When creating a website, the professional often offers the client site maintenance. Website maintenance is sometimes listed as an option, and from experience, I've noticed that when it's not mandatory, it's only chosen about half the time. Why? Because initially, when you want to create a website, you might not fully understand what maintenance entails and, more importantly, you might not grasp its importance. There's a fear that it might involve paying for an opaque or unnecessary service. This is not the case. Here is a brief overview of the advantages that make website maintenance indispensable.
Preparing for Success
Unless you're a bit unconventional, if you're creating a site, it's because you want it to succeed. Who would say "no" to more visitors? Success means traffic. Therefore, you need to ensure that your site's hosting can handle an increase in load, in other words, that it can cope if your traffic doubles. And if you can't ensure this, at least answer this question:
What do we do if the site crashes? Is there a backup?
You might say that traffic doesn't double overnight, so there's always time to prepare. And yet... It's not uncommon for a site's traffic to spike following a well-performing blog post, especially due to increased sharing on social media. In the event of a crash, if you don't have a maintenance guarantee, you might find yourself without a site, possibly for an extended period. Then, you'll have to call in a professional for an ad hoc service, which will likely be more expensive.
Ensuring the Site's Longevity
Today, most websites are built with scalable solutions (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.). What does this scalability mean? It means that the content management of your site and its modules can be updated (to improve their performance, make them more secure, etc.). This is an undeniable advantage as it extends the lifespan of your site. However, if you do not perform these updates, this advantage disappears. These updates are not always as straightforward as they might seem. Often, an update is carried out smoothly and without issue. In fact, since the latest versions of WordPress, the plugin update process has become even more seamless. But should you encounter an incompatibility, it immediately becomes more problematic, especially if it occurs on the live site. In such cases, the importance of having a backup to recover from or deploying updates on a test version becomes clear. During website maintenance, these procedures are implemented to ensure the integrity of the live site.
In content management, there are three types of elements to update:
- the content management core;
- the modules;
- and the site theme.
The theme must also be updated because, depending on the developed functionalities, they need to be aligned with the new version of the core or the modules.
Preparing the site migration
During a website's lifespan, it's not uncommon for it to change hosting, moving from one server to another. In this case, a "migration" is performed. When your site arrives in a new environment, it's best if it is "clean," meaning it's not overly complex. This is simply to avoid any compatibility issues, errors, or other unforeseen problems.
Preventing Your Website from Becoming Overly Complex
Over the years, I've sometimes seen websites that, with the addition of new features, start to resemble complex systems. Occasionally, new features are installed to replace old ones that have become deficient or less advanced. In such cases, website maintenance is crucial as it allows for the site's evolution and helps decide what to keep and what to discard. This prevents having obsolete modules and helps maintain a stable system. It's important to remember that a large number of plugins installed on a site can slow it down. And a slower site means a site with penalized search engine optimization.
Hacking Doesn't Only Happen to Others
A maintenance contract is also the best insurance against hacking. Contrary to popular belief, website hacks are very rarely targeted. Most of the time, a site is hacked because it was detected by a script searching for vulnerabilities.
A website hacking represents a serious threat to any business. When a site is compromised, the impact can extend far beyond a simple technical malfunction. The first damage, often the most visible, is the harm to the company's reputation. Customers and partners place their trust in the organizations they work with. If their security is jeopardized or their personal data is exposed, this trust can be irreparably eroded, making customer recovery costly, if not impossible, for some businesses.
Financially, the consequences are numerous. Not only can a company suffer revenue losses due to decreased customer trust, but it may also face unexpected costs related to remedying the breach, hiring cybersecurity experts, and potentially regulatory fines if the hacking resulted in non-compliance with data protection laws. Stolen information, whether customer data, trade secrets, or other sensitive data, can be used for malicious purposes, thereby exacerbating losses.
The technical aspect should not be overlooked. Besides the risk of the site becoming temporarily inaccessible, hindering the company's normal operations, there is also the danger of the site being hijacked to spread malicious content, thereby infecting visitors. Additionally, in some cases, hackers use compromised infrastructures as a springboard to launch other attacks, thus abusively soliciting the company's resources.
Finally, the specter of legal consequences also heavily weighs on a victimized company. Beyond potential sanctions, the prospect of litigation can prove costly, both financially and time-wise. Thus, a simple hacking act can trigger a cascade of negative events, threatening the very viability of the company concerned.
Website maintenance is therefore not just a technical issue; it is a strategic matter for the company.
Application Maintenance and Corrective Maintenance
The adjective attached to the word "maintenance" holds great importance. If you subscribe to application maintenance, it means that your site and its components will be updated. This is also known as TMA (third-party application maintenance).
When we talk about corrective maintenance, it means that in addition to updating the site, any new bugs will also be fixed. Indeed, it can happen that with a browser update, a display bug appears. In this case, corrective maintenance guarantees its resolution. This type of maintenance has a broader scope of action, and is therefore generally more expensive.
What to do if you haven't subscribed to maintenance?
The first thing to do is hope that nothing unfortunate happens to you :) More seriously, you can subscribe to one with any webmaster or web agency; or most simply with the person who created your site. I especially recommend choosing a company that truly masters the technical solution you are using. Avoid companies that sell maintenance regardless of your technical solution. When aiming to do good work, it's not possible to master everything perfectly, even if one can dabble in everything.
For example, even though I am well-versed in Joomla and Drupal, I do not provide maintenance for sites using these content management systems. I have indeed created sites with these solutions before, but I believe that's not enough. I only work on sites that use WordPress because it is THE solution I work with every day, whose developments I scrutinize closely, and whose strengths and weaknesses, potential compatibility issues, etc., I am familiar with. For maintenance to be properly executed, it must be a specialist's affair.
If you decide to forgo maintenance packages, you will need to call on a service provider if a problem arises. In this case, they will conduct a quick diagnosis to provide you with a quote. Be aware that if they are not familiar with your site and it takes them some time to get acquainted with it, the costs will reflect that. Similarly, if you are in a hurry, you will have less room to negotiate...
In conclusion…
Maintenance is a kind of insurance, a guarantee of the good condition of your website, but not only that; it also ensures its longevity. Creating a site is an investment, and like any other investment, it needs to be monitored and cared for. As you have understood, website maintenance is part of a risk economy; it is not mandatory, but it's worth thinking twice about.