What is Website Maintenance and Website Care?
You have a website that looks great and is professional – so you might be asking yourself what is website maintenance and why do I need to have it?
what is website maintenance ?
Well simply put website maintenance or website care is looking after your website to keep it looking and working well.
why is it important?
When your website was created – it was up to date. All was working in harmony. Let’s take plugins as an example. Depending on the developer they make improvements daily, weekly or monthly to their plugins to provide new features and functions and possibly more importantly they also identify potential weakness.
The great thing is the plugins get better and better and by keeping them correctly updated you keep your website safer and reduce vulnerabilities that could allow unauthorised access to your website.

Your website as a whole
So what about the website as a whole, the best way to understand why maintenance is needed is to consider what happens to a website in time.
Vulnerabilities occur in time – if you use our example of our website being our home it is more relatable. Consider your website is like a home.
After a long time:
- the gutter needs adjusting or replacing;
- Bricks need repointing;
- The boiler needs a tune up.
In the short time:
- that gorgeous drive needs it surface re-coating;
- windows need cleaning;
- the door hinge needs oiling.
So you get the idea and like our home our website when we keep up with maintenance tasks stays working at its best.
When its working at its best it is better at avoiding common hazards such as:
- Website hacks;
- Plugin clashes;
- Theme issues;
- Errors.

NOW LETS ADDRESS THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Every website designer should tell you we cannot eliminate all external factors that can influence your website but through good maintenance and best practice we can ensure it is much less likely to happen to you.
Any if it does happen – take a breathe and remind yourself that’s the exact reason we have backups.

What if you don’t have a care package?
Hand on heart this is not necessarily a problem, you might wonder why I say that but I am just being honest. Having worked with and supported a variety of clients over the years there are two types of approach.
One thing to think on is that without a maintenance/ care approach if something goes wrong I get a panic phone call, you feel worried and its more costly and challenging to remedy without a care plan.

The first approach
The first type of client is very hands on and they want to look after their website care on their own. This has many benefits such as cost saving and being self sufficient. There are downsides even if a client has been tutored in website care they may still miss a step after all there are many things you cannot learn over night and wont equal a professional with experience.

The second approach
The second type of client prefers to be hands off. If this is you you may just want to know that you are supported and that the right things are happening behind the scenes to minimise threats. This benefits you because you feel confident that website care is supporting you, you gain more time freedom and you know are being proactive in avoiding website threats. A downside of this approach is if you can call it that is an investment by you for your care package. However it’s only a small cost for support where you need it most.

Recommendation for your website care
- Professional Hosting
- Care Package (maintenance)

Why professional hosting?
Getting your foundations right is important. Many hosting companies provide adequate budget or business options but through my experience they are not all equal. I recommend using professional hosting that gives you daily automated backups included – this feature is not included by many hosts.

To benefit from this feature simply ask to be hosted by us and we can have this in place for you too. We support hosting needs for small to medium websites. If you are larger I am happy to make recommendations for you to also benefit.
Why a Care Package?
I recommend considering your personal needs and which approach would best suit your needs and time availability.
Please ensure you have an approach in place which ever one you choose - I love it when my customers have their website well cared for and that extra level of protection.

If you wish to be hands on I can support you to learn and please ensure you book several sessions to ensure you develop your knowledge.
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