Website maintenance services in Australia

Start with your hosting arrangement. Managed hosting suits you if you want the maintainer responsible for speed and uptime as well as website care. Self-managed hosting gives an in-house IT team control over its server policies, but leaves your team with more of the hosting responsibility. The right choice depends on who has access and who is expected to act when the site has a problem.

Your site’s construction also affects the work. A custom-coded or static site has no plugin layer to patch, although its dependencies, renewals and monitoring still need attention. A plugin-based content management system has more update checks. Automatic updates close known security holes sooner, but a conflict can go unnoticed; updates tested on a staging copy take more effort and give you a chance to catch conflicts before visitors see them.

We begin by learning about your business, audience and goals, then agree the scope with you. That gives you a way to decide what your team will handle and what you want us to manage.

Accessibility belongs in the care conversation. Australian guidance on equal access to digital goods and services recommends WCAG 2.2 at a minimum of Level AA. We set up accessibility checks against that guidance for the pages in the agreed scope, then address issues identified in the work. When you request a page change, tell us which page is affected so the check covers the content being maintained.

For a plugin-heavy WordPress site, regular updates also need testing for compatibility. We include that work in the care scope so you know which parts of the site are being checked.

Gather what you have; the review can identify gaps in the handover.

• Account accessWebsite admin, hosting, domain registrar, DNS, email and premium plugin or theme logins.
• ConnectionsA list of forms, CRM, payment gateway, booking tool, analytics and ad tracking linked to the site.
• Known problemsDetails of hacks, outages, broken forms or slow pages, with rough dates if anyone remembers them.
• Renewal detailsDates for the domain, SSL certificate, hosting and licences, or the accounts where those dates can be checked.
• Email accountsInclude them in the renewal discussion alongside the domain, hosting and licences, so responsibility for their dates is clear.

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  Keeping the only backup on the site’s server

  A server failure or hack can take the backup with it. Keep a copy away from that server.

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  Never checking a restore

  A backup that cannot be restored is a poor discovery during an emergency. Test restores as part of care.

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  Leaving the domain or hosting in a former employee’s or agency’s personal account: Move control to an account the business can access, so renewals and changes are easier to handle.

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  Sending renewal reminders to an old inbox

  Update the contact address and check reminders. An expired domain can take the website and company email offline together.