St. Ferrer
Ongoing care for a website the business would rather not have to think about.
What was wrong
St. Ferrer’s website was built by one company and looked after by another. The site itself was fine.
When something needed changing, the request went to a company rather than a person. It joined a queue and came out whenever it came out.
A website isn’t front of mind when you run a construction business. On the day something’s wrong or needs to go up now, a queue is no use.
What I did
I took over the website and the hosting in 2024. WordPress on one server. Nothing exotic.
They buy a block of hours up front. Every month I do the maintenance. The same day it’s done I tell Catherine the maintenance is complete. I include how long it took and how many hours are left.
When the balance is down to about an hour, I talk to Catherine before raising an invoice for the next block. Hosting is invoiced once a year, separately, so it isn’t tangled up with the maintenance hours.
Dev work happens a few times a year when they ask. Same person and phone number.
What changed
Nobody has to ask whether maintenance happened. The message arrives and has a number in it.
If I need to restart the server, I check first whether anyone’s mid-way through something. I do it after hours if they are.