There is no better feeling than when your website is running smoothly, loads quickly, works perfectly on every device, and even ranks high in search results. But will this always be the case? Yes, provided you maintain it diligently!
After considerable planning, work, and expense, your website is finally ready. Everything works perfectly, attracting more and more visitors, clients, and customers. But as time passes, you suddenly notice it’s loading more slowly, lagging, and falling apart. You’re also slipping down in Google search results, appearing only on the third or fourth page. But it’s even worse if angry customers contact you saying their data was stolen because of your website or their computer got a virus from it.
These inconveniences can be easily prevented if you maintain your website regularly, or if you don’t have the time or expertise, trust us with it!
What exactly does website maintenance entail?
The importance of backups
It’s worth making backups of your database and files at least monthly. This is important because if anything happens, for example if your hosting provider’s servers burn down—which did happen recently—your website won’t be lost and can be restored. It’s also essential in situations where your site has been hacked or attacked.
And how many backups should you have? The best practice is to have 3 backups, with at least 2 stored on separate devices and at least 1 physically located in a different place than the others, which should be sufficient.
Continuous updates
The most commonly used open-source content management systems, such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, all work on similar principles. There is a framework, which is the website engine, and to this are added supplementary extensions or modules. The engine and the extensions are developed by different developers, and the updates and enhancements won’t be done by the same developers either. This can lead to situations where after certain updates, the engine is no longer compatible with a particular extension. In such cases, you’ll notice errors in the website’s appearance or functionality, and you’ll need to investigate what’s causing it.
Although you should strive to always use the latest version of the framework and modules, if compatibility issues arise, you need to investigate which update caused it and ultimately consider a different extension or use a version of the extension that is relatively recent and still works well with the engine.
If you don’t update regularly, your website will be much more vulnerable to various viruses and malicious bots.
Security modules, firewall, antivirus
For any website engine, a security system always needs to be set up. Excellent security extensions are available, and by configuring them, most attacks can be filtered out.
Content maintenance
When a new website is completed, all text and images are still fresh, there are no outdated links or information. But unfortunately this changes quickly; over time your website can become filled with incorrect information and broken links. Google monitors this and also notices when no new content is added for a certain period, and because of all this, we get ranked lower in the search results.
It’s worth reviewing your website from this perspective from time to time, removing outdated content, checking external links, and striving to always add some new content. A good idea might be to start a “news” section or a blog on your site where you can regularly display valuable, fresh content.
Is this too much? Ask for help!
If you feel you don’t have the capacity to regularly handle the tasks mentioned above and would like your website maintenance in trusted hands, we’re happy to take these tasks off your shoulders. For 6,000 HUF per month, we provide the following:
• Monthly backups of the database and files
• Defense against hacker attacks
• Continuous updates of extensions and the framework
• Fixing bugs resulting from updates
• Keeping spambots away
We can also help with content updates, whether it’s writing text or uploading ready-made content. Feel free to contact us to discuss the details!
