Whats a care plan?

A website is one of the most important investments for your business, and as such, it is vital that you make sure it stays maintained. Just like when you buy a car and take it to the mechanic regularly for a service or when you go to the doctor for a checkup, you need to maintain your website and service it to make sure it is performing at its best. When it comes to web design a care plan is something that you should get to look after your investment in your website and your business.

The two main reasons to maintain your website are to make sure it stays secure and that you are getting any software updates. WordPress is like any software, there is a need to update it and make sure it is kept up to date so that it performs at its best and you are keeping your website secure from any potential hacks. Hand in hand with updating WordPress goes updating all the plugins which are used on your website to provide various functionality. Both the WordPress core files and plugins are updated regularly for security reasons (to avoid potential hacks or malware) and for optimisation which will make your website run better or to keep them in line with updates to other technology used in the website such as the version of PHP or MySQL.

Another important part of maintenance is to make a regular backup and keep a copy of your files and database just in case something does go wrong. Once you have a backup it is possible to roll back to the recent backup and get your website back up and running again. If you don't have a backup and your website gets hacked then your files can become corrupt and it can mean needing your whole website being redone or expensive costs involved in doing code reviews to find the malicious code or files causing the issues.

For those who heavily rely on their website for business (e-commerce websites) server uptime is also a critical factor and knowing that your website is up and running 24/7, and that worst case something happens and the website goes down that you are notified immediately and it can be investigated.

The costs involved

When looking at the costs involved in a care plan its important to consider the effect any of these issues will have on your business should your website go down, or the costs involved in having to get a whole new website built due to a malicious hack or malware infecting your website. As the old saying goes "prevention is better than the cure" and really considering your website is such an important investment it really should not be something you want to risk neglecting when it comes to looking after it. The costs of repair and the downtime to your business if your website is out of action will always far outweigh the cost of a care plan and the peace of mind that everything is being looked after! You get to save money and focus on what matters, running your business without having to worry about a potential disaster around the corner!