Do you run a business that uses WordPress or is your business solely dependant on your WordPress websites, such as a Woocommerce shop or blog? Do you invest in your websites to ensure that they are maintained, backed up, compliant and secure? If not then now is the time to protect your investments, we look into how a WordPress maintenance and support plan could actually save you money and protect your investment.
A website, whether WordPress powered or not needs to be maintained. Think if it as you would a car, your website is powered by many different components that all need attention to ensure that they are working correctly, secure and compliant with today’s technology.
WordPress websites introduce many more components in the shape of plugins, themes, third-party software, databases and security which make the job of maintaining them harder and the chance of a hole in security more likely.
WordPress Security
WordPress has become by far the most used content management system (CMS) powering over a quarter of all websites. A bit like PC’s, which became more susceptible to viruses due to the sheer amount of people using Windows compared to say a Mac. WordPress has become an easy target for hackers as so many people us it. Out of the millions of websites that use WordPress many aren’t updated, they are running old versions of PHP and more shockingly many still use the default ‘admin’ username which makes a brute force hacking attempt very easy.
Unfortunately, WordPress brought along a wave of hobbyist ‘Wed designers’ which I think are to blame for a lot of the WordPress sites that aren’t maintained. Some of these web designers only started building WordPress sites as a hobby and a way to make some money quickly by using free plugins and themes to build a website. Many of their projects go unmaintained as they either don’t feel the need to maintain projects or they are simply moved on to other things.
We come across many of these instances where a website has been abandoned by a previous ‘web designer’, these sites are usually running very old versions of WordPress and even unsupported versions of PHP. Not to mention many have already been hacked and malware has been injected all over the database to embed spam backlinks. Most business owners don’t even know that their site needs to be maintained let alone the importance of security.
So how can a WordPress maintenance plan help with security?
A WordPress maintenance plan should include full security checkups, hardening and monitoring to ensure that the site is always secure and using the best security practices. Our WordPress maintenance plans include a full initial checkup and fixing of any security flaws, we will also help remove any malware from your site. Our WP Helper services include additional options such as daily security checkups which include a full scan of your site to ensure that there are no holes in your security.
Along with security checks, we also backup your site daily as a minimum, we also have options for real-time backups and backups at intervals that suit your needs. These backups are stored in a secure external location so in the worst case scenario, your site can be restored using a backup. This is very important in the case of severe hacking attempts and even DDOS attacks on your server.
If you have a hosting service with Lakewood we also include DDOS protection and additional server security to prevent hacking attempts.
General WordPress maintenance, what does it involve?
WordPress requires some general maintenance to keep it fast, updated and compliant with new technologies. This maintenance ranges from database cleaning and optimising to plugin updates. A WordPress maintenance plan will include general maintenance of your site, this includes the following as a minimum:
- WordPress Core Updates
- Plugin Updates
- Theme Updates
- Database Optimisation
- Comment Cleanups
- Conflict testing with plugin and theme updates
- Code Audits
- Site file cleanups
- Image Optimising
With our WordPress maintenance plans, you get all the above and much more to ensure that your site is always seamlessly up to date. Our plans also come with many additional extras to cater to your needs, for example, you can choose to have a staging site that can be used to perform update conflict tests.
Support when you need it.
A WordPress maintenance plan doesn’t just cover the behind the scenes stuff, it also provides you with a constant point of contact for all your technical and general support. From questions on how to change settings with a plugin to more complex technical support, you can even opt for a WordPress support and maintenance plan which will give you 1 hour of developer & technical support each month. This hour could be used to make complex changes to your site, add content or even help with 3d party services.
Our WordPress support & maintenance plan doesn’t just limit you to WordPress questions, we can help with almost any online service from email to social media.
All our plans also include additional add-on support time at a discounted rate, should you need more than 1 hour of developer support you can simply increase or book extra time as a one-off if you need to develop a new feature on your site.
So how can this save me money?
Ah yes, this was the point of the article. The typical cost for a WordPress maintenance plan is around £30 per month, our WP Helper WordPress Maintenance plan is just £22 per month and includes all the above features plus extras such as performance optimising, Imagify image compression, uptime monitoring, monthly site reports and more. Our Support & Maintenace plan comes with additional dedicated support and some extras such as SEO keyword ranking reports and SEO audits, the support and maintenance plan costs £63 per month.
A WordPress support & maintenance plan could save you thousands each year if you consider the worst case outcome if something goes wrong. The cost of recovering your site and lost business can be crippling.
So at £22 per month, your site is secured, backed up, monitored for downtime, updated, database optimising, checked for malware and your images are optimised. So compared to not having a WordPress maintenance plan. If you say experienced an issue with an update and you needed to get one-off WordPress support to fix the issue you will be looking at costs of at least £44, you would instantly be saving with a maintenance plan.
Then you can consider your time, monitoring your site, performing backups and updating themes, plugins and WordPress core takes time and often more time than you expect when something doesn’t go as planned. £22 per month is a very low price to pay when you consider the time it will take to perform the tasks included in your maintenance plan. Our support plan can also reduce development costs as you get a discounted rate on additional support time.
Check out our WordPress support and maintenance plans or talk to a member of our team for more details on enterprise plans.
