After launch
What happens after your website launches.
Launch feels like the end. It is closer to the beginning, and the gap between a site that keeps working and one that quietly rots is entirely about who is looking after these four things.
Four things need an owner after launch: keeping the content current, keeping the domain renewed, keeping an eye on whether Google can see the site, and having somebody to ring when something breaks. Decide who does each before launch day, because the site does not stop needing attention once it is live.
Written by Susarathi Bose of Silicon Insights, Kolkata. Last updated .
In detail
The four things, and who should hold each.
The content, which goes stale faster than you expect
Hours change, numbers change, a person leaves, a festival comes. A site with last year’s information on it does more damage than no site, because it is a visible signal that nobody is minding the shop.
The domain renewal, which is the one that actually kills sites
It arrives by email, once a year, to whichever address is on the account. Miss it and the site simply stops. Make sure the renewal notice comes to an address you read, and that the card on the account is not one that expired two years ago.
Whether Google can still see you
Search Console tells you free, and almost nobody looks. It is where you find out that pages have dropped out of the index or that something is blocking the crawler, usually months before you would notice it in the phone not ringing.
Somebody to ring when it breaks
Decide in advance whether that is you, a care plan, or nobody. All three are legitimate answers. What is not legitimate is finding out on the day the site is down that you never agreed who fixes it.
None of this requires a monthly plan. It requires a name against each of the four. Write them down on launch day and the site will still be working in three years.
Questions
Questions people ask
Do I need a monthly maintenance plan?
Not necessarily. A static site with no login and no plugins can sit happily for a year needing nothing. A plan earns its money when your information changes often, when you would rather not learn the tools, or when you want a known response time instead of hoping somebody is free. If your hours never change and you do not add products, paying monthly for nothing is fair to nobody.
What actually breaks on a website?
The commonest by a distance is the domain lapsing, and the second is somebody editing a page and not noticing what it did on a phone. After that: a hosting plan changing its terms, a third-party thing you embedded shutting down, and a certificate expiring. Notice that most of these are administrative rather than technical, which is why the answer is a named person rather than a clever system.
How do I know if my website is working?
Two free things, once a month, ten minutes. Open Search Console and look at whether your pages are still indexed and which searches you appear for. Then open your own site on your phone, on mobile data rather than wifi, and try to do what a customer would do. That second one finds more problems than any tool, and almost nobody does it.
The other questions