Modern websites require a certain level of maintenance. PHP, WordPress updates, Plugins, database upgrades…..there’s always something going on. While website owners don’t have to spend a lot of time every day working on their sites, there is still a bare minimum that needs to be done daily.
Here at RLC Design we train our clients on how to use the sites we develop for them. We actually create lengthy video tutorials on blogging, page creation, menu creation, and site maintenance. When we’ve completed a site our clients are equipped to deal with the day to day operation of their sites. Unfortunately sometimes folks forget to check often, and that can become a problem down the road.
We develop and design websites using the WordPress platform. Often there are updates to WordPress, or to any number of plugins we use when developing client sites. Also there are regular updates to the themes we design with as well. Some updates improve performance, others add an additional degree of security, and some updates are critical due to security flaws that are discovered. So keeping up with updates is extremely important.
RLC Design offers maintenance packages
When we first started working with our clients we trained them to be their own web administrators. Over time though we came to realize that some of our customers don’t want to mess with the inner workings of their websites. They’d forget to do their updates, check their stats, or even approve comments from their own clients. So earlier this year we announced a few website maintenance packages that we now offer to our customers.
Bottom line, we want to make sure our customers’ websites are secure and running the latest plugins available. We also want to make sure that they never have to contend with a security breach due to the fact that updates and patches were left undone.
How much time does maintenance take?
Currently I run 4 websites that are my own. This site is one of them. I also run The Airstream Chronicles, Living In Tin, & Rich Charpentier dot com. They’re all built on WordPress, and they all have multiple plugins setup on them. And each day when I settle into the work chair I check each of them to see if updates are available. Usually I spend 5-10 minutes per site on updates and making sure the site is doing well. That’s not a lot of time, right?
Let’s see now… 4 websites at 5 minutes each at the start of my day. That’s 20 minutes of time per day. If your average month has 30 days in it we’re talking 600 minutes per month. Put another way, that’s 10 hours per month. That actually is a substantial amount of time. The RV repair guys who replaced my fridge the other month were billing at over $100 per hour, so in terms of their time we’re talking $1,000 worth of work!
For our average clients we’re looking at about the same amount of time per day. 5-10 minutes each day is normally all you’ll need. At 5 minutes a day we’re talking 150 minutes of time. That works out to 2.5 hours per month of checking your sites on the low end. So, what’s the value of your time?
Let us worry about the “behind the scenes” maintenance!
If you don’t have the time to spare, and you look at your business website as a “set it and forget it,” consider one of our website maintenance packages! We’ll deal with that behind the scenes stuff for you, and you can focus on running your business, not your website.
Currently we have 2 primary service offerings. One covers the day to day updates, and the other offers a few extras like additional SEO or blogging on behalf of your business. We’ll keep you up to date and let you focus on what you do best!
This posting was not only inspired by our new maintenance packages, it was also inspired by the release of WordPress 4.3 yesterday. This morning I checked every one of our client websites, and not a single one had been updated to the new release. I went ahead and did their updates for them, but with 20+ websites it took a little time! 😉