Some website developers don't include a maintenance agreement as part of their projects, and as a result, once a site is completed, it may accumulate important updates that are never made.

Website maintenance is important throughout the lifetime of a site. Customers will expect some form of warranty irrespective of how much testing has been done prior to the website's launch but once any snagging issues have been dealt with, a maintenance contract is essential and should be part of any project plan.

What is a website maintenance contract?

Joomla Developer Serge Billon says it's "like a boiler contract" where prevention is better than cure. The system may work without interruption but if anything goes wrong you need to know there's someone you can contact to fix it.

In essence, a website maintenance contract is an agreement between the developers and the customer that the website will be looked after for an agreed period of time. Most contracts renew every year and you'd usually expect to pay monthly or annually for this service.

What specifically is included may differ. If you're not comfortable adding or changing content, for example, part of the agreement might be for those updates to also be made by a developer.

Enhanced Security

Over time plugins and extensions may be found to contain vulnerabilities that need patching and core software, which can include PHP, MySQL and Joomla will also need updating. Some of this responsibility is down to the web hosting provider, who will ensure updates are made in a timely fashion. Updating the software to the latest version ensures that any security updates that are included have been made. This would deal with reported bugs, some of which could be serious and need dealing with ASAP to prevent the website becoming compromised.

New Features

What's not to like about updates to software where new features are introduced? A new version may bring about an easier way to make changes to website content, improvements to workflow or enhancements to SEO. Whatever it is, you want to know that if the updates are available they'll be made to your website. A site that receives regular updates to the latest version means it keeps up with the latest technology changes.

Testing Upgrades & Updates

Every website developer has a story about a difficult update, maybe where the code in an extension or plugin has been changed, or where an unexpected error occurred. This might mean that pressing the Update button doesn't go smoothly and functionality may be affected down to the website not displaying correctly.

A good developer will have checked the changelog of the software to make sure there are no potential issues ahead but testing updates, upgrades and changes on a staging version of the live website will help avoid unexpected results.

The Go-Between

Outages come in many different forms. A website may appear to be slow to load or it may not display at all. Having someone that can troubleshoot issues, report them to the web hosts and take charge of the issue, is an essential part of website maintenance. Web developers often speak with web hosts and are likely to have diagnosed an issue far enough that they can direct the support request to the right team.

Quite often the provision of web hosting forms part of the arrangement between developer and client. It may be the case that web hosting has already been set up, especially where the site is being re-developed. Whichever way round it is, providing the other party with access to the hosting, whether just to the control panel provides trust on the one hand, and a fallback on the other, in case support isn't available and the web host needs to be contacted. A number of web hosts offer a "collaborator" account that gives access to the technical support team.

Disaster Recovery

If a website is "mission critical" the need for a support / maintenance plan is that much greater. Having some kind of disaster recovery plan in a contract can really help if a website needs to be moved to another server or hosting service at short notice. Having offsite backups is a "belt and braces" option that considers what might happen if the webhost is unavailable for some reason. It happened to me a few years ago when a whole datacentre went offline and I needed to relocate a website that had to be up and running ASAP. Depending on the budget, co-location may resolve this issue by sending requests to a different webserver. Someone needs to oversee whatever is needed to keep the website live.

How Long For A Response?

You may have heard of the term, Service Level Agreement, which is basically a promise of how long it might take between a problem being reported and getting a response. It may also be the length of time it might take for a problem to be resolved. It sounds quite formal, but managing expectations, especially when the public-facing element of a business is malfunctioning, is very important. Response times may differ depending on the issue. Someone not being able to reset their password is probably less urgent than a "showstopper" where the website has ceased working. Some agreements will need to consider out-of-hours cover depending on how critical the website is to the customer.

How Much Will It Cost?

There's no simple answer as the cost of a website maintenance contract really depends on the exact requirements of the agreement. There's obviously a difference between Serge's "boiler contract" where updates may be few and far between, and a monthly plan that may include regular content updates and feature enhancements. However, they all require time, even if it's just monitoring email alerts or being available when an uptime alert sends a notification.

My rule of thumb says it should be the equivalent of 2 or 3 hours work a month as a minimum. Some months may be busier than others, but that doesn't mean the web developer owes lots of hours of work at the end of the year. Remember that monitoring services is part of the agreement.

I also think if the payment process is really simple, with automated invoices and direct debits then the admin time saved might allow for a bit more time spent on doing the maintenance.

Conclusion

Maintaining a website requires certain skills that not everyone has, and for peace of mind, paying for someone to look after your site can mean you get more time to focus on your business. What you should expect exactly from a website maintenance contract will differ between projects, but this list should give you an idea of what to expect as paid-for aftercare once a project has gone live.