Different processes involved in managing a website

What Is Website Management?

Website management can take various forms. But in a nutshell it’s the collection of stuff that needs doing regularly to keep a website functioning and up to date.

The core of it for most businesses is general maintenance of the website itself – keeping the website updated and secure. But it can also extend to ongoing development, keeping content up to date as well as SEO and other marketing work.

But let’s take a quick look at how this breaks down and how best to handle it.

What Is Website Maintenance?

General website maintenance is all about keeping the technical stuff up to date. That’s everything from the server the website is hosted on, right through to the application used to build the site.

So what is included in website maintenance?

Web Server Maintenance

This will typically be handled by the hosting company. But it may also be part of your website maintenance plan if your hosting is also provided by the management company.

Either way server maintenance is just something that you don’t even see what is involved. But it is going on all the time with patches and updates being applied to fix bugs and security issues. With less frequent but equally important more major upgrades to things like PHP (the programming language most sites depend on) or database applications like MySQL. And even the operating system the web server uses – normally a version of Linux (e.g. Ubuntu or Debian).

Web Application Maintenance

The application your site is built with could be anything from WordPress to Wix. There are many ways to create a website.

Maintenance at this level includes regularly updating plugins and themes. Something that should be done weekly at least. It will also include updating the application itself – minor updates may come up every month or so, with more major releases a few times a year.

Keeping It Together…

Web Application Maintenance does also need to be co-ordinated with Web Server Maintenance. As over time applications and plugins etc will require newer versions of the underlying technologies like PHP.

An old version of WordPress will not work on the latest version of PHP. Similarly the latest version of WordPress will not work on a very old version of PHP.

There are generous overlaps here though to make this as painless as possible. But at some point you have to move forward just to avoid falling too far behind. Because that’s when maintenance can become a major project. And website security issues become much more likely.

Other Website Management Tasks

There’s no fixed definiton for what website management is. It’s whatever you need to keep your business website working well for you.

So anything that isn’t central to the services your business provides can (and probably should) be passed over to someone else to manage.

Typical additional tasks are:

website backups
content and design updates (see Web Design and Maintenance)
analytics and reporting
content marketing
ongoing SEO work

What Is a Website Maintenance Plan?

A website maintenance plan is the collection of processes required to keep your website running smoothly.

Most small businesses don’t have the technical expertise to handle everything required by a maintenance plan. So typically this will be something you outsource to a specialist company to handle (we can help with website maintenance in New Zealand).

Plans are usually paid monthly or annually at a fixed rate. The price will be determined by what tasks your business needs. Any additional work or infrequent tasks can then be billed as and when (fixed price or hourly rate).

Tips on Website Maintenance

The key to how to do website maintenance successfully, is to stay on top of it. All tasks should have a schedule and be done regularly and frequently.

How frequently will depend on the task. WordPress plugin updates for example should be checked for at least weekly, preferably daily. And then applied as appropriate – security fixes much more urgently than upgrades that just add new features.

What Is the Average Hourly Rate for Website Maintenance?

Typically website management/maintenance is provided at a fixed monthly rate. Most plans will include some ‘extra time’ to handle questions, advice and additional tasks (usually calculated at a discount rate).

Any additional hours above those inclusive hours are then billed at an hourly rate. The average hourly rate for this could be anywhere from $75 to $200+ per hour depending on the expertise required for that task, and the level of urgency.

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