Because employment of full time website maintenance staff is often beyond the reach of the average small online business, the issue of website maintenance is frequently ignored. It often only comes to the forefront in the event of a major crisis, such as;
- When your site has been hacked and defaced or deleted
- or has simply self-destructed due to out-of-date software – such as WordPress and/or plugins
- or server applications such as PHP, MySQL etc ere upgraded and old plugins died
- or your hosting company replaced Apache with Litespeed server
At that point, discovering that you don’t have a current backup that can restore the site to normal operations can be pretty devastating! The earlier prevarication about implementing security and configuring robust backup regimes can be a very costly mistake WHEN something goes wrong. There’s no “if” in this equation! Something catastrophic “will” happen, and always at the worst possible time.
See: https://www.websitemaintenanceservices.co.nz/website-maintenance-plan/
WebsiteMaintenanceServices.co.nz provides annual website maintenance contracts and management services for sundry:
- CMS-based Websites (CMS = content management systems, such as WordPress)
- Static HTML Sites
- Forum, Blogs and Ecommerce sites, subject to an evaluation
A properly put together Web Site Maintenance plan should offer an array of measures to protect personal and client data from hackers and from total loss. We like to think of it as pre-emptive Disaster Recovery Plan, where;
- the primary known threats are assessed
- preventive measures are put in place
- recovery procedures are documented
Most small business owners don’t do any of this because they are either quite unaware of the risks and lack comprehension of the issues. That’s where I come in! I manage all the awkward website stuff, freeing you up to do what you do best. You have the peace of mind knowing that;
- All sensible measures are in place to prevent a problem arising
- Should a problem arise, I will solve it at no additional cost
The Website Maintenance Plan includes;
- Daily Upgrade Checks for your CMS software and plugins to ensure you’ve got the latest security updates, bug fixes and product enhancements installed immediately they are available.
- Installation of Backup Software, for your CMS, automation of backup schedule. If possible, using an application that provides Backup & Restore function plus scheduling of backups to off-site to secure storage.
- Website Database Backups – daily backup of database, weekly backup of files
- Full Backup – entire site, plus site establishment documentation, original images etc. Cpanel or whatever system is available.
- Installation of Security – depending on the site, installation of a WAF (Web Application Firewall). For static sites, the 6G WAF can be installed.
- Installation of Caching – For static sites, I can implement various page load speed options in .htaccess.
- Evaluate & Process link exchange requests for you. Link requests will be assessed and processed on your behalf.
- Anti-Spam – installation and configuration of the Cpanel “Spam Assassin” email spam filter.
- Web Site Maintenance – we will do any quick amendments to pages, correcting typographical errors, fixing broken hyperlinks.
- Emergency Response for urgent repairs, maintenance, website hacking attacks and self-inflicted breakages…
Not covered: significant site enhancements and development. However, we are happy to quote for any additional work that may be required.
Annual Website Maintenance Plan Costs:
- Standard Plan – US$250 / NZ$300 per year, paid annually in January: I take care of all the technical aspects, leaving you free to work on your core business activities!
Website Security
Website security becomes more of an issue each year rather than less of an issue. As fast as a threat is detected, deterred and incorporated into security systems, the hacking community discover new exploits. Thus, an endless skirmish between the hackers intent on inserting malware and/or phishing software into sites persists.
For the most sophisticated hackers, the motivation is almost always financial in some way or another. Everything from theft ofpersonal data to bank phishing code or blackmail… The consequences of a successful hack can be severe and may include blocks by search engines such as Google, blacklisting on anti-spam sites, and eviction from your hosting company’s web server!
– https://www.websitemaintenanceservices.co.nz/backups-security/
Website Backups
Business risk management is an oft-overlooked aspect of website ownership. Whilst commonsense suggests that having regular backups of site’s files and databases can prevent total loss of your investment, many people never give that a moments thought. Often, the assumption is that the hosting company are somehow responsible for that – a serious error of judgement in many cases. A lot of hosting companies don’t provide automated / scheduled backups. If the tools are provided, you usually have to configure those yourself.
For example, how daily, weekly or monthly options are configured can impact dramatically on your ability to recover files and data. A daily full backup, over-written daily, means that within 24 hours of a defacement or total deletion, you may no longer have anything to restore…
Cheap hosting often means no backups at all…
By contrast, what we provide is;
- Full backup and off-site storage of all files and databases
- Daily database backups uploaded to secure Cloud storage
- Weekly or Monthly full file backups (depending on site activity) uploaded to secure Cloud storage
- If your site is hosted with us, we also ensure R1Soft Daily Backups
- Restoration from backup as/if required
In the event that files are compromised or deleted, we can get your website back online and running properly within a very short space of time.
Additional webmaster services:
As examples, we can help clients with active sites that need assistance with;
- Managing user registration and comments
- Evaluating and processing link requests
- Supervision of content categorisation
- Coaching and additional support for multiple staff members.
Please ask how I can assist you;