Your content may be updated regularly, but what about the infrastructure that supports it?

The more functionality offered by a site or application, the size of the audience to which it appeals together with the nature of that audience and their engagement with the application all influence the amount of maintenance a site or application will require.

Maintenance can operate on a number of fronts – any of which can loosely be categorised into one of the following categories:

• Monitoring & Reporting
• Stability & Infrastructure
• Security
• Support
• Bug Fixing
• Enhancements

"What about content?" I hear you ask.

At this stage, any organisation that is serious about the web knows content should be updated regularly and kept current and on message. However, that's not really what website maintenance or web application maintenance should be about, at least its not what we are addressing here.

Maintenance would cover a content management system, and a site that is powered by a content management system - and anything and everything associated with keeping these systems secure, stable, useful and up to date. Updating and authoring and planning the content itself however,is not a part of a site's maintenance, rather, your "content strategy" is something that should be managed by the site owners and the copy editors and marketing teams that deliver the message and it's tone.

Most site (and some web application) owners understand that they need to keep their content current, relevant and updated. However, many neglect the other aspects of maintaining a healthy, well performing web site or web application.

Too often this comes to light when disaster has struck - a non patched CMS gets compromised via a hacker exploiting a newly discovered flaw, a new device or browser type fails to render an old site, Google changes an algorithm and the site falls off radar.

More frequently again, site owners just become frustrated when their web development or design company is slow to respond when something is required, or more seriously, when something goes wrong.

So if you own a site or a busy web application - get an agreement in place with a company who can take care of the technical (and visual) updates to your site, app and it's infrastructure. Just as you have a digital marketing agent, or even staff member, keeping your content on point, get a decent technical team in place to support your content team and keep your online presence stable, secure and fast.

Communicraft offer robust, flexible website maintenance plans to suit any professional web presence.

So what kind of tasks are we talking about here?

Tasks carried out under maintenance can generally be seen to be either “proactive” or “reactive”.

Proactive – predefined tasks, carried out at set intervals, in order to innovate, prevent problems before they occur, spot and correct problems before owners or users are affected.

Reactive – troubleshooting, responding to issues or preferences identified by users or owners.

Ideally most tasks should be proactive, but in the real world, the rapidly changing technological environment, rapidly evolving user habits and expectations as well as the increasingly diverse means by which users interact with web enabled systems means that a good deal of the work required to maintain a site or application remains re-active.

In these cases, quick reactions are what set an application or a website apart in terms of quality.

A website, web application or mobile application is not a static entity and therefore requires certain tasks to ensure it continues to operate smoothly in the face of changing technical environment and evolving user habits.

Establishing a maintenance plan will ensure:

• Improved Site Stability
• Continuity of Service
• Faster Service Response Times
• Budgetary Control
• Lower hourly costs
• Peace of Mind
• A more current, relevant and thus effective web presence

Interested in learning more about site maintenance? Contact us directly and we can set you on the right path.