Website Maintenance for WordPress Sites

We love to build websites using WordPress, but creating a site is only the beginning. Once your site is up and running, it’s time to start maintaining it. For a website with limited functionality, website maintenance may be as simple as keeping your content updated. However, if your site relies on advanced functionality (e.g., online sales, user portals, communication with CRM software), then a comprehensive maintenance plan is critical to keeping your site working properly. In this article, we’ll outline what a website maintenance plan is and discuss two common practices that can crash your site—if you don’t have a maintenance plan in place.

What Is a Website Maintenance Plan?

A website maintenance plan is comprised of regularly scheduled assessments, “tune-ups,” and backups of your site. It can include updates to your website content, but at a minimum, it always includes updates to your WordPress core software and site plugins. Most website developers and some web hosts offer maintenance plans with a variety of options and price points. Is it worth the ongoing cost to have a website maintenance plan in place? Yes. Here’s why.

Updates Can Break Your Website

The principal reason you need a maintenance plan is to maintain compatibility with WordPress updates. Updating the WordPress core software protects your site against security threats and malware. Unfortunately, these updates don’t always play nicely with your website code and plugins. That’s why regular backups are the cornerstone of every maintenance plan. Having a complete backup of your website is a life saver when updates go wrong. It can even save you from the dreaded white screen of death.

Templates Can Leave You High and Dry

Using a template is another common practice that can leave your website vulnerable to compatibility issues (if you don’t have a maintenance plan). Often, templates offered for sale on online marketplaces are abandoned by their developers. When this happens, no one checks the theme files for bugs, no one answers SOS messages, and in some cases, developers delete the original theme files so that you truly have no backup to revert to. Yikes!

The only way to ensure that your website stays in top shape (even if you’re using a template) is to have a maintenance plan that includes regular backups. That’s why Diace Designs offers top-tier website maintenance to all of our web design clients. If you don’t yet have a maintenance plan for your website, contact us to get started. If you don’t yet have a website at all, we can help with that, too.

About Kara Franco
Kara writes copy that speaks. She has a knack for creating clear, compelling messages without wasting words. She is passionate about digital marketing and believes that copy is the cornerstone of user experience.

Copywriter + Content Strategist
Kara@diacedesigns.com