Your new website has, to a great degree, what might be described as a computer operating system. Like Windows or iOS or Android, your website’s platform (WordPress) has a myriad of software programs and components that all come together to properly serve your website to the world. Within this “plumbing” are literally hundreds (or even thousands) of computer files.
All operating systems evolve; features and functionality are regularly added to them. So, the first thing that website maintenance does is update WordPress’ core files, theme, and plugins to the latest versions. Not only does this fix any existing bugs, but it also patches security vulnerabilities, improves compatibility, and prevents hackers from exploiting outdated components. A website that has gone more than a few months without these updates is a sitting duck for malware and a host of other security-related issues that can not only break your website, but snatch it away from your control.
The second most important maintenance task is ensuring that the website’s one or more scheduled backups are functioning properly. Regularly backing up your website ensures you can restore it if the server crashes, is hacked, or an accidental content/component deletion occurs.
Making the website’s database more efficient and reducing image file sizes will help the site load quicker and improve how visitors experience it. This also benefits SEO, which is ultimately better when visitors are having a superior experience.
Finally, regular website maintenance monitors uptime and errors. That is, keeping track of website availability and error logs that help detect and resolve issues before they affect visitors’ user experience.
So why not do these tasks yourself?
I would say that the primary reason is that these tasks require some degree of technical knowledge and skill, and a general awareness of current website security and other related issues. There’s also the fact that, occasionally, performing a mundane maintenance task will inexplicably break your website, rendering it totally non-functional. (This is especially common in the WordPress world, where literally tens of thousands of different versions and combinations of themes and plugins regularly are found to have “incompatibilities” that need to be researched, diagnosed, and repaired.)
My aim is to visit each of my client’s websites about every six weeks to do regular maintenance chores. Statistically, this takes me 8 to 12 minutes per website on average. (Large, complex websites with many plugins and dynamically changing content take longer.) At my current rate, this amounts to about $115 per year for a typical website. I log all of these visits and the time it takes me, so I’m fully accountable.
To be clear, website maintenance is not:
- Writing and publishing new website content.
- Adding new pages or sections to a website.
- Adding new functionality to a website, such as online booking or a store.
To summarize, website maintenance is a “necessary evil” of every website that is built on the WordPress platform. It gives you, the website owner, the potential ability to evolve your website to do new and innovative things that you are currently only dreaming of. At the same time, it ensures that everything is functioning as designed, that visitors are having the desired experience, and that nefarious bots, hackers, and other entities can’t corrupt or rob you of your website.
