Wordpress maintenance
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- raf
What is the standard approach to charging for standard WordPress maintenance (backing up, updating the whole site and plugins, fixing user edit errors, ensuring it runs etc.).
Do you charge on a retainer basis, something like, say, two hours monthly?
- vaxorcist0
monthly, and one HUGE issue with some clients is that they don't understand why some of their friends paid $20 for a template, had their nephew upload it and change a color or two... everything was cool till they got hacked(!) and suddenly want you to help fix it all in return for a beer....
so this is a way to ensure they know you're professional, and charge accordingly.
- raf0
Thanks Vaxorcist. May I ask what your monthly charge for that is? I mean in hours, I am not asking dollars.
- BattleAxe0
$600-800 a year up front for on call beats trying to collect $50-75 every month
on call for a system crash or "my site is down" which might happen 2 a year maybe depending on what you are running and traffic
- vaxorcist0
BattleAxe's about right...
it's not the backup, it's the updates.... and making sure the plugins aren't broken by the updates.... and making sure your additional code or layout tweeks aren't broken by the updates....
Rolling back doesn't help you that much if there's a hackable vurnability found in an earlier version of WP....
make sure your mysql is backed up as well as your website... yes, server-side is good, make sure it's not just weekly erasing last week's backup,etc..
- nocomply0
I communicate with my clients before creating a WordPress site that it will require occasional maintenance and version updating, and those updates will be billed for at my regular hourly rate. I do not ask for permission to make those updates since I view them as critical for the website's security.
I'm not sure what you guys think about it, but now I am also starting to tell new clients that I am not responsible for any loss of data that may potentially happen due to any type of security compromises. I'm recommending that if they want to be really safe they get an account with http://vaultpress.com/.
- Thanks for the VaultPress info. Going to start pitching that as well.RGB
- raf0
Thanks all, good advice, much appreciated.