Website care and hosting

A website is not finished at launch. WordPress and its plugins release updates every few weeks, many of them security fixes. Hosting needs monitoring. Forms stop sending when an email setting changes. Someone needs to notice when the site goes down at 2am on a Sunday. For many small Oxford businesses, that someone has been nobody, until the day the site is hacked or simply disappears. A care plan prevents that.

Who this is for

• Owners who do not want to think about their website between busy periods.
• Businesses whose original developer has moved on, leaving nobody who knows how the site works.
• Seasonal trades such as guest houses, tour operators and cafés that need changes made quickly before busy weeks.
• Clinics and charities that need accessibility and privacy settings kept in order as content changes.
• Growing companies with a steady trickle of news, vacancies and page edits.

What a care plan covers

Task	How often	Why it matters
Software updates, tested on staging first	Monthly, or sooner for urgent security fixes	Most WordPress compromises use known holes in outdated plugins
Off-site backups	Daily, kept for 30 days	A backup you cannot restore is not a backup
Restore test	Monthly	Proves the backups actually work
Uptime monitoring	Every few minutes	We often know before you do
Security scanning	Daily	Catches unexpected file changes early
Form test submissions	Monthly	Broken forms fail silently
Speed and Core Web Vitals check	Monthly	Sites slow down as content and plugins pile up
Accessibility spot checks	Monthly	New content can introduce new problems
Edits and small improvements	As requested, within the plan's time	Keeps the site current without a new project
Written report	Monthly	A short email saying what was done and anything we noticed

Getting started, step by step

1. Audit. For sites we did not build, we review the hosting, theme, plugins, backups and security before agreeing a plan.
2. Fix the urgent things. Outdated software, missing backups or broken forms are dealt with first.
3. Set up monitoring, staging and backups to our standard.
4. Agree a calendar of known busy periods and planned changes.
5. First monthly report, after which the routine takes over.

Small edits, done properly

Edit time covers the jobs that otherwise sit on a to-do list for months: new staff, revised prices, seasonal menus, a new service page, swapping tired photographs, fixing a broken link someone emailed about. Requests go to one address and are logged, so nothing gets lost.

Hosting

We host sites on managed platforms suited to their size: well-supported hosting for WordPress, and static hosting on a global network for lightweight sites. Either way, you own your domain and your content, and you can take them elsewhere at any time. We handle SSL certificates, DNS records and email deliverability settings so your contact forms reach your inbox.

How long it takes to start

Taking on a site we built is immediate. For a site we did not build, the audit takes about a week, and any urgent fixes follow straight away.

What drives the cost

• The platform. A static site needs much less care than a WordPress site with an online shop.
• Number of plugins and integrations, each of which needs updating and testing.
• Editing time included each month.
• Traffic and hosting needs, which matter mainly for shops and busy sites.
• Response times you need. A shop selling every day needs faster cover than a brochure site.

Common mistakes

• Auto-updating everything on the live site with no testing, then finding the layout broken on a Monday morning.
• Backups stored on the same server as the site, which disappear together.
• Hosting bundled with a developer's account, so the owner cannot get access when they part ways.
• Unused plugins left installed, each one a potential way in.
• Nobody receiving the form emails because the address belongs to someone who has left.

What a typical month looks like

In the first week we apply and test updates on staging, then push them live at a quiet time. Through the month, monitoring runs in the background and edit requests are handled as they arrive, usually within a couple of working days. Towards the end of the month we test every form, run a restore from backup, check speed and spot-check accessibility on recently changed pages. The report lands in your inbox with anything we think you should know, such as a plugin that is no longer maintained or a page that has become slow.

When something goes wrong

Even well-kept sites occasionally have problems: a hosting outage, a third-party service that changes without warning, an update that clashes with a plugin. Because updates are tested on staging and backups are checked monthly, recovery is usually a matter of rolling back rather than rebuilding. We tell you what happened, what we did and whether anything needs to change to stop it happening again.

Leaving is easy

Plans run month to month. If you move to another provider or bring the work in house, we hand over every login, the full set of files and a fresh backup, and explain anything unusual about how the site is set up. We would rather keep clients because the service is useful than because leaving is awkward.

How we measure it

The monthly report records uptime, updates applied, backup and restore results, form tests, speed figures and edits made. Over a year, the measure that matters most is simple: the site stayed up, stayed secure and stayed accurate, and you did not have to think about it. If you are considering a larger change, our website redesign page explains how we approach that without losing what already works.