See why you need WordPress maintenance to get excellent results

WordPress maintenance is crucial and it’s why we only use the best hosting

If you have a WordPress website, you need regular maintenance to keep it secure and running smoothly. Keeping up with updates and security checks can feel overwhelming because maintaining a site takes time. That’s why ongoing maintenance is essential for preventing issues and ensuring long-term stability.

That’s where we can help. At Woodswork, we focus on key areas to keep your website performing at its best. Our maintenance care plans include the following:

• core updates to the WordPress platform
• updates to themes
• updates to plugins, both paid and free
• backups
• Vulnerability Monitoring
• Uptime Monitoring
• Security Monitoring

Security is at the forefront of every web design build at Woodswork. For this reason, we only use the best-managed WordPress environments available. We also don’t compromise on the quality of our WordPress hosting, as a strong foundation is essential. It’s the first step in our dedication to updating, editing, and keeping our clients’ sites safe.

We understand that site maintenance is an investment, and with this in mind, Woodswork offers tiers of care to suit different needs. The cost difference between these two offerings per year is minimal, especially when you consider the potential expenses involved in troubleshooting issues on an unmaintained website.

Because of this, over 50% of our clients who initially opt out of a maintained care plan choose to opt back in within two years. The reason is that the longer maintenance is delayed, the more vulnerable the site becomes.

Here’s an overview of our current offerings:

Self Care Plan

Client Maintained

We provide security and monitoring services. We will also promptly inform you whenever we receive notifications from our hosting providers about potential security risks and vulnerabilities.

At this service level, clients are responsible for performing their updates. However, if they don’t update their sites frequently enough, they may encounter more issues. Those who regularly access their sites and perform scheduled maintenance significantly reduce their site’s vulnerability. It’s simple: regular updates are crucial for maintaining a secure and functional website.

With our Self Care plan, you have options to extend the care, such as SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) monitored form delivery.

Essentials Care Plan

Woodswork Web maintains everything for you. 

We provide all the security and monitoring services our hosting providers offer, along with additional protection through vulnerability and security scanning. We perform all necessary updates promptly. Furthermore, when we receive notifications about potential security risks and vulnerabilities, we act on them immediately. We address any issues as they arise, regardless of whether your regular updates have already been completed.

What are WordPress core updates, and why are they so crucial to WordPress maintenance?

The best place to start this conversation is to explain what the core is. The WordPress core is a term used to describe the components of WordPress that ‘make it go’. It is essentially a bunch of code files and folders that each perform a very specific role. If a site isn’t updated to the latest version of WordPress, there can be implications. You can find more detailed information in this article by ithemes. WordPress core updates ensure known security vulnerabilities are minimised. They are vital to your site’s health and functionality.

What are theme updates, and why do they need to be done?

The theme is another stack of code files and folders that allow designers and developers to build a website. When we customise files using code or a builder, they change the way the site functions and how it looks. This is how we create your branded website.

Updating the theme we utilised to build your website is very, very important. The creators of the theme (good themes anyway, such as Divi used here at Woodswork) make regular edits to introduce new features, make improvements to things like site speed or fix bugs. Now and then, theme creators launch major rollouts or extensive usability updates. Updating a site’s theme is also essential to security and to a website’s performance.

What are plugins, and why do they need to be updated?

Plugins are essentially extra bits of software that add a unique feature to your site. They could be anything from the super functional form builder we use, Gravity Forms, to something simple like a plugin to change the login logo. Either way, plugins are ‘plugged in’ or loaded into the site using the Plugin dashboard or a manual upload. It’s considered best practice to minimise the use of plugins, as they can conflict. 

At Woodswork, we apply the same high standards to plugins that we do to website building, and the key to using a plugin is to check its credibility. If a plugin is required, we ensure that it is tried and tested by the broader WordPress community. We want you to know that diligence is essential here. We check how many users have uploaded it and when the last update was made by its developer. Then, we ensure it has a good number of reviews and that they are ‘largely’ favourable. We also read a few of the not-so-favourable reviews to see what the pain points were for the user. And we check the most crucial thing, ensuring that the plugin is compatible with the version of WordPress you are running. Which will, of course, be the most recent version because the updates are done, RIGHT? 

Plugin updates are carried out for assorted reasons, including compatibility with the updated WordPress install. Out-of-date plugins can reduce performance and cause security vulnerabilities. The level of service required varies and depends on the type and critical nature of the website: e-commerce sites require extra support, for example. Find out if your plugins need updating.

Why we utilise premium hosts to host our websites

In our opinion, and the opinion of  WordPress developers all over the planet, a WordPress dedicated host is crucial to a healthy, easy-to-maintain WordPress site. Dedicated hosting means that the provider only hosts WordPress websites and so they are specialists at hosting WordPress websites. With WordPress having 65% of the market share of all websites, it’s no wonder dedicated hosting is a good business. Cheap providers also host WordPress. However, if they host other platforms as well, their support may have a diluted level of WordPress-specific technical knowledge. Our providers also provide an excellent level of uptime, which means your site won’t suffer the effects of downtime during maintenance periods as they may on other hosts.

As in all things, you get what you pay for.

Above and beyond WordPress hosting

If all this isn’t convincing, the specialist WordPress-managed hosting companies we utilise reduce the costs we pass to our clients. SSL certification on our sites is covered. Not only that, if you decide to have Woodswork look after your business, we can use a host migration plugin to copy your site to our account. 

We recommend using managed hosting so much that if a client insists on using another host (which is very rare), we charge more for the edits. Why? Because, in our experience, there will usually be more issues editing sites that we don’t host on our chosen hosting companies!

UPDATE – Since we first posted this article, we now choose not to onboard clients that we don’t host. Yes, our hosting is that good!

Contact Woodswork today to upgrade your hosting plan or start your safe and secure hosting on a WordPress managed hosting provider with us.