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What is Website Maintenance & Support?
At first glance, a website may seem simple. However, several key components work together behind the scenes to create a fully-functional online presence:
- Content Management System (CMS): The CMS provides the underlying framework and admin interface for managing all website content and functionality. Popular CMS platforms like WordPress allow for easy content creation and updates.
- Themes: These control the visual design and layout that visitors see on the front-end of the site. Themes in CMS platforms come with various styles, templates, and customisation options to tailor the look and feel.
- Plugins: Plugins add special features and functionality to websites built with CMS platforms. There are thousands of plugins available for features like contact forms, image sliders, reviews, live chat, SEO tools, analytics, and much more.
- Back-End Language: The CMS and platform are built using server-side programming languages like PHP. This code handles all the back-end processing and functions that enable the admin and public site to work.
Together, these elements enable website owners to easily build professional sites with custom designs, dynamic content, and robust functionality tailored to their unique needs. The possibilities are endless with the right platforms and tools.
Why should you maintain your website?
While all of these components enable rich website functionality, they also require regular maintenance and updates to keep a site running optimally. Staying on top of core platform updates, theme and plugin maintenance, and implementing good security practices is crucial for any website owner to maintain performance, protect against threats, and provide the best user experience.
Maintaining a website can be likened to servicing a car. If things are left untouched for an extended period of time they may stop functioning correctly or have vulnerabilities exposed in outdated code.
We are here to help and take the hassle out of maintaining your website. All of our clients and their needs are important to us, and our after sales support is something that we pride ourselves on.
What level of Maintenance & Support do we recommend?
Every client is different, but at a minimum we always recommend considering at least our basic Tier 1 support package. Pricing starts at $100+GST per month and includes all of the following:
- Regular active monitoring of your website
- Security audit for vulnerabilities within the Content Management System (CMS), plugins and themes
- Update core of CMS used eg. WordPress
- Update all plugins that are providing enhancements to the site that are available
- Update all themes that provide the layout and look and feel of the site available
- Update PHP software used on the website hosting server
- Quality assurance and testing across Mac, PC, tablet and smartphone platforms
With our more advanced tiers of support we can also help to regularly update content such as images, text, videos, blog posts or products on your site.
If you have specific requirements, feel free to get in touch and let us know how we can help.
Website Maintenance FAQs
What is website maintenance and support?
Website support and maintenance refers to the ongoing activities and services performed to ensure the smooth functioning, security, and effectiveness of a website. It involves regular updates, monitoring, troubleshooting, and improvements to keep a website running optimally and meeting the needs of its users.
It may also include regularly updating and managing website content, such as text, images, videos, and documents. This includes adding new content, modifying existing content, and removing outdated information.
What is included in website maintenance packages?
Our entry level website maintenance includes actively monitoring your website for issues, security updates to the core of WordPress and plugins that are providing enhancements to the site, as well as updates to themes that are providing the look and feel of your website. If your website is hosted with us we can also update PHP software used on the server as required.
Our more advanced levels of support include performing updates to content such text, images, videos, and documents. This includes adding new content, modifying existing content, adding new products and removing outdated information on your behalf.
Will I be locked into a long term contract?
No! We don’t believe in locking our clients into long term contracts. We do need to have a contract in place to detail our commitments to each other, however, feel free to cancel at anytime. We only want you to continue using this service if you feel you are receiving great value for money.
Do support hours rollover into the next month if they are unused?
We make ourselves available for as many support hours agreed upon per month. We don’t rollover support hours from month to month if they remain unused. If you feel you are no longer using the current support plan feel free to downgrade or cancel at anytime.
Alternatively, if you need more support hours we can easily upgrade your plan as well.
Do you only provide support for sites built by Walker Digital?
We are more than happy to work with sites built by other website designers and developers. As long as you can provide access to the website and hosting so we can assess how things have been built and whether there are any additional paid plugins or themes that require licenses being used.
Contact us for a free site evaluation today!
What happens if my website is hacked?
While we can’t guarantee 100% that your site will never be hacked, if anything does ever happen we will work on restoring things fast, finding the source of the hacking and fixing it.
Our support and maintenance clients have peace of mind that this is taken care of as a priority and inclusive of all plans. We’re happy to help with other sites that have been hacked but it will incur additional fees based on requirements.
How do I communicate what I need updated on my website?
You can send us an email listing your requirements at any time, it’s fast and a great way to track communication. We’re online most of the time and will work on website updates and support as a priority.
Depending on how detailed you would like to be you can put together a Word Doc, PDF or text file. If you would prefer to have a Zoom meeting and screen share your changes feel free to let us know and we can schedule it in.
Quick Quote
We’ve successfully helped 100’s of Australian businesses. Looking for some help with a project?
Call us today on 1300 855 253 , or simply use the contact form for a quick, hassle free quote.
