You already know the importance of keeping your website’s content updated, but what about regular maintenance?
Many WordPress site owners perform occasional maintenance, but they don’t have the time to do everything that needs to be done. This is why you need a WordPress maintenance service.
Instead of trying to take care of every detail of your site, professionals handle the technical details and maintenance. This leads to better performance, higher search ranking and an overall safer WordPress site.
Keep Software Updated
WordPress is software, as are your themes and plugins. As with any software, it needs to be updated to add new features, improve performance, fix bugs and patch security flaws. The problem is updating doesn’t always go smoothly which may lead you to skip an important update. If you’re not keeping WordPress, your themes and your plugins updated, you could be putting your site and users at risk.
Using a WordPress maintenance service takes all the stress out of updating. You no longer have to worry about what happens if your theme or a plugin isn’t compatible with a new WordPress update or vice versa. The service handles everything so all updates go as smoothly as possible. Just take a look at descriptions of each WordPress version and it’s easy to see that updating is a vital part of regular maintenance.
Maintain A Secure Website
WordPress has built-in security features, but it isn’t hacker proof. While no site is 100% secure, there are steps you can take to deter hackers and stay on top of security. Doing this does take time and it’s one of the biggest reasons many users prefer using a WordPress maintenance service.
Even if you only have a small site that has an audience of 1000, hackers are still interested. Using server resources, sending spam and using a malicious redirect are three of the top things hackers do with both large and small WordPress sites.
When a cross-scripting vulnerability was discovered in 2014, 86% of the 75 million WordPress sites at the time were vulnerable because they weren’t up to date. If you weren’t using a professional service, you might have missed the importance of updating and scanning your site for any security issues.
A service takes care of searching for viruses, malware and vulnerabilities. Experts stay abreast of the latest threats and work to keep your site as secure as possible. It’s kind of like having bouncers at the doors of your site, keeping hackers away.
Perform and Verify Backups
A hacked site, bad update or incorrect theme installation could all leave your site corrupted and offline. Now the big question – do you have a recent backup? Regular backups are one the single most important maintenance step, yet many users skip them. With every hour your site is offline, you’re losing visitors, conversions and your search rank.
Let a professional WordPress maintenance service perform backups, store them securely and verify to ensure they work. With a current backup, your site will be back up quickly, no matter what happens.
STANDARD
$35 / month
- 24/7 Security Monitoring
- Secure Off-Site Backups
- WordPress Core Updates
- Theme/Plugin Updates
EXTENDED
$50 / month
- 24/7 Security Monitoring
- Secure Off-Site Backups
- WordPress Core Updates
- Theme/Plugin Updates
- 1 Hour Support/monthly
- Onpage SEO such as Meta tags (title, description, keywords), alt tag, h1, h2, h3
PREMIUM
$75 / month
- 24/7 Security Monitoring
- Secure Off-Site Backups
- WordPress Core Updates
- Theme/Plugin Updates
- 3 Hour Support/monthly
- Onpage SEO such as Meta tags (title, description, keywords), alt tag, h1, h2, h3
- includes hosting and 1 domain
Frequently Asked Questions
How will future changes in WordPress impact our site?
To assess the specific ways that WordPress updates (and the direction WordPress is moving in), we would need to provide a formal audit of all plugins and the active theme on the site.
Can you restore the site from a backup site/roll a site back to yesterday’s version?
Provided that the backup is available, yes. While we’re happy to restore a site, usage of this feature may consume monthly development time (if available in your account), and/or incur additional fees. We will notify you prior to charging anything to your account.
What to do if my website is hacked?
We continuously monitors customer sites using ongoing security scans. Common issues are also manually checked whenever relevant.
Unfortunately, even with proactive monitoring, no one can catch every security issue. In the event a security issue does occur, our goal is to respond immediately within business hours. Valid security concerns are of the highest priority over any and all development work, company-wide.
If a site issue is detected, who can report it?
For security reasons, no one other than approved parties may request information or support services for a customer. The account holder is the default approved party, but you can also assign authorized users to your account! This can be done simply by emailing us with the name and email address for additional authorized users, as well as specific instructions regarding which sites they are authorized for. From then on, they can both request data and support services with ease.
What happens if my WordPress plugin is no longer supported?
The plugin is still monitored for issues as before. If no breaking changes or other issues are presented, it remains on the site. We frequently encounters plugins with a variety of issues; in such cases, the customer is notified of better (and up-to-date) alternatives. If there are not alternatives, we can provide support to change the plugin to continue working with your site. For this, additional development hour will occur.
What if an update breaks my site? Does it cost extra to fix?
The site is immediately rolled-back to the backup state taken prior to performing the update. The methods for this vary in some cases (due primarily to e-commerce functionalities, if present). From there, you’ll be notified of the issue.
The majority of issues are addressed free of cost, however, custom plugins, issues introduced by users, or especially time-consuming issues may be billable. We will notify you before charging anything to your account.