Should I pay for website maintenance?

[Al’s Ads]

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Hi Paz456. I’m only new at website administration however I backup my website once a month a the moment. It’s a bit of a worry the first couple of times but if you make notes along the way it gets easier each time. You will need a good ftp like the free one that I use “FileZila”. I save to an external hard drive. Good Luck.

[eWAY]

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Al’s Ads, post: 168413 wrote:

Hi Paz456. I’m only new at website administration however I backup my website once a month a the moment. It’s a bit of a worry the first couple of times but if you make notes along the way it gets easier each time. You will need a good ftp like the free one that I use “FileZila”. I save to an external hard drive. Good Luck.

Hi Al,

It sounds like you’re copying your website files to a local location as your means of backing up?

Unfortunately if you’re using any modern Content Management System or shopping cart (highly likely) your content is actually stored in a database which you will not be backing up so in the event of a server issue you may be in trouble!

Of course you can ignore the above if you’re first exporting your database

Maclean

[Al’s Ads]

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Thanks Maclean, now you have me thinking. I will check it out thoroughly.

[paz456]

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eWAY, post: 168393 wrote:

Hi Paz,

I don’t think you can expect a lot for $100. For that, you’ll get 15 minutes of time a week which will cover logging in, doing a backup, clicking the one-click upgrade button, and logging out. They might quickly flick through the site to make sure pages still come up. But some things could get missed very easily.

Find out what you get and let us know and we’ll be able to say whether it’s good value or not.

Maclean

Okay so here’s the list of services I’ve been quoted. You guys might need to help me out and tell me which are of value and which aren’t, as I don’t fully understand all of them.

– 24/7 Support
– Automated backups
– Upgrades for WP, Themes and Plugins
– Performance tweaking optimization (includes plugin auditing)
– Speed optimization
– Uptime monitoring
– Security testing/Malware scans
– Code Review
– Staging Servers

[eWAY]

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paz456, post: 168486 wrote:

Okay so here’s the list of services I’ve been quoted. You guys might need to help me out and tell me which are of value and which aren’t, as I don’t fully understand all of them.

– 24/7 Support
– Automated backups
– Upgrades for WP, Themes and Plugins
– Performance tweaking optimization (includes plugin auditing)
– Speed optimization
– Uptime monitoring
– Security testing/Malware scans
– Code Review
– Staging Servers

It’s all valuable and is pretty much everything you could hope for. How much time do you get a month though?

Maclean

[paz456]

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eWAY, post: 168556 wrote:

It’s all valuable and is pretty much everything you could hope for. How much time do you get a month though?

Maclean

Good question. How much time should I need? 1 hour?

I believe for a lesser fee I can get a simplified version of the offering. Which do you think are the key services? I think backups, security, and support are most important.

[DKChoices]

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These are quite basic things – I think $100 is a fairly high amount. If you Google and understand basic website maintenance, you could really do it yourself for 15 mins as other people have suggested, and that would be much cheaper going forward.

[eWAY]

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paz456, post: 168564 wrote:

Good question. How much time should I need? 1 hour?

I believe for a lesser fee I can get a simplified version of the offering. Which do you think are the key services? I think backups, security, and support are most important.

DKChoices, post: 168872 wrote:

These are quite basic things – I think $100 is a fairly high amount. If you Google and understand basic website maintenance, you could really do it yourself for 15 mins as other people have suggested, and that would be much cheaper going forward.

The value is there for when something does go wrong. An hour is enough for backing up etc. But when it comes to an upgrade that messes up the site you’ll need more time.

Here’s a quick example.

WordPress 3.6 has just come out so you hit the upgrade button and quickly check the site to make sure it all looks right. The site loads nicely in your browser and all looks great. You can thank Google Chrome caching for that but in the background an important plugin has actually stopped working because a function it relies on has been removed or changed.

After a week you receive an email who wanted to buy from you bad enough that they report the issue. Now you’ve lost a weeks worth of sales and have to figure out how to restore from a backup – hoping you won’t lose too much data.

Now the example with a maintenance service.

WordPress 3.6 has just come out and your maintenance business schedules the upgrade. They copy the latest version of the site to the staging server and perform the upgrade. They test all of the site and it’s functions in multiple browsers and find that the plugin isn’t working. They check the WordPress Codex and note that a function has changed so they implement a fix to the plugin and notify the plugin developer. They then perform another backup of the live site and push the upgrade from staging to live, retest and all works perfectly. The next day the plugin that has the issue is upgraded by their developers and no one else is affected by the upgrade bug.

It’s cost you $100 but you’ve lost $0 in sales.

Maclean

[paz456]

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Guys, a friend just referred me to this page.

http://landing.tweaky.com/wordpress-maintenance/

Based off what you guys have suggested, it looks reasonable.

Thoughts?

Paz

[Tiggerito]

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It looks ok.

However I’m surprised the base package does not include updates.

[paz456]

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Tiggerito, post: 169627 wrote:

It looks ok.

However I’m surprised the base package does not include updates.

Yeh me too, that kind of bothers me. Why do you think they left it out?

[JohnW]

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Hi Paz,
I don’t provide these types of services so my opinion is not biased by this fact.

I’d broadly sort support in these categories:

• Backend maintenance – this is to ensure that the hosting server systems, security flaws and updates are maintained
• Content management system updates – for the same reasons
• Backing up website files
• Site owner help – eg. Fixing hacked sites, resurrecting back-up files, etc.

Some of these support times can be easy to predict but others can be infrequent and very broad in scope.

I’ve seen hacked websites, deleted sites and “rogue” employees walk away with total control of their previous employer’s web assets. That last one nearly bankrupt a small business. This single incident in various legal fees and consultant’s fees would have been the equivalent of 5 years worth of professional support at $100 per month.

IMHO, if you have any sort of valuable marketing asset in your website then I strongly urge professional maintenance of it.

By all means ensue you get the best value for money but in the scheme of things, around $100 per month should a very small price to pay.

If people can’t afford as little as $100 per month for professional support and maintenance of their website then their site is not delivering any valuable results and they may as well shut it down completely.

I wonder what a small businesses’ month bill is for their landlines, mobile phones and Internet access?
Regs,
JohnW

[eWAY]

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Tiggerito, post: 169627 wrote:

It looks ok.

However I’m surprised the base package does not include updates.

It’s designed to get you in and upsell you to the next plan later.

paz456, post: 169628 wrote:

Yeh me too, that kind of bothers me. Why do you think they left it out?

I’d say their intro package is very much a free money package for them. They get people in on a $20/month plan where they only provide a couple of automated tasks after an initial upgrade/test.

JohnW, post: 169646 wrote:

Hi Paz,
I don’t provide these types of services so my opinion is not biased by this fact.

I’d broadly sort support in these categories:

• Backend maintenance – this is to ensure that the hosting server systems, security flaws and updates are maintained
• Content management system updates – for the same reasons
• Backing up website files
• Site owner help – eg. Fixing hacked sites, resurrecting back-up files, etc.

Some of these support times can be easy to predict but others can be infrequent and very broad in scope.

I’ve seen hacked websites, deleted sites and “rogue” employees walk away with total control of their previous employer’s web assets. That last one nearly bankrupt a small business. This single incident in various legal fees and consultant’s fees would have been the equivalent of 5 years worth of professional support at $100 per month.

IMHO, if you have any sort of valuable marketing asset in your website then I strongly urge professional maintenance of it.

By all means ensue you get the best value for money but in the scheme of things, around $100 per month should a very small price to pay.

If people can’t afford as little as $100 per month for professional support and maintenance of their website then their site is not delivering any valuable results and they may as well shut it down completely.

I wonder what a small businesses’ month bill is for their landlines, mobile phones and Internet access?
Regs,
JohnW

Totally agree.

Paz, one thing of note. There is no phone number, find out how contactable they are during different business hours.

Maclean

[websitedesigner]

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Hi Paz, we recently launched the exact service you are speaking of (with a little twist) http://wpcurve.com. We do all of the stuff you mentioned as well as unlimited small jobs by an experienced WordPress developer 24 / 7 with live chat (and for the same price).

Like eway pointed out I actually think there’s more value in the small jobs and having access to a developer. In my experience what ends up happening is people tip-toe around their site not really knowing what will happen when they upgrade WordPress, upgrade plugins or install new plugins and themes. Since they aren’t sure, they don’t do anything and as a result end up with an insecure site.

Our business is going nuts right now because I think a lot of people have this problem. They are able to do 90% themselves but with the final 10% they don’t want to hand their passwords over to someone new on Odesk each time and the agency model doesn’t support these small jobs very well.

[paz456]

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websitedesigner, post: 169712 wrote:

unlimited small jobs by an experienced WordPress developer 24 / 7 with live chat (and for the same price)

Hi Dan

Sounds too good to be true!

So every time I want some work done on my site, you guys will do it for me for free as long as its <30mins?

Also, is there one developer who works on my website, who I can contact with questions?

[Author]

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