A Brief Introduction to WordPress Maintenance
When you are working in the online industry being updated is indispensable and so is time management and with many tasks at hand sometimes it feels like you are not going to make it before the deadline.
Now some tasks are more important than others which include client prospecting, strategizing and analyzing the market channels to grow your business and you have to prioritize them in order finish the work in stipulated time to get paid by your client.
However all tasks matter, but it isn’t hard to see why tasks like security, maintenance, and other behind-the-scenes Word Press ‘chores’ are neglected.
If you want your business to operate smoothly, these ‘not so important’ tasks matter. And fortunately, a number of good WordPress maintenance package have recently appeared to take the burden off your shoulders to look after your WordPress website during maintenance to free up your time.
Word Press Support Services: Are they worth it?
But should you put your trust in these services? Are they worth the money?
Well, that depends on how much you value your time. Let’s say you spend at least two hours per month on website maintenance (a conservative estimate). What’s the opportunity cost in terms of client work you’ve missed out on?
If you charge your time at $50/hour, that’s $100. If you charge $100/hour, it’s $200.
When you factor this in, spending some money on a WordPress support service makes financial sense – and most support services have a plan for under $100/month. Many of these services will also handle some other important tasks like site backups, WordPress updates (core, theme, and plugins), and even offer small amounts of developer time for quick fixes. With this in mind, you might actually save far more than two hours per month by signing up for one of these services.
Which service should you choose? Well, you have a number of choices available for that these days.
Secondly, if you have the time or you want to do the maintenance on your own you can add a maintenance plugin to your website or a coming soon page for a new website. Admin gets full access to the website including the front end during maintenance.
Activate this plugin while your blog or website is in maintenance mode. You can use a date with a countdown timer for visitor information or set a value and unit for information.
Maintenance plugin allows WordPress site administrator to close the website for maintenance, enable “503 Service temporarily unavailable”, set a temporary page with authorization, which can be edited via the plugin settings. Easy customize good look on all devices.
FEW COMMON FEATURES OFFERED BY MAINTENANCE PLUGIN
• Fully customizable (change colors, texts, and backgrounds);
• WordPress multisite;
• Social media icons;
• Contact form (receive emails from visitors);
• Coming soon page;
• Subscription form (export emails to .csv file);
• Countdown timer (remaining time);
• Contact form (receive emails from visitors);
• Landing page templates;
• Responsive design;
• Works with any WordPress theme;
• SEO options;
• Exclude URLs from maintenance.
• Html/CSS layout without images (retina ready)
• Fullscreen background (Backstretch)
• Blur background effect
• Upload own logo and retina
• Configurable colors: fonts, icons, background
• Add your title, headline, text
• User login with validation
• Admin bar: show/hide
• 503 error on/off
• Google analytics field
• Login on/off
• Exclude pages in Maintenance mode