The website maintenance checklist nobody sends you
Websites don't break loudly — they rot quietly. A certificate expires, a form stops delivering, the price list still says last summer. This page lists every check that stops that, free, as a list you can tick right here (it remembers where you got to), print for the office, or hand to me for $29 a month and never think about again.
The checklist
Tick as you go — this page remembers your ticks on this device. The notes say what each check prevents, because a list without reasons gets skipped.
Every month (about 20 minutes)
the rot-stoppersEvery quarter (about an hour)
the slow driftEvery year (an afternoon)
the paperworkWhy websites rot (and what skipping costs)
Every item above exists because of a real, boring, expensive failure. The four that hurt most:
The expired certificate
Cost to prevent: two minutes a month. Cost when skipped: every visitor gets a red warning page, and Google flags the site in search results. Rebuilding trust after that takes weeks.
The dead form
Cost to prevent: one test enquiry a month. Cost when skipped: silently losing every quote request since the day it broke — usually discovered months later by a customer mentioning "I emailed you ages ago."
The lapsed domain
Cost to prevent: $15 a year and a calendar reminder. Cost when skipped: the domain enters public sale, and the person who buys it can intercept your old address — or charge you dearly to get it back.
The unpatched plugin
Cost to prevent: updates when they appear. Cost when skipped: a hacked site serving spam or ransom notes, a cleanup bill, and a restore from whatever backup happens to exist.
The pattern: every one of these is cheap on the checklist and expensive in an emergency. Maintenance isn't a cost centre; it's the smallest insurance policy a business can buy.
Do it yourself, or delegate it?
Honestly: if you enjoy this and you will actually do it monthly, do it yourself. The list is free, print it, put it in the diary, and your site will outlive most of your competitors'.
The failure mode isn't cost, it's attention. "I'll check it this weekend" becomes "that was six months ago" for almost everybody, because maintenance has no deadline until it becomes a fire. If that sounds familiar, the rational move is to pay someone whose diary it already is.
That's the entire pitch for my care plan: $29 a month, every item on this page done for you, plus a plain-English report each month so you can see it happening, two content changes a month, same-day priority when something does go wrong, and no contract — cancel with a text. Or $290 a year, which is two months free.
And if your site was built by someone else, or on a builder, that's fine too — the checklist applies to every site, and the care plan takes on sites I didn't build.
Questions about maintenance
How often does a site really need this?
A light monthly pass catches nearly everything: online, certificate, forms, backup, updates, content truth. Quarterly and yearly items are slower drift — speed, search, links, paperwork. Fifteen checks in total across the year.
My site is on a builder. Does this apply?
Most of it. The platform handles hosting and certificates, but forms still die, content still goes stale, apps still bill you, and the yearly read-as-a- stranger pass matters more, not less.
What does the care plan actually include?
Monitoring (uptime, SSL, domain expiry), a monthly form test, monthly off-site backups with a real restore test, security and library updates, spam tuning, a broken-link sweep, two content changes a month, a plain-English report and same-day priority — $29 a month or $290 a year, cancel any month.
Do my ticks on this page go anywhere?
No. They live in this browser only, so you can keep score between visits without an account. Clearing site data resets them.
Hand the list over
Text me your site address. I'll tell you which of these fifteen checks it would fail today — free — and then watch all of them for $29 a month if you want me to.