We offer a WordPress maintenance service where we will schedule security and functionality updates for your WordPress website, keeping it up to date.
Your WordPress website is built on WordPress (of course), a custom theme that defines the front-end look and feel and lastly your site will likely rely on a selection of plugins to extend the functionality of the website (e.g. a plugin that allows you to create contact forms).
It’s important to keep your WordPress site up to date:
- Security – To make sure there’s no vulnerabilities which a hacker could take advantage of to deface or infect your website.
- Features – Each release of WordPress brings new cutting edge features. Plugins used likely bring new features too.
- Speed – WordPress is already trying to remove reliance on some old coding principles and introducing new native performance features (e.g. lazy load).
- Bug fixes – Regular bug fixes will be applied to minimise the chance of broken features.
We can schedule your WordPress site for regular updates. We’ll always make a backup of your website before an update is applied, meaning if there’s any issues (sometimes major bugs can reside within WordPress and plugin updates) we can then roll back the site and plan how to proceed. The core WordPress update is applied first then we’ll check for issues. If all’s clear, we’ll then start applying updates to your theme and plugins. At each stage we’ll be testing the site for any visual or functionality based issues.
This process is often, for well built websites, quite straightforward and likely that all updates will process with no issues at all. Depending on how well your site has been built and/or what type of plugins (and how many) you rely on, you may have a slightly lower percentage chance of success each time updates are applied.
The basic charge for WordPress updates – £20 per action
You can schedule this as regularly as you see fit in line with your budget and we can advise on the frequency also (e.g. whether monthly or every three months). This pricing covers the majority of websites but some larger or more complex websites (e.g. WooCommerce) may require extended time to test after updates have been applied.
If your updates encounter a problem (it’s not common but can happen) I can assess what the issue is and recommend a plan of action but extra time may be required to help fix the issue. Sometimes it can be advised to hold off on a specific update (e.g. at the time of writing Contact Form 7 has a few site breaking issues) or I may be required, as an example, to work with the WordPress plugin developer to understand why the update didn’t work as expected.
Want help with your WordPress updates?
If you need assistance with your WordPress updates contact us for more information.