Website maintenance: keep your site always working, fast and secure

🛠️ Why a site needs maintenance

A website is a living system: browsers change, servers get new versions, plugins and CMS cores release fixes, and attackers constantly look for outdated sites. A neglected site slowly becomes slow, insecure and finally unusable. Website maintenance is insurance: regular care is cheaper than an emergency rescue after an incident.

📋 What maintenance covers

• Updates of the CMS core, plugins and themes after testing.
• Backups stored off-server, with restore checks.
• Security: malware scanning, login protection, proper headers.
• Uptime monitoring so problems are solved before clients notice.
• Speed checks and optimisation.
• SEO checks: indexing, Search Console errors, broken links.
• Support: edits to texts, prices and images.

🔐 Why sites get hacked

Mostly through known flaws in outdated plugins, weak passwords and unprotected forms. Updates, strong passwords, two-factor login, limited login attempts and removal of unused plugins stop the vast majority of attacks. See WordPress website development.

💾 Backups

Backups must be regular, automatic, stored elsewhere and occasionally tested. A backup that cannot be restored is only a feeling of safety.

🌐 Domain, hosting and certificates

Part of maintenance is remembering what is easily forgotten: domain renewal, SSL certificate, hosting status and PHP version. See hosting and domain.

🆘 If the site is already hacked

Isolate the problem, restore a clean copy or clean the code, close the hole, change credentials and request a re-review from Google if the site was flagged. The sooner the better.