Maintenance plans from Birdwaves Media

For some time I have been working on offering a Maintenance plan for sites I have built and/or maintain. I’m happy to finally announce that plan.

Why a Maintenance plan? What’s it about?

There is an ad I see now and again on the web that shows a web designer getting swamped with “special requests” from clients after they’ve “handed off the website” to their clients. 

I can’t stand this commercial. The premise is all wrong, in my opinion. I have never wanted to just “hand off” a website to a client. I’ve always been in it for the long haul. I want to be there for my clients, and be ready to work on improvements to their sites. 

I’ve also wanted to be there for maintenance. And now I’m putting in place a means to do this. 

Proper Care and Feeding

A website is not a static, “set it and forget it” type of a thing. For a site to thrive, it must be actively maintained and updated. At a bare minimum, the software must be kept updated to protect against hacking and the web files and database must be backed up to prevent data loss.

You will also want to have someone making sure that the site is actually still working correctly. :-)

And then there is the occasional malicious file cleanup that might have to take place.

But the maintenance contract can also do more for you. You need to update pages and content on a regular basis, to let Google know you’re still there. You also want to keep an eye on webstats and search rankings, to see if there are more things that could be done to improve your ranking.

Services offered:

Backups of web files and databases
Uptime monitoring (“Is my website down?”)
Malware monitoring. Infected file cleanup. *see below for more info
Software updates to Joomla / Wordpress and their plugins
Home Page content update. Keep your website fresh!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) via Google Webmaster Tools. Keyword updates, Web Stats.

I have laid out three plans. The “Small” plan works on a Quarterly basis, while the “Medium” and “Large” plans are on a monthly basis.

The difference between “Medium” and “Large” is that “Large” includes a Homepage update and SEO. See the attached chart to compare the plans.

These plans don’t include site redesigns, multiple page updates, graphics work, etc. Those are things I would charge at my usual hourly rate of $55/hr. 

Billing is by yearly or 6-month agreement.

* Malware monitoring: I put in place features to protect against login hacks. I also view your files on the webhost, and clean up as necessary. I watch to see if any unapproved users have mysteriously been added. This is not the same as Sitelock, which you may or may not have purchased with your hosting. I work alongside your webhost and/or Sitelock, and make remediations as necessary. 

Thanks for your consideration!

Tony Jillson
Birdwaves Media
413•628•3805

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