buys you: everything green, a backup that completed, and no surprises — checked in ten minutes a month rather than discovered in a bad week.

A website is not a purchase. It is something you own.

Websites do not sit still. Hosting expires, certificates lapse, plugins fall out of date, the contact form silently stops delivering, and a browser update quietly breaks a layout that worked for three years. None of it announces itself. You find out when a customer mentions it, or when you notice the enquiries stopped a month ago.

Most of the sites I am called in to rescue were not badly built. They were built well and then left alone for four years. The rescue almost always costs more than the maintenance would have — and it is paid in lost enquiries first, invoices second.

This series is what actually needs attention, how often, and what it is reasonable to pay for it.

What needs looking at, and how often

The realistic version

Test the contact form
Send yourself one. A form that fails silently is the most expensive fault there is.Monthly · 2 min

Check the site loads on a phone
On mobile data, not your office wifi. Most visitors are on worse connections than you.Monthly · 2 min

Confirm backups exist — and restore one
An untested backup is a rumour. Restore it somewhere safe and see.Quarterly

Updates: platform, plugins, PHP
On a copy first if the site earns money. The update that breaks things always looks routine.Monthly

Domain and SSL expiry
Set a reminder two months out. An expired domain can be a genuine emergency.Annually

Speed and Core Web Vitals
Sites get slower by accretion — one image, one script, one plugin at a time.Quarterly

Prices, hours, staff, services
The most-read details on the site, and the most often out of date.As they change

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

The first three items above take about ten minutes a month and need no technical skill. Do those yourself — they catch the faults that cost real money.

Pay for the rest if the site earns you anything: updates that can break a live site, backups you can prove work, and speed work that needs judgement. A care plan is cheap insurance against the version of this where you call someone in a panic.

Be sceptical of a retainer that only produces a monthly PDF report. You are paying for someone to notice things, fix them, and tell you plainly what they did.