WordPress Website Maintenance Subscription
Ongoing Website Maintenance Needs
Keeping your organization’s WordPress website in good working order can be considered much like tending to a garden. While certain tasks require immediate and ongoing attention, others can be performed on a monthly, quarterly, or even annual basis. We’ve organized these critical activities into several broad categories based on their frequency required for optimal website performance. While all websites have their own unique needs, the following document serves as a general outline for standard maintenance requirements.
Backups
Backing up a website is arguably one of the most important maintenance activities. Having a regular backup plan means safeguarding your site against the threat of hackers, computer crashes, misconfigured updates, viruses or malware, and simple human errors. While none of these occurrences can be totally prevented, having access to a recent backup can help minimize the damage. We recommend a weekly backup at the very least.
Uptime Monitoring
Monitoring website uptime means testing and verifying the availability and reliability of the website and servers on a continuous basis. When a website is functioning as it should, uptime statistics will confirm, offering peace of mind that your visitors are able to access the site and that it’s operating as intended. Uptime monitoring can help identify unforeseen events and issues, and also provide valuable insight into the overall experience of your visitors.
WordPress Updates
While it’s difficult to predict the regularity of update releases for the Wordpress platform, they can arise at any given time and may contain certain security fixes that would otherwise leave your website at risk. Because minor updates are much more common than major updates or new version releases, we advise updating Wordpress on a monthly basis.
Theme Maintenance
Similar to Wordpress, updates to your website theme should happen on a monthly basis. Assuming that your site is running on a theme that’s been developed by a third party, update releases can include security and bug fixes, performance enhancements, and compatibility changes for proper display on the latest mobile devices and browsers. Hackers are constantly searching for vulnerabilities in website themes and plugins, so making sure they’re updated is the first line of defense in keeping your site secure.
Plugin Maintenance
No website is 100% safe from hackers or malware, so just like Wordpress and themes, plugins are a common target and also require regular updates to minimize risks. Monthly maintenance for plugins can save you from a nightmare of website downtime.
Plugin Audit
Not only can neglecting plugin updates compromise your website’s security, but over time, better performing variations of plugins may be developed that could very well outperform your current selections. It’s important to be aware of the higher quality plugins that become available and to determine which ones could use replacement by auditing your plugins on an annual basis. This is also an opportunity to find plugins that are no longer in use and to deactivate them.
Image Compression (Homepage)
Did you know that most people will immediately abandon your website homepage if it fails to load within 3 seconds? If you regularly post images on your site, their file size may be a major culprit in slowing down your website speed. Compressing images without negatively affecting their quality is one of the best ways to optimize your website’s speed and performance. It will also help to reduce your website’s bounce rate, or the percentage of visitors who immediately leave your site after clicking on the link (often thanks to slow loading times), and even help to improve your search engine rankings. We recommend a regularly scheduled task of image compression on a monthly basis.
Vulnerabilities & Security
Unfortunately, viruses, hackers, and malware are more abundant today than ever before, and no website is ever entirely protected from them. If your website undergoes an attack, you need an immediate solution. Website downtown will confuse your visitors, hurt your search engine rankings, and cause countless headaches in undoing the damage and working to restore it. While regular website maintenance is key to prevention, it’s also wise to have a disaster plan in place.
Your website delivers the first impression of your organization to many of its visitors and is easily one of the most powerful marketing tools you have. Like with any major investment, routine maintenance and updates are critical for optimizing its performance and preventing its depreciation. Put your website maintenance in the expert hands of Missional Marketing and save yourself countless hours and headaches. We’ll worry about your website while you focus on what matters most - your members!
Exclusions
Basic maintenance service does not include fixing things that the client breaks while adding content, plugins, functionality, etc. We will charge our hourly web work rate to fix those kinds of problems. Alternatively, you can add a development subscription for as many hours per month as you’d like for us to be on retainer.
Basic maintenance service does not include adding content, plugins, or functionality to the website. We will charge our hourly web work rate for those additional services. Alternatively, you can add a development subscription for as many hours per month as you’d like for us to be on retainer.
Get Started
Contact Missional Marketing for more information on our Wordpress Website Maintenance subscription and our current pricing.
If you're in need of a new church website, make sure to visit our pages on Custom Wordpress Websites, Ready-Made Wordpress Websites, and One-Page Wordpress Websites.