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Website Maintenance

Website maintenance is the repeated work that keeps the published service accurate, secure and usable. It includes much more than software updates: content, forms, integrations, access, certificates, backups and business…

2 published guides0 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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Practical guide21 July 2026

How Often Should a Website Be Updated?

There is no safe universal answer such as weekly or monthly. The correct frequency depends on what changes, how exposed the compon…

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Complete guide21 July 2026

Website Maintenance Guide

Website maintenance is the routine work that keeps a site available, secure, accurate and useful. It includes more than software u…

Read guide →

About this section

Information checked: 21 July 2026.

In brief: Maintain the whole service, not only the software dashboard.

Build a maintenance inventory

Items to include in a maintenance inventory
Area	Examples	Owner
Platform	CMS, themes, plugins, runtime and database	Technical maintainer
Business functions	Forms, booking, payment, search and email	Service owner
Content	Prices, opening hours, policies, staff and downloads	Content owner
Infrastructure	Domain, DNS, hosting, certificates and backups	Account owner
Measurement	Analytics, consent, Search Console and alerts	Marketing or operations

Use risk-based frequencies

A brochure site and a busy online shop should not share the same schedule. Review frequency should reflect transaction volume, rate of change, security exposure and the cost of failure.

Check critical customer journeys after every relevant change.
Review expiring services and account access before they become urgent.
Schedule updates during a window with monitoring and rollback available.
Record what changed, who approved it and what was tested.

Do not confuse activity with maintenance

Logging in once a month and clicking every available update is not a complete process. A controlled maintenance cycle starts with a backup, separates changes where possible, verifies the result and records any unresolved risk.

Acceptance check

A maintenance arrangement is credible when the owner receives a readable report showing work completed, tests performed, failures found, backups checked and actions still outstanding.

A maintenance contract should be testable

A monthly fee does not prove that customer journeys are being checked. A useful agreement distinguishes monitoring, routine work, emergency response and project changes. It also states which actions require approval and whether the supplier is allowed to update several components at once.

Records to keep

Scope of included and excluded work.
Response targets by severity, not a blanket promise.
Change log with pre-change backup reference.
Evidence that forms, booking or checkout were tested.

Owner test: Choose one recent month and confirm that the report shows what was tested, not merely that the site was “maintained”.

Sources and date checked

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