WordPress Does Not Maintain Itself
WordPress runs a colossal share of the web, which makes it the most attacked software on the web. An unmaintained site is not neutral - plugins age into vulnerabilities, PHP versions fall out of support, and one day the contact form silently stops sending, taking your enquiries with it. The typical Perth business finds out any of this happened months later, from a customer.
A care plan is the unglamorous fix: updates applied on a schedule with a backup taken first, security and uptime monitored, offsite backups kept and occasionally test-restored, and small content changes handled by someone who answers the phone. It is the difference between a website as an asset and a website as a slow-motion liability.
The rescue cases are their own category - hacked sites, white screens, hosting held hostage by a vanished developer. We untangle those regularly (WooCommerce fatal at 9am? Seen it, fixed it), and a rescue usually rolls straight into a care plan so it never happens again.
What a Care Plan Covers
Flat monthly fee per site, quoted on the site - no lock-in, like everything else we do.
Updates done safely
- Core, plugin and theme updates on a schedule - with a backup and a check after, not blind auto-updates
- PHP version kept current with hosting
- A staging-first approach for the updates that look risky
Security and backups
- Malware and uptime monitoring with alerts we act on
- Offsite backups independent of the hosting - and restore-tested
- Hardening: login protection, least-privilege accounts, the basics most sites skip
Small jobs included
- A monthly allowance for content tweaks and small fixes inside the plan
- Bigger changes quoted or at $180/hr ex GST - your call before work starts
- The form-stopped-sending class of bug found by us, not by lost enquiries
Broken and hacked sites
- Hacked-site cleanup with the entry point closed, not just symptoms deleted
- White screens, fatal errors and plugin conflicts diagnosed properly
- Sites recovered from vanished developers or hostage hosting
WordPress Support Questions, Answered
What site owners ask - usually slightly too late.
What does a WordPress care plan cost?
A flat monthly fee per site, quoted after a quick look at the site - complexity varies enormously between a five-page brochure site and a WooCommerce store, so a single advertised price would be dishonest in one direction or the other. No lock-in: the plan is monthly, and if it is not earning its fee you cancel it.
Our site was built by someone else - can you take it over?
Yes, that is the most common starting point. We audit what is there, secure the access, take a clean backup and put it under care - no rebuild required and no judgement about the previous developer. If access has been lost entirely, recovery of hosting and domain control is part of the rescue playbook.
My site has been hacked - what do I do right now?
Call us before touching anything - well-meaning cleanup often destroys the evidence of how the attacker got in, which is the thing that prevents the rematch. A proper rescue removes the malware, closes the entry point, checks whether data was exposed, and gets you delisted from any blocklists. Then a care plan stops the sequel.
Why not just turn on automatic updates?
Auto-updates are better than nothing and worse than supervision. They apply changes without a fresh backup, cannot tell when an update breaks the checkout or the theme, and skip the major-version updates that matter most. Scheduled, supervised updates with a backup first and a check after is the boring approach that never eats a site.
Do you need to host the site to support it?
No. We work with the hosting you have, and only recommend moving when the hosting itself is the problem - slow, insecure or held by someone unreachable. As with licensing everywhere else in our business, hosting stays in your name and on your card.
Related Services
The pieces that usually sit alongside this work.
When did your site last get looked at?
Send the URL. We will run a quick health check - versions, obvious risks, backup reality - and quote a care plan against what we find.
Support Perth IT Pty Ltd · Perth, Western Australia · $180/hr ex GST, one-hour minimum, then 30-minute increments · No call-out fee in metro Perth.