A website isn't finished at launch — it's finished at the point someone stops maintaining it, which is usually when something breaks. Here's a realistic maintenance schedule, not a 50-item list nobody actually follows.
Weekly
- Check the site loads and the contact form actually sends. Takes two minutes; catches the failures that cost the most (a broken enquiry form can run silently for weeks).
- Glance at uptime monitoring, if you have it — and set it up if you don't.
Monthly
- Apply WordPress core, theme and plugin updates, tested on staging first if the site is important enough to justify it.
- Review broken links and 404s via Google Search Console.
- Check page speed hasn't degraded — new plugins and content bloat pages over time.
- Back up the site, and actually confirm the backup is restorable, not just that it exists.
Quarterly
- Review analytics for traffic drops or unusual patterns that might indicate a technical or SEO issue.
- Check SSL certificate expiry and domain renewal dates — both are easy to let lapse silently.
- Audit old content for outdated pricing, discontinued services or stale information.
Yearly
- Full security review — user accounts, plugin bloat, anything installed and forgotten.
- Reassess whether the platform still fits — a site that's outgrown WordPress, or a custom build that's become a maintenance burden, is worth revisiting annually, not waiting for a crisis.
The single most skipped item on this list: confirming backups actually restore. A backup nobody has tested is a false sense of security, not a safety net.
Doing this yourself vs a support plan
The weekly and monthly items are manageable for a hands-on business owner. Where it's worth a support arrangement is anything involving updates to a live production site — a bad plugin update can take a site down, and that's expensive to fix under pressure. See our web hosting support page for what an ongoing arrangement looks like.
Want someone else handling this checklist?
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