Maintenance
The Website Maintenance Checklist We Use for Client Sites
Websites rarely fail all at once. They decay through skipped updates, untested backups, and slow creep. This is the routine that keeps client sites healthy.
Why maintenance matters more than launch
Launch day is the best your site will ever be unless someone looks after it. Software ages, plugins publish security fixes, content grows, and tracking scripts accumulate. A simple, consistent routine prevents most emergencies and keeps the site earning.
Every week
- Confirm uptime monitoring and alerting are working.
- Review security alerts and apply critical patches promptly.
- Check that forms, checkout, and key conversions still complete.
- Confirm the latest automated backup finished successfully.
Every month
- Apply core, plugin, theme, and dependency updates on staging first, then production.
- Review Core Web Vitals and fix any template that regressed.
- Scan Search Console for new crawl errors, 404s, and indexing issues.
- Check analytics against orders or leads to make sure tracking still lines up.
- Remove plugins, scripts, and user accounts that are no longer needed.
- Send stakeholders a short report: what changed, what is next.
Every quarter
- Restore a backup to a test environment to prove it actually works.
- Audit user roles and access, and rotate credentials that should be rotated.
- Review hosting resources, PHP or Node versions, and end-of-life dates.
- Run a full crawl for broken links, redirect chains, and thin pages.
- Check accessibility on key templates: contrast, focus states, and form labels.
- Prioritize the next round of improvements based on data, not opinions.
Do it yourself or hand it off?
Small brochure sites can follow this checklist in-house with an hour or two a month. When the site drives revenue, has custom code, or runs a store, the cost of a missed update or untested backup is much higher than the cost of a care plan with someone accountable for it.