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Maintenance and Security

A business website remains useful only when somebody owns its routine care, security, monitoring and recovery. This section turns those responsibilities into a manageable operating system rather than a collection of…

7 published guides6 subtopicsUpdated 21 July 2026

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Website Maintenance Guide

Website maintenance is the routine work that keeps a site available, secure, accurate and useful. It includes more than software updates. A maintained website also has working forms, restorable backup…

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About this section

Information checked: 21 July 2026.

In brief: Assign ownership, monitor the customer journey, control changes and rehearse recovery before an incident.

The four operating disciplines

What a maintained website needs
Discipline	Purpose	Evidence
Maintenance	Keep software, content and integrations working	Change log, review calendar and tested releases
Security	Reduce the likelihood and impact of compromise	Controlled access, MFA, updates and incident records
Monitoring	Detect failures before customers report them	Uptime, error, form and performance alerts
Recovery	Restore the service and business process safely	Tested backups, contacts, priorities and rehearsal notes

Start with ownership

Name one business owner for the website, not only a supplier.
Record who controls the domain, hosting, CMS, email, analytics and backups.
Use individual accounts and multi-factor authentication for privileged access.
Keep an independent copy of contracts, recovery codes, DNS records and restoration instructions.

A practical operating rhythm

Monitor availability and critical transactions continuously.
Review alerts and customer-facing failures each working day.
Apply controlled updates and inspect forms, checkout or booking at an agreed frequency.
Test backup contents regularly and perform a full restoration rehearsal on schedule.
Review access, suppliers, policies and recovery priorities at least annually.

What good looks like

The site is operationally ready when a named person can explain what is monitored, where the backups are, who can restore the service and how the business communicates if the website is unavailable.

A realistic ownership scenario

A five-page service website may depend on a registrar, DNS provider, hosting account, CMS, form-delivery service and business mailbox. If those accounts belong to different suppliers and nobody maintains a register, a simple staff departure can become a recovery incident. The owner should be able to trace every dependency from the public domain to the person who receives an enquiry.

Records to keep

Asset and supplier register with renewal dates.
Named owner and backup owner for every critical account.
Recovery methods and MFA status.
Latest maintenance report and restoration-test result.

Owner test: Ask a second authorised person to locate the domain, hosting, backup and incident contacts without help from the current developer.

Sources and date checked

This practical guidance was checked against the following primary sources. Date checked: 21 July 2026.