
I have recently begun to offer WordPress maintenance packages to my clients, in hopes of keeping their site up and running with as little issues as possible. I’m noticing, though, that more than a few clients have questions on why maintenance is needed at all. I get it! I charged you a lot of money for a GOOD website, so why doesn’t it just STAY good? Am I right?
The following is an email response I sent a client who was wondering, what I’m guessing most new WordPress users are wondering…
Why Do I Need To Do Maintenance on My Site?
Hi [client’s name] – I suggest doing maintenance on your WordPress site as a proactive way of keeping it running smooth and fast. Every so often, WordPress will send out an update to it’s script for any number of reasons. Could be to patch a vulnerability, it could be to add more functionality to the back-end or to the end user, or to take away out-dated/non-functional features. That is 1 of the updates – WordPress itself. Others are from the functions that do no come “out-of-the-box,” like your contact form – we call these “non-out-of-the-box” features plugins. The script/code for plugins will need to be updated as WordPress is updated. So so so many reasons for this. One could be that the updates to WordPress changed a portion of code that a widget, if left out of date, will struggle to process. An example – Do you have an iPad? I just bought a new one because the one I bought 5 years ago could no longer run any of the apps. That’s because the apps, if they’re good, are made with the most modern and up to date scripting & that in time became too much for the old hardware to handle. So in this case, WordPress is our hardware and plugins are our software.
I hope that makes sense 😉
If you’ve had a chance to give it some thought, visit my WordPress Maintenance Service Page to see my prices & get the ball rollin’.