FAQs
Got questions? You’re not alone! Find answers to common questions about my services below.
Website Maintenance
Have questions about maintenance? This section covers everything you need to know about keeping your website secure, fast, and running at its best.
Most website problems don’t announce themselves, they build quietly until they start costing you business. The signs to watch for include slow page load times, a drop in search rankings, plugin conflicts or error messages, a design that looks outdated compared to your competitors, and security warnings flagged by Google or your browser.
Any one of these issues can erode visitor trust and push potential customers toward a competitor. If you’re noticing two or more at once, it’s not a coincidence, it’s a signal that your site needs attention. A proactive maintenance plan catches these issues before they reach that point.
This is one of the most common misconceptions about websites, that no visible problem means no real problem. In reality, the most damaging issues are often the ones you can’t see: outdated plugins creating security vulnerabilities, database bloat slowing your site down, or expired SSL certificates quietly flagging your site as unsafe to browsers.
Think of it like servicing a car. You don’t wait for the engine to fail before changing the oil. Regular maintenance keeps small issues from becoming expensive emergencies, protects your search rankings, and ensures your site is always performing at its best for every visitor who lands on it.
For a WordPress site with active plugins and regular content, I recommend a structured maintenance schedule that works on two levels.
On a weekly basis: automated security scans, uptime monitoring, and off-site backups run continuously in the background. On a monthly basis: I perform manual reviews covering plugin and core updates, performance checks, broken link scans, and a full security audit with a report sent to you so you always know exactly where your site stands.
Sites with higher traffic, eCommerce functionality, or frequent content updates may benefit from more intensive monitoring. During onboarding, I’ll assess your site and recommend the right frequency for your specific setup.
A hacked website is every business owner’s worst nightmare, but it doesn’t have to be a disaster if you’re prepared. In my maintenance plan, I monitor for malicious activity around the clock. If a breach is detected, I act immediately: isolating the issue, removing malicious code, restoring from a clean backup, and hardening your site to prevent a repeat.
For sites not on a care plan, recovery is significantly more time-consuming and costly, and without a recent backup, some data may be unrecoverable. My maintenance plan include regular off-site backups specifically so that if the worst happens, I can get you back online quickly and cleanly with minimal disruption to your business.
These two services are related but serve different purposes, and it’s important to understand what each one covers.
Hosting is the infrastructure, the server where your website files live. It determines your site’s uptime, speed, and the environment it runs in. Maintenance is the ongoing work performed on your site itself, updates, security monitoring, backups, performance optimisation, and troubleshooting.
You need both. A great server with no maintenance still leaves your site vulnerable to outdated plugins and security gaps. My fully managed hosting plans combine both under a single monthly fee, so there’s no gap in coverage and no confusion about who handles what.
Absolutely. Not every website has the same needs, and I don’t believe in charging you for services that don’t apply to your situation.
I offer structured care plans that cover the essentials, updates, backups, security monitoring, & performance reporting and I can build on top of those with additional services like priority support response times, content updates, SEO monitoring, or expanded development hours, depending on what your business actually requires.
The best starting point is a conversation. I’ll review your current site, understand how you use it, and recommend a plan that protects your investment without overcomplicating things. Get in touch and I’ll put something together that makes sense for you.
Platform Selection
Frequently asked questions to help you understand why platform choice matters, and why I build exclusively on WordPress.
Because I believe in being specialists, not generalists. WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet and for good reason. It offers unmatched flexibility, the strongest SEO control of any platform, a vast ecosystem of tools and integrations, and a completely open codebase that means you’re never locked into a single provider.
By focusing exclusively on WordPress, I’ve developed deep expertise in what it can do and how to make it perform at its best. I don’t split my attention across five different platforms, I go deep on one, and that depth directly benefits my clients. When you work with me, you’re getting a team that knows WordPress inside and out, not a generalist who’ll figure it out as they go.
The right platform depends on what your business actually needs — not on which tool has the most features or the lowest monthly fee. The key factors to consider are your long-term growth plans, how much control you want over your site’s design and functionality, your SEO ambitions, and whether you want the freedom to take your site to any developer in the future.
For service-based businesses which make up the core of my clientele, WordPress is almost always the right answer. It scales with you, gives you full ownership of your site, offers the best SEO capabilities of any platform, and has the largest global support community. It’s not the easiest platform to use out of the box, but that’s exactly why you hire specialists to build and manage it properly.
This is one of the most important questions any business owner should ask before signing a contract. Some agencies build your website on their own proprietary platform which means if you ever want to leave, you can’t take your site with you. You’d essentially be starting from scratch with a new provider.
This is a significant risk that’s easy to overlook when everything is going well. I build exclusively on WordPress, which is open-source and universally supported. Your website is yours, the code, the content, the design. You can take it to any WordPress developer at any time. I believe that’s the only honest way to work with clients.
WordPress is remarkably versatile. Within the industries I serve: HVAC, Movers & Packers, Construction & Excavation, Consulting, and Landscaping, I typically build service websites, lead generation sites, booking and quote request systems, and content-driven sites built for SEO.
Beyond my core sectors, WordPress handles membership sites, online directories, eCommerce stores via WooCommerce, and complex multi-location business sites. If you have a specific functionality in mind, the question is rarely whether WordPress can do it, it’s about how best to implement it.
Yes, significantly. Platform choice has a direct impact on how much control you have over the technical elements that influence your search rankings: page speed, schema markup, URL structure, metadata, canonical tags, and site architecture.
WordPress gives you more SEO control than any other platform. With the right technical setup and the right plugins, every element of your site’s SEO can be precisely managed. Hosted builders like Wix and Squarespace have improved in recent years, but they still impose limitations that can hold you back in competitive search landscapes. For businesses that are serious about ranking, WordPress isn’t just a preference, it’s the strategic choice.
WordPress itself is free, but running it properly involves several cost layers that are worth understanding upfront.
For a professionally managed WordPress site, you’re typically looking at: quality managed hosting ($30–100/month depending on traffic and specification), a domain name ($10–20/year), premium plugins for functionality and security (variable, but typically $100–300/year in total), and ongoing maintenance and support.
What makes my approach different is that I consolidate hosting, maintenance, security, and support into a single monthly fee, so you’re never surprised by separate invoices or unsure about who covers what. I’m transparent about costs from the first conversation, and everything is documented before any work begins.
With any website, there are costs that don’t always make it into the initial proposal from less transparent providers. The common ones to ask about are: premium plugin renewals, additional development work billed outside a retainer, fees for emergency support, costs for staging environments, and charges for performance or security fixes.
On my plans, none of those are surprises. Everything is scoped and agreed in writing before work begins, and my maintenance plan clearly define what’s included. If something falls outside the scope, I’ll tell you before I act, not invoice you after the fact.
A well-built WordPress site, properly maintained, typically remains competitive for three to five years before a meaningful redesign is warranted. The factors that shorten that lifespan are neglected updates, accumulated technical debt, and changing business needs that the original design can’t accommodate.
Regular maintenance extends that window considerably. When your plugins, theme, and core are kept up to date, and your performance is monitored over time, the site stays technically sound much longer. When a redesign does become appropriate, the transition is also smoother, because the underlying structure hasn’t been left to degrade.
Yes, and because I build on WordPress, the process is more straightforward than with many other platforms. WordPress is open-source, meaning your content, data, and structure aren’t locked into our systems or anyone else’s.
That said, migrating any website involves work. Content generally transfers well, but design and custom functionality typically need to be rebuilt on the new platform. My honest recommendation is to choose a platform you can grow into from the start, which is why I invest time upfront understanding your long-term goals, not just your immediate needs. WordPress scales with most businesses for the long haul, which means migration is rarely necessary.
Shopify is the platform I recommend when eCommerce is the primary purpose of your website, particularly for businesses with growing product catalogues, complex inventory needs, or high transaction volumes. It’s purpose-built for selling, and it does that job extremely well.
Pros:
✓ Everything you need for eCommerce is built in: checkout, inventory, shipping, and tax management
✓ Fully hosted and managed, with automatic security updates
✓ Supports a wide range of payment gateways out of the box
✓ Reliable performance even during high-traffic periods or seasonal spikes
Cons:
✗ Monthly fees ($29–$299) plus transaction fees of 0.5–2% unless using Shopify Payments
✗ Functionality outside of eCommerce is more limited compared to WordPress
✗ Customisation has a ceiling, complex design requirements can be difficult to execute
✗ Paid apps accumulate quickly and can add meaningfully to your monthly costs