A good website should not be “set and forget”.

It’s important to keep track of how your site is performing and what your competitors are doing. More importantly, you should be making changes to your site accordingly.

Just as with a Windows PC, software needs to be kept up to date to remain secure. With a website it’s particularly important because it’s open to the internet 24 hours a day. So it’s important to keep your site up to date with the latest software.

We offer different support options depending on your needs.

Self-supported Hosting

Some clients are technically savvy and want to look after their hosting themselves.

To do this effectively you will need to:

• Be familiar with using CPANEL
• Be able to evaluate and test plug-ins for upgrade compatibility
• Periodically review software for security updates and their applicability
• Review WordPress (or other CMS) for upgrade compatibility
• Monitor backups and review backup logs
• Periodically review system logs for errors and correct as necessary
• Monitor and control disk space use, email quotas etc
• Interact with the hosting provider where necessary
• Monitor site performance and overall availability

Many website owners choose to neglect all of the above. While this does not guarantee disaster, you should be aware that doing so exposes your site to:

• increased risk of being hacked
• becoming significantly out of date, which will increase costs when you are eventually forced to update
• increase risk of data loss, particularly if you do not have a backup strategy
• unexplained or unnoticed outages
• undetected problems becoming major and costly issues
• potentially expensive support if you do need help resolving issues

For the technically savvy, self-hosting is a viable option if you have the time and skills. But be aware of the pitfalls – we have clients where it has been more economical to completely replace websites as they were so poorly maintained.

Self supported hosting costs will depend on which provider you choose as you pay their costs directly. Using your own provider may necessitate higher initial set-up costs as they may not offer the dame services and features.

For most small businesses, having an expert provide basic support makes economical sense.

Hosting with Basic Support and Maintenance

If you use our hosting services, you have the option using our inclusive basic support and maintenance services.

Basic support does not include call-in support, unless your site is down or has other issues. However it does provide the following:

• testing new minor versions of plug-ins and other software to see if they will work correctly
• minor CMS upgrade support
• periodic on-site backups.
• site monitoring for performance and availability
• security updates
• monitoring and guarding against hacking
• bandwidth and disk space management
• handing technical problems (email issues, website issues etc)

We also have specific supplier relationships, so we can quantify and minimise the time spent dealing with issues.

Supported hosting costs are typically  around $25-35pcm depending on requirements.

Many businesses also want additional support, such as training, Google analytics monitoring and help with minor enhancements and changes. For this we offer support hours packages, as detailed next.

Support hours packages

Support hours packages are an economical way to get support for whatever you want when you need it.

Support hours are pre-purchased in blocks. They are used as and when you ask for assistance. They do not expire.

There are a multitude of uses, such as:

• support for a website using your own hosting and other provider
• training or assistance learning how to use WordPress of other software
• enhancements to your website: additional pages, new features etc
• research on your website traffic and how to improve it
• using Google Analytics to increase your website’s effectiveness
• link building and other methods of increasing he the performance of your website
• Analysis of competitor behaviour, and how their sites are performing
• Major software updates
• Help with a non-Backbonewebdesigns website

Support hours packages are costed at our standard hourly rates, with discounts applied for bulk purchases.

Unless you have no competition, continuous monitoring and improvement of y our website is essential to it’s performance and competitiveness. Support hours packages are the most economical way to achieve this. You only pay for what you need.

Getting support

We can help you choose the most economical support option to suit your needs.