Module 9 · 9.4

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A fixed maintenance rhythm

Module 9: Email, search visibility, GDPR, maintenance and migrating · Reading time: 8 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson, you can set up and keep a fixed maintenance rhythm for your WordPress website.

Key concepts: maintenance rhythm, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, uptime monitoring, maintenance log, restore test, user audit, plugin audit, renewals, responsible person

Maintenance is a habit, not a project

Most problems in this course don't arise from a single mistake at one moment, but from something that slowly slips: a plugin that's no longer updated, a PHP version that becomes outdated, a backup that's been failing for months without anyone noticing, a former staff member who's still an administrator. With a fixed rhythm, you catch this before it becomes a problem.

The rhythm below is an example for an ordinary business or association website. A webshop or busy website needs more; a website that rarely changes needs a little less. Adjust it, but keep the four rings.

Every week (10 minutes)

Check updates: did the automatic updates succeed (lesson 7.2)? Is there anything you still need to update by hand? Read the emails from WordPress and your installer, including those about rollbacks.
A quick look: open your homepage and your most important page (for example the contact page or the shop) in a private window. Does everything work?
Notifications: emails from your hosting provider, your security plugin or malware scanner, Search Console.
Comments and forms: is there spam you need to clear out, and are form submissions arriving?

Every month (30 minutes)

Check your backup: is there a recent backup, and is it complete (files and database)? Download one to your own storage as part of 3-2-1 (lesson 8.1).
Site Health (lesson 5.4): any new warnings?
Really test a form: fill in your contact form and check whether the email arrives (lesson 9.1).
Speed: one measurement in PageSpeed Insights (lesson 6.1), to spot a sudden decline.
Storage: how full is your package? Backups from the installer and uploads build up (lesson 2.2).
Search Console: indexing errors, security issues, a sudden drop.

Every quarter (1 to 2 hours)

Restore test: restore a backup next to your website and go through the checklist (lesson 8.2).
User audit: who are administrators, who has left, which application passwords still exist (lesson 3.3)?
Plugin audit: go through all plugins, still needed, still maintained, not closed (lesson 5.4)?
Themes: only the active theme and one backup theme (lesson 2.4).
Hardening: do the checks from lesson 7.4 still hold (for example after a plugin rewrote .htaccess)?
Final check: run the exercise from this lesson.

Every year (half a day)

PHP version: are you still on a version with active support (lesson 8.4)? Plan the upgrade.
Theme and major plugins: is there a major new version you should move to, or is it time to replace an outdated page builder or an "all-in-one" theme?
Renewals: domain name, hosting package, licences for paid plugins and themes. An expired licence means no security updates (lesson 7.2). An expired domain means your website and email are gone.
GDPR: are your processing register and Privacy Policy still accurate, have new services or plugins been added, are old form submissions being cleared out (lesson 9.3)?
Passwords and access: who has access to the hosting panel, the registrar, the DNS, the backup storage? Is everything in a password manager, and can someone else get in if you're unavailable?
Your emergency plan (lesson 7.5): is it still accurate?

Monitoring: don't wait for a customer to call

An uptime monitor checks every few minutes whether your website responds and sends an email or message if it doesn't. There are free and paid services for this; some hosting providers offer it too. Set it up on a page that's genuinely generated by WordPress (not just an image), and optionally on a word that must appear on that page. That way you'll also notice a critical error or a hacked homepage.

Also keep an eye on your certificate (make sure it doesn't expire unnoticed, lesson 3.1) and your domain (renewal).

A maintenance log

Keep a simple log: date, what you did, what you saw, what needs following up. A shared document or a table is enough. It helps you to:

look back, when there's a problem, at what recently changed ("the forms stopped working since Tuesday's update");
reconstruct the timeline after a hack (lesson 7.5);
help a colleague, successor or website builder get up to speed quickly;
show that you take security seriously (the GDPR requires appropriate measures, lesson 9.3).

Who does it?

Even the best rhythm doesn't work if nobody follows it. Agree on:

who is responsible for each ring (week, month, quarter, year);
who takes over during holidays or illness;
what happens when the website builder or volunteer who always did it stops.

If you don't do it yourself, you can outsource maintenance to a website builder or maintenance service. In that case, ask exactly which of the points above they handle, how often, and how you'll see evidence of it (a monthly report). "We keep your website up to date" can mean anything.

Summary

Maintenance is a habit with four rings: week, month, quarter, year.
Weekly updates and a quick look; monthly backup, form and notifications; quarterly a restore test and audits; yearly PHP, renewals, GDPR and access.
An uptime monitor on a genuine WordPress page reports problems before a customer calls.
A maintenance log helps with problems, hacks and handovers.
Agree who does what, including during absences; when outsourcing, ask exactly what's being done.

Quiz

1. How often do you test restoring a backup, at a minimum? Never, as long as the backup is made
Once a quarter, and after any change to your backup system
Only after a hack
Every day

You'd rather discover a backup that can't be restored at a quiet moment. Quarterly is a good rule of thumb.

2. Why do you set up an uptime monitor on a page that's genuinely generated by WordPress, with a word that must appear on it? Because it's faster
Because then you'll also notice a critical error or a replaced homepage, not only a server that doesn't respond at all
Because images can't be monitored
Because Google requires it

A server can respond with an error page. A check on content lets you spot that too.

3. Your paid plugin still works, but the licence expired last year. What's the risk? None, as long as it works
You no longer receive updates, including security updates
The plugin stops working immediately
Your website becomes slower

Without a licence there are no updates, so vulnerabilities stay open. Renewals belong in your yearly round.

4. What is a maintenance log most useful for? For search engines
To see what changed and when, when there's a problem or hack, and to hand over the work
To make the website faster
It's only mandatory for webshops

Someone who knows what recently changed finds the cause of a problem much faster.

Exercise

Exercise A9.4: The quarterly check. Enter your website's address. The program runs all the public checks from this course in one go and lists the results: certificate (A3.1), redirects and mixed content (A3.2), cache (A6.2), what your website reveals (A7.4), search visibility (A9.2) and external services (A9.3). Save the results and compare them at the next quarterly check.

Exercise A9.4: The quarterly check

Address of your website (for example www.yourdomain.com)

What you enter and what we find isn't stored. Your browser remembers your answers and whether you've passed the exercise. If you're signed in, we only save that you got the exercise (almost) right in My courses; you can delete that there too.

Exercise D9.4: Your maintenance calendar. Create your own maintenance calendar with the four rings. For each point, note who does it and who takes over, and schedule the first instance of each ring in your diary. Start a maintenance log and record the first weekly round in it. Tick off that you've set up an uptime monitor and that the renewal dates for domain, hosting and licences are in your diary.

Exercise D9.4: Your maintenance calendar

You do this exercise yourself; no one checks it. Tick off what you've done and mark the exercise as done.

Four rings (week, month, quarter, year) with points
For each point, who does it and who's the backup
The first instance of every recurring reminder in the calendar
A logbook started with the first weekly round
Uptime monitoring set up
Renewal dates (domain, certificate, package) in the calendar

Which service do you use for uptime monitoring, and on which page?

The first line of your logbook

Also save my answers in My courses (so you can view and download them on any device). Don't include any passwords or other secrets.

Here's how you could approach this

Monitor an actual WordPress page (one that uses PHP and the database), not just an image. A log line has a date and what you did, for example "8-11-2026: updated 3 plugins, checked backup".

Your ticks and notes only stay in this browser; we don't send them anywhere. If you're signed in, we only save in My courses that you've done the exercise.

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