Website Maintenance Is Critical
Website Maintenance Is Critical : The Web Doctor Is In.
Your CMS (content management system), or any website platform for that matter, is built using various programs. Just like your computer’s operating system (ie: Windows, Mac), someone is always trying to hack into it and cause you major problems. Also, programs and operating systems are constantly being updated just to improve upon them.
Your Web Designer should inform you of this and offer to take care of it.
Instead, some just love you and leave you. Many website designers and developers give you a price for the website alone. Just like you wanted. Right? Done deal. You almost can’t blame them. After all, that’s what you asked for. They provided you with your nice, new $8,000 website and left you to make sure it doesn’t break down. But you don’t know how. You don’t even know these potential problems exist. How could you? That’s one of the reasons you hired someone else to build your site instead of trying to do it yourself (also a bad idea – another story).
Website maintenance is worth the money.
I suspect many web-masters are afraid they will lose the sale if they try to tack on a maintenance fee. Kind of like selling replacement insurance on your $25 coffee maker. Well, I’m here to tell you that a website maintenance contract is a must-have addition to the price of having your website built. A stagnant website continues to become more and more susceptible to hackers. Your site could just crash if no-one updates it, checks to see if the server is maxed out, the domain expired or a myriad of other scenarios. Days, weeks, sometimes months can go by without you knowing your website is down.
I really discovered this problem when giving quotes on website updates or rebuilds. I was amazed at how many sites had been neglected; full of errors and outdated programs, just begging to be fixed. I’m sure I’m not the first one to stumble on this anomaly, but I’d like to make people aware of the potential heartache of a crashed website. It’s such a needless waste of time and money.
We don’t really charge all that much for it.
The way I see it, it doesn’t do my reputation any good if your site crashes after a year or two. I’ll probably be the first one that gets blamed. So, do yourself a favor and go the extra bucks for site maintenance. It’s kind of like having a neighbor watch your house while you’re on vacation. Or like having your own security guard and car mechanic on retainer. It’s a feature that seems to get overlooked, but one that is very important to you and your website’s well-being.
