Resources · Maintenance & Support

Website Maintenance Checklist for Busy Teams

Last Updated: December 13, 2025

If your website is responsible for leads, payments, or customer communication, “we’ll fix it when it breaks” is a risky strategy.

This checklist is designed for busy teams who don’t have time to live in their dashboard 24/7 but still need their site to be stable, secure, and fast. You can use it internally with your team or hand it to a maintenance partner like Alison Prime and ask them to own it.

You don’t have to implement every item on day one. Start with the essentials, then layer on more over time.

1. Before You Touch Anything

Before you start updating plugins or changing settings, make sure these foundations are in place.

1.1 Ownership and Access

• You know who owns:
  • The domain registrar account
  • The hosting account
  • The DNS records
• Admin logins are:
  • Stored in a secure password manager
  • Tied to named user accounts (not just “admin / admin”)
  • Removed when staff or vendors leave

1.2 Backups and Recovery

• You have automated backups for:
  • The database
  • Application files (code, plugins, themes)
  • Any uploads/media
• Backups are:
  • Stored off the main server (e.g., separate storage location)
  • Kept for a reasonable retention period (e.g., 14–30 days)
  • Tested at least quarterly with a restore test (even if on a staging environment)

1.3 Environments

• You have a staging environment (or test version) for major changes.
• You have a simple rule:
  • “Big changes go to staging first. Only stable changes go to production.”

If you don’t have this foundation yet, make it your first mini-project.

2. Daily & Ongoing Checks

You don’t need to manually run these every day if you have monitoring. But someone should own these checks and review alerts.

• The site is up and reachable (uptime monitoring alerts to email/Slack).
• The homepage, key landing pages, and login pages load without obvious errors.
• Contact forms and critical flows (e.g., “Book a call”, “Contact us”, “Checkout” if relevant) are working.
• No visible security warnings in the browser (e.g., HTTPS or certificate issues).
• No unexpected spikes in 4xx/5xx errors in your monitoring tools (if configured).

If you’re not using monitoring yet, schedule a simple daily check and plan to add monitoring soon.

3. Weekly Maintenance Tasks

Weekly is a good rhythm for most business sites (busy eCommerce may need more; very simple sites may stretch this slightly).

3.1 Updates (Core, Plugins, Extensions)

• Check for:
  • CMS or framework updates (e.g., WordPress core, Laravel, etc.).
  • Plugin, theme, or extension updates.
• For each update:
  • Review the change log briefly (especially major version jumps).
  • Apply updates first on staging, then on production.
  • After updating, spot-check:
    • Homepage
    • A sample content page
    • Contact / lead forms
    • Login and account pages (if used)

3.2 Security Monitoring

• Review security plugin or platform alerts:
  • Failed login attempts (are there unusual spikes?).
  • IPs or behavior blocked by firewalls or WAF (web application firewall).
  • Any files flagged as modified or suspicious.
• Make sure:
  • Admin accounts are still correct.
  • No strange new users with admin roles have appeared.

3.3 Content and UX Checks

• Scan for broken layouts or obvious content errors on:
  • Home
  • Top 3–5 traffic pages
  • Key landing pages used in campaigns
• Check that:
  • Forms still submit correctly.
  • Any “Book a call” or scheduling embeds still load and connect properly.

4. Monthly Maintenance Tasks

Monthly tasks are about performance, structure, and making sure nothing is drifting out of alignment.

4.1 Performance and Core Web Vitals

• Run a basic performance check using your chosen tool (e.g., Lighthouse on key pages).
• Look for:
  • Major regressions versus previous months.
  • Heavy scripts or large new images dragging things down.
• At least on your:
  • Homepage
  • Primary conversion page (e.g., Contact/Book a Call)
  • One or two important content pages

4.2 Technical Housekeeping

• Clean up:
  • Unused plugins or modules (remove, don’t just deactivate forever).
  • Old themes or templates that are no longer needed.
  • Transient cache or temporary files (if safe to clear).
• Review URL redirects:
  • Make sure there aren’t chains like /old → /new → /newer.
  • Remove obsolete redirects that are no longer required.

4.3 Analytics and Tracking

• Confirm that:
  • Analytics is still collecting data properly (traffic doesn’t suddenly drop to zero).
  • Key events (form submissions, signups, bookings) are still being tracked.
• Note any major changes in traffic or behavior:
  • Is it a data issue (tracking broken) or a real change in user behavior?

5. Quarterly Maintenance Tasks

Quarterly checks make sure the bigger picture is healthy.

5.1 Security & Access Review

• Review who has access to:
  • The website admin panel
  • Hosting control panels
  • DNS and domain registrar accounts
• Remove:
  • Users who no longer need access
  • Old vendor accounts you no longer work with
• Rotate:
  • Critical passwords where appropriate (especially if you had staff/vendor changes).

5.2 Content & UX Review

• Walk through your site like a new visitor:
  • Homepage > Services > Case Studies > Contact
• Ask:
  • Is the content still accurate?
  • Are old services still being advertised?
  • Are there any outdated screenshots or messaging?
• Identify pages that:
  • Get a lot of traffic but low conversions (candidate for UX improvements).
  • Are no longer needed and can be redirected to better destinations.

5.3 Legal and Policy Links

• Check that your:
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  • Cookie Policy
  • Accessibility Statement
  are:
  • Present in the footer
  • Pointing to the correct URLs
  • Reflecting your current tools and practices (especially if you’ve changed analytics, email, or third-party tools).

6. Before and After Big Changes

Any time you make major changes (new theme, rebuild, plugin swap, integration), treat it like a small “release”:

6.1 Before the Change

• Take a fresh backup of:
  • Database
  • Files / assets
• Document:
  • What is being changed
  • Who is responsible
  • When you’re doing it (ideally off-peak hours)

6.2 After the Change

• Test:
  • Homepage, navigation, key content pages
  • Forms, login flows, checkout (if applicable)
• Watch:
  • Error logs
  • Performance metrics
  • Uptime and alerts for the next 24–48 hours

If something goes seriously wrong, know in advance whether you will:

• Roll back to the previous backup, or
• Fix forward with a clear plan.

7. Who Owns This Checklist?

A checklist is only useful if someone is actually responsible for it.

Decide:

• Who is the primary owner of website maintenance (internal team or external partner).
• What happens if that person is unavailable:
  • Is there a backup person or vendor?
  • Are the logins and runbooks stored somewhere safe?

If you don’t have time or the right skills in-house, it’s often more cost-effective to have a dedicated maintenance partner own this checklist for you.

8. When to Bring in a Maintenance Partner

You don’t have to DIY everything. It may be time to bring in help if:

• Your site goes down or breaks multiple times a year.
• You avoid updates because “they always break something”.
• No one in your team really “owns” web reliability.
• You’ll lose leads or revenue if the site is down for a day.

In those cases, having a partner who lives in this checklist every week is usually cheaper than one big emergency incident.

---

If you’d like Alison Prime to own this checklist for you, we can audit your current setup, stabilize it, and then take over ongoing maintenance with clear communication and predictable scope.