Management
The month after launch is when sites rot.
Ongoing care for a site that is already good: updates applied, backups verified, uptime watched, small changes made the week you ask, and a monthly report that shows the speed has not quietly slipped back.
The newest thing on this list. The delivery record behind it is nine years old; the retainer itself is not.
How a good site goes bad
Not suddenly. Every one of these is ordinary, and every one of them is invisible until a customer finds it first.
- Plugins and dependencies drift out of date, and one of them becomes the way in.
- Images get uploaded straight from a phone camera, and the page that loaded in one second now takes six.
- A certificate expires on a Saturday and the browser tells every visitor the site is unsafe.
- Nobody has checked whether the backup restores. Backups that have never been restored are a filing habit, not a safety net.
What I do each month
- Core, plugin and dependency updates, applied and checked
- Off-site backups, and a restore that has actually been tested
- Uptime and certificate monitoring, with a human who answers
- A monthly performance number, so decay is visible before a client sees it
Three levels
- Watch
- Updates applied and checked, off-site backups with a tested restore, uptime and certificate monitoring, and a monthly report with the speed numbers on it.
- Maintain
- Everything in Watch, plus up to two hours of changes a month, done the week you ask: the price edit, the new team member, the page that needs a section adding.
- Manage
- Everything in Maintain, with priority turnaround and a quarterly review that looks at what the site is actually doing for you, not only whether it is up.
Monthly, cancel whenever it stops being worth it. No setup fee and no minimum term: a retainer that needs a contract to keep you is not earning its place. Tell me which level fits and I will send the number.
Already have a site you like?
Send me the URL. I will tell you what state it is in before you commit to anything monthly, and if it needs fixing first, that is a different job, quoted separately.