A website is not finished on launch day: what goes out of date by itself

A website is usually bought once. It is the same mistake in thinking as buying a car and assuming it needs nothing done to it. A website does not wear out by being used, but some of the things connected to it expire according to the calendar, whether anyone touches the site or not.

The things divide into three groups, and it is worth keeping them separate. The first goes out of date by itself. The second needs a person who knows what is happening in the business. The third does not need changing at all, even though many people try to sell it to you.

1. What expires technically even if you do nothing

DOMAIN NAME

The registration is for a fixed period and is renewed. If the payment or renewal is forgotten, the website and email can stop working as soon as the validity ends. After the grace period the domain can become available to someone else.

SSL/TLS CERTIFICATE

Time-limited, nowadays typically a few months. With an expired certificate the browser shows the visitor a full-screen security warning. Most often this renews automatically, so check that it does.

PUBLISHING PLATFORM

Receives security updates that have to be installed. A platform that is not updated is a common way for a small site to end up hacked.

PLUGINS

They go out of date, stop being supported or break when the platform is updated. The more plugins, the more often something breaks.

SERVER ENVIRONMENT

Software versions go out of date on the server. An old version eventually stops getting fixes, and then the update has to be made.

BACKUPS

They do not expire, but they quietly stop working. A copy that has never been restored is a promise, not a backup.

This group is the one that should be part of a maintenance agreement. You do not need to know how to do these things; you need to know who does them and what happens if they are left undone. My own maintenance covers this group for the monthly fee.

2. What a person has to update

These are not technical problems. They change because a business lives, and nobody outside can know about them until you tell them.

• Phone number and email, even when the old one still works but nobody answers it
• Opening hours and exceptions: summer holiday, public holidays, changed on-call times
• Services that have been added or dropped
• Prices or pricing principles, if they are on the site: an old price is a promise you do not want to keep
• Staff: an employee who has left and still has their own photo on the site is awkward for both
• References and photos of finished work, when something worth photographing is completed
• The business profile details at the same time, so that the website and the map tell the same story

This list does not require monthly work. It requires that when one of these changes, the change goes onto the website in the same week and not next year. It is worth checking the business profile details at the same time.

3. What does not need changing

A website does not need regular updating just for the sake of updating. There is no rule that a search engine rewards editing the page text every month, and refreshing the look every three years is not compulsory.

A well-written service page can stay up to date for years. If the service has not changed, the text does not need to change either. You do not need to write a blog unless you really have something to say. An empty monthly post helps nobody.

Replacing a website makes sense when something is concretely broken: it does not work on a phone, it is so slow that visitors leave, the platform can no longer be updated safely, or the content does not say what the business does today. Age in itself is not a reason.

What neglect leads to in practice

None of these will tell you about itself. They tell your customer.

1. The visitor sees a “your connection is not private” warning and leaves. They do not call to tell you about it.
2. A hacked site starts redirecting visitors elsewhere or showing ads. The browser and the search engine may warn about it, and sorting the situation out takes time.
3. A customer sets off based on the opening hours they read on the site, and the door is closed.
4. The contact form quietly stops working. This is the most insidious of them: the site looks completely normal, but the messages do not reach anyone.

Test your own form twice a year by sending yourself a message through it. It is one minute of work, and surprisingly often it reveals something.

Maintenance checklist

This is a list you can go through yourself or send as it is to whoever built your site.

ONCE A YEAR

Domain name validity and holder details. Backup restore test. Prices, services and staff on the website. Whether the recipient address of the form is still in use.

EVERY SIX MONTHS

Form test with a real message. Contact details on the website and in the business profile. Opening hours exceptions for the next half year.

CONTINUOUSLY IN THE BACKGROUND

Platform and plugin updates, certificate renewal, backups and accessibility. This is the maintainer's work, not yours.

WHEN SOMETHING CHANGES

Phone number, email, address, service, price or person. The same change is made both on the website and in the business profile.

What maintenance means in a contract

When you ask for a quote, ask separately what maintenance includes. The word means different things to different suppliers. Sometimes it is just hosting, sometimes it also covers work. These are worth going through:

• Hosting, domain name renewal and email mailboxes
• Certificate and security updates, renewing automatically
• Backups, and more importantly, verified restore
• Small content changes: are they included or invoiced separately?
• Who is responsible if the site goes down on a Friday evening, and within what time?

Backup deserves a question of its own. Ask your supplier when a restore was last tested. If the answer is vague, it has not been tested.

Three things worth keeping in your own name

Regardless of who maintains your site, these three belong to you. They are also the things that sometimes leave a business owner stuck with their former supplier.

1. A domain name with your business listed as the holder, not the supplier
2. Your own login details for managing the website
3. The Google Business Profile and visitor analytics on your own account

If these are in order, changing supplier is laborious but straightforward. There is a separate article on domain and email ownership that explains how to check the situation yourself.