SALTWORKS
655 E 4500 S #210
SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84107
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DIGITAL MARKETING | WEB DEVELOPMENT
655 E. 4500 S. SUITE 200
SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84107
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Managed WordPress Maintenance: How Saltworks Keeps Your Website Secure and Online
Your website is one of the most important assets in your business — but keeping a WordPress site secure, updated, and performing properly takes ongoing attention. Many website issues happen because plugins become outdated, incompatible, or vulnerable over time. Regular maintenance helps prevent:
- Broken site features or functionality
- Slow website performance and longer load times
- Security breaches or injection of malware
- Website downtime due to plugin conflicts or errors
- Damage to search rankings
- Lost leads or sales due to broken forms or poor user experience
- Expensive emergency fixes
- Compliance and privacy risks related to outdated software
If your website goes down or pages fail to load properly, even for just a few hours, your search rankings could begin to suffer. To search engines like Google and Bing, repeated 404 errors can signal that a site is no longer being maintained—or that the business may no longer be operating.
That’s why we take a meticulous approach to planning and deploying technical updates on your website. Our quality assurance testing and continuous monitoring help ensure a consistent user experience for your site’s visitors.
Our WordPress Technical Maintenance Services Include:
- WordPress core updates (to the latest compatible version)
- Plugin updates (to the latest compatible versions)
- Theme updates (to the latest compatible version)
- PHP version updates
- Testing updates for compatibility issues
- Form submission testing
- E-commerce functionality checks (if applicable)
- Learning Management System (LMS) functionality checks (if applicable)
- Rolling back updates if problems occur
- Security monitoring and vulnerability prevention
- Backup verification/testing
- Automated scheduled backups
- SSL certificate monitoring
- Uptime monitoring
- Broken link checks
- Fixing compatibility issues before they become problems
Our Process
Our unique process for software updates has been refined by 15+ years of WordPress development and management experience. Because we manage updates for hundreds of websites, our team stays up to date on new releases of dozens of plugins and their compatibility with WordPress core, key themes, and PHP versions. With new versions of plugins being released every few weeks and WordPress core updates many times each year, this can be a full-time job.
Here’s our process for WordPress sites (excludes most e-commerce websites and sites that have daily content updates):
Research and identify the target updates
Before updating a website, we document the current version of each plugin and review available updates for compatibility with the website’s current (or planned) versions of WordPress and PHP. If a newer PHP version is available, we also evaluate compatibility against that version. All components must work together seamlessly. By reviewing the release notes and documentation for WordPress core and each plugin, we can identify conflicts or incompatibilities that could break functionality or affect the design and appearance of your website. Based on this analysis, we establish a target version for each plugin and track both available and target versions in our custom update management database.
Schedule the updates
Depending on a website’s traffic patterns and peak usage times, we schedule updates during periods when they will have the least impact on visitors. In some cases, this means performing updates late at night or early in the morning. Because we conduct thorough post-update testing to ensure everything is functioning as expected, a Quality Assurance (QA) team member must also be available immediately after the updates are completed to validate the site.
Verify Backups
Confirm that a recent (within the last 24 hours) version of the entire website and database has been backed up on the server or on off-site storage. This way, if one of the updates fails or breaks any functionality or appearance, we can roll back to the backup without any major downtime or disruption of user experience.
Run the updates
Our WordPress lead developer performs the updates to WordPress core, plugins, and the PHP version (not in this order). The order that updates are run really matters and can mean the difference between a smooth transition and an hour or more of resolving compatibility conflicts. The developer checks the site’s basic performance and scans for any issues.
Test after updates
The goal is for the website to work exactly as it did before updates. Our QA pro thoroughly tests all core pages to ensure they still display properly and that buttons still work, videos still play, and there are no page errors. Importantly, we test pages on desktop and mobile to make sure that the user experience is consistent. Next, we test the contact form to ensure it still works and email notification is received after updates. Finally, we validate the site and check for broken links and report any broken links to you or your content manager (your choice). If we manage content for you as well, you can choose to have us take the lead on resolving broken links.
Top Benefits of Saltworks Managing Your WordPress Site’s Technical Updates
24-7 real-time monitoring of your website
We install Uptrends monitoring for every website we manage. Uptrends is a cloud-based web performance monitoring platform that functions like a 24/7 watchdog, continuously testing your site from global checkpoints to ensure your visitors can access your site. If a site is unreachable for more than 120 seconds, it instantly alerts Saltworks support via SMS and email.
Take advantage of bulk pricing on plugin licenses
Since many plugin and theme developers offer group/bulk pricing for agencies, in many cases, your paid plugin licenses can be included in our agency/developer license plan. In the case of a plugin such as Gravity Forms Pro License, that can bring your cost down from $160/yr. to $10 to $15 per year.
One single monthly or quarterly invoice
Whether you’re taking advantage of Saltworks’ agency license bulk pricing that many plugin and theme developers offer, or simply having Saltworks manage single-site plugin licenses for you, we can make it turn-key, so you pay one bill each month. If you prefer, we can also process your website hosting company payments and include that in your single monthly Saltworks invoice.
Maintain your focus
Planning and running technical updates on your website isn’t fun. It’s time-consuming, tedious, and requires a methodical approach. Since our technical team manages updates for dozens of websites each month, we can do it more efficiently. With Saltworks managing the technical aspects of your website’s updates, you can focus on doing what you do best – running your business.
Peace of mind
Nothing ruins a weekend or vacation faster than having to drop everything to deal with a technical problem with your website. If something goes wrong, our developers are here to help. No spending hours on the phone with your hosting provider’s technical support team. Our team can diagnose the issue and either resolve it independently and notify you, or discuss mitigation options with you and implement the solution.
We have a 15+ year track record of managing WordPress websites smoothly and efficiently. If you’d like help keeping your WordPress website secure, updated, and running at its best, reach out to us to discuss the right maintenance plan for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: What if something is broken after updates?
A: If we discover core functionality is broken after updates, and our developer is not able to satisfactorily (and quickly) resolve the issues, we will roll your site back to the latest backup (that was archived before we ran the updates). Next, we schedule a time to implement the same updates on a hidden, development version of your website at a time when our developer can dig into deeper troubleshooting
The process for Enterprise Plan clients (recommended for e-commerce sites or websites that have content updates multiple times per day)
All updates are performed first on a hidden, development version of your website and are thoroughly tested before being implemented on the live version of the website (after which we thoroughly test the live version)
Q: Why do WordPress and plugin updates need to be updated at least monthly?
A: No Content Management System (CMS), and in fact, no software, lives in a vacuum. Everything on the internet is changing. As cybercriminals find new ways to try to exploit vulnerabilities in software, databases, networks, and connected services, so too must developers continuously release updates and security patches to keep systems protected. When this happens, browsers, operating systems, plugins, APIs, and hosting environments must also adapt to remain compatible, stable, and efficient.
Outdated software is one of the most common causes of website breaches. Updates also help keep your website working with new browser versions, mobile devices, payment processors, and third-party integrations.
Q: How much risk is there really? I’m just a small business.
A: It may be tempting to assume that cybercriminals only target large corporations or businesses that process transactions through their websites. In reality, that assumption is far from accurate. Industry reports show that 43% to 46% of all cyberattacks and data breaches are directed at small and medium-sized businesses. Research also suggests that smaller organizations are up to three times more likely to be targeted than large enterprises, largely because attackers perceive them as having fewer resources and less robust cybersecurity defenses.
Q: What’s new about the way WordPress 7.0 integrates with AI Tools?
A: While AI tools for WordPress have been around for a while, in the past, each plugin had to connect to an AI service, store its own credentials, and handle everything independently. WordPress 7.0 bakes a standardized system for AI tools into its core. The new release is also packed with design and performance upgrades that are supposed to make the entire experience of using WordPress faster and more intuitive.
Q: What determines the pricing for my Technical Maintenance packages
A: The cost for managing technical updates for your WordPress site is based on your website’s number of plugins, the size of your website’s database, the number of pages, and the complexity of your website (simple website vs. eCommerce and/or LMS sites). If your website uses paid plugins, the cost of those licenses will also be a factor (if you choose to have us pay your license fees on your behalf).
Q: How much time do plugin updates and testing take?
A: Smaller websites require about an hour of labor to update and test. Larger, more complex e-commerce websites can take 2-2.5 hours to update and test.
Q: Does Saltworks managing my WordPress Technical Updates mean that I don’t need to maintain anything in my WordPress site?
A: Saltworks manages the Technical Maintenance/Updates for WordPress, plugins, theme, and PHP versions. Provided that you have Managed Hosting, that results in a complete package. However, keeping your WordPress site secure and running smoothly also means that you have a role to play.
You are responsible for doing the following:
- Manage your USERS to ensure that anyone who should not have Admin or Editor access (E.g., employees who have left your company) do not have any permissions or access
- Update YOUR Admin password quarterly using a strong, unique password
- Manage your domain renewals so that you retain your website domain
- Manage your website hosting account (unless Saltworks is contractually managing this for you) so that the credit card on file is current and the payment process goes smoothly
- Respond quickly to emails from your domain registrar, such as the “ICANN Domain Contact Verification” or “IMMEDIATE VERIFICATION Required” email. This is triggered whenever you register a new domain, transfer ownership, or update contact information
- Alert Saltworks anytime any major changes are planned for your website (new functionality, new styling, etc.)
Q: Could one of the companies that offer “automatic updates” with my hosting plan be a good, lower-cost alternative?
A: There are many hosting companies that offer “automatic updates” for WordPress sites for a small monthly fee. This is generally a bad idea. Here’s why:
- Not every update is stable as soon as it is released
- Some updates introduce new code that is incompatible with your theme or other plugins you are using
- Some automatic updates fail to run
- With most of these plans, there’s no human quality assurance (a person thoroughly checking your website to make sure it is still functional after plugin updates)
- They offer little or no control over update timing. You may want to wait a week for bug-fix releases, test updates on a staging site yourself, and avoid updates during high-traffic periods. With automatic updates, they run when the service decides, not you.
That said, there are a few new WordPress plugin management companies that claim to offer human oversight to provide WordPress site management and monthly updates at a cost ranging between $150 and $300 per month.
Q: If I don’t have a Saltworks Technical Maintenance plan and I just do the updates myself, if something breaks, can you fix it?
A: Perhaps. However, depending on when you run updates and/or discover the problem, it may result in your site being down or broken for hours or days before it can be repaired/restored. Our methodical process of researching, safeguarding with backups, and carefully coordinating testing immediately after updates is designed to eliminate chaos, reduce downtime, and ensure continuity with your website.
Q: If I do have a Saltworks Technical Maintenance plan, can I add or change plugins on my own?
A: Since our goal is to reduce downtime and keep things running smoothly, we ask that clients not add, remove, disable, or modify plugins, WordPress core, themes, or make other changes to the hosting server or software without coordinating it with the Saltworks team. We take our job of safeguarding your website very seriously, and your cooperation helps us achieve this goal.
Q: Do you fix broken sites for clients who haven’t worked with you before?
A: Rarely, and only on a case-by-case basis. Depending on the reported problems/issues, we may be able to schedule an evaluation/analysis of your site. The minimum cost for this is $1,000, and it generally takes about 2 business days. If your site needs remediation, we can create an estimated cost based on the analysis. Remediation can be costly and time-consuming. That’s why we developed our 5-step system for WordPress technical maintenance.
Q: How much money could I save by having Saltworks provide plugin licensing?
A: Since Saltworks can take advantage of plugin and theme developers’ group/bulk pricing, we can often reduce your monthly expense for paid plugins and theme licensing