WordPress maintenance from the person who answers the phone.
Updates handled, backups verified, speed and security watched, small changes done, and one person to call when something goes sideways. WordPress maintenance for Louisville businesses and clients across Kentucky, priced monthly, not by the hour, from the developer who keeps my own client sites running. Maintenance is also where improvements come from: the Heimerdinger Cutlery phase two grew out of running the site week after week.
Or call or text (502) 387-1142
> 02:00 Care run started 14 sites, 3 stores
> 02:00 Snapshot: files + database to offsite storage ok 412 MB
$ wp core check-update
Success: WordPress is at the latest version.
$ wp plugin update --all --dry-run
woocommerce 9.3.1 -> 9.4.0
wordpress-seo 23.6 -> 23.7
gravityforms 2.8.17 -> 2.8.18
$ wp plugin update woocommerce wordpress-seo gravityforms
Success: Updated 3 of 3 plugins.
> Visual check: 12 pages compared 0 differences
> Checkout: test order placed and refunded passed
> Forms: test entry delivered to inbox passed
> Core Web Vitals: LCP 1.3 s CLS 0.01 good
> Malware scan: 14,382 files clean
> SSL certificate: 71 days left ok
> Uptime 30 days: 99.99%
> 02:19 Care run finished all green
next run: Tuesday 02:00
02:11wp-includes verified against checksums
02:11wp-admin verified
02:12plugins/woocommerce clean
02:12plugins/gravityforms clean
02:13uploads/2024/03 PHP file in uploads, reviewed: safe
02:13themes/kadence-child clean
02:14database: no injected scripts
02:14admin users: 2, both known
02:15file permissions correct
02:15report saved to your care log
Oct 01Plugins updated after testing on staging
Oct 03Menu change for the fall hours
Oct 06Backup restored to staging: verified
Oct 08New photos added to the gallery
Oct 09Form spam spike blocked
Oct 12Core Web Vitals all good
Oct 14Monthly report sent
Six things that go wrong when nobody is watching a WordPress site.
Updates pile up
Every update badge you ignore is a hole that stays open. Most hacked WordPress sites were simply behind.
Backups nobody has tested
A backup is a theory until someone restores it. Most hosting backups have never been tried.
It got slow and nobody noticed
Sites decay. Plugins bloat, images pile up, caches expire, and one day a customer mentions it takes forever. If that is you now, start with website speed optimization.
The last developer vanished
The person who built it is gone, the logins are a mystery, and every small change is a scramble. Website rescue gets the domain, hosting and logins back first.
Security warnings you do not understand
Red banners in the dashboard, admin users you did not create, emails about logins from places you have never been.
You want one person to call
Not a ticket queue with a four-day response. The person who knows the site, twenty minutes away.
Maintenance is a relationship, not a ticket.
The sites on this page are ones I host, update and answer the phone for. Some I built. Some arrived broken and stayed. Every care plan is scoped to the site in writing before it starts: what gets updated and when, how backups are verified, what is watched, and how much small-change time is included each month. Bigger work is quoted separately, so there are no surprises on either side.
Five sites I look after, and what that looks like.
Every site below is live today and maintained by me. A bourbon store that has to survive release-day traffic, a 160-year-old retailer, a haunted attraction that lives or dies in October, a solo law practice and a century-old manufacturer.
A store that has to survive release day without blinking.
Shop Peerless ships small-batch bourbon direct to consumers, and a limited release brings a wave of buyers at once. Keeping it up means updates tested before they touch the store, caching and server capacity checked ahead of every release, and someone watching on the day. Stores get WooCommerce maintenance that tests checkout, payments and order emails after every update.
A thousand products, live shipping rates, and a store that ships every day.
Heimerdinger Cutlery has served Louisville since the 1800s. Its WooCommerce store carries roughly a thousand products with live UPS rates wired into every order, so an update that breaks shipping is not a bug, it is lost sales. Hosting, updates and improvements are handled continuously, not abandoned at launch.
That is what maintenance on a store looks like: every plugin update tested against checkout before it goes live.
A site that lives or dies in October.
Field of Screams sells tickets for a few weeks a year, mostly from phones in a car park. The 2026 site moved onto my managed dedicated server so the busiest nights of the season are not the nights the site falls over.
Season-aware tools, background films with fallbacks, and a maintenance calendar that does its heavy lifting in August, not October.
Same site, my infrastructure, roughly five times faster.
Todd Lewis Law’s site was already clean. In September 2026 everything underneath it changed: moved off a shared reseller account onto my dedicated server, Cloudflare in front of it, Full (Strict) encryption end to end, homepage weight cut by more than two thirds, all 41 pages verified, and off-site backups to Backblaze.
A manufacturer’s catalog, maintained for more than a decade.
Vendome has made stills in Louisville since 1903, and I have looked after its web presence for more than ten years, through two websites. The current site is an equipment catalog with an extensive request-a-quote system at its heart, and it is still maintained and developed by me today.
A company with that reputation does not hand its website to just anyone twice. Maintenance is how the second time happens.
From Google reviews
“Shaun has taken care of the Vendome Copper & Brass Works website for years. He handles our hosting, our online store and everything in between, and when something comes up he finds the cause, fixes it quickly and explains it in plain English. We trust him with our site and would recommend him to anyone.”
“Shaun has built Field of Screams two websites now. … He also handles our hosting and helped us straighten out our Google listing. When something needs changing in the middle of the season, I call him and it gets done. Could not recommend him more.”
Years building websites
Dedicated server I run myself, behind Cloudflare
Ticket queues between you and the developer
Small issues stay small.
Updates on a schedule, backups you can actually restore, speed and security watched, and the person who knows your site on the other end of the phone. That is the whole job.
What the sites I maintain look like on a desk, in a hand and on a phone.
Current desktop, detail and phone views of live sites I host and maintain. Nothing redrawn, nothing staged.
Four steps from first call to first lead.
Audit
A look at the site as it is: versions, plugins, backups, speed, security, and what has been quietly failing.
Fix first
Anything already broken or behind gets fixed before the plan starts, quoted up front.
Care
Updates on a schedule, backups verified, uptime checked, security hardened, small changes handled within the plan.
Answer the phone
When something goes wrong you call the person who knows the site, not a queue.
What owners ask before they hand over the keys.
What does a WordPress maintenance plan include?
It is scoped to the site, in writing: core, theme and plugin updates on a schedule, backups verified rather than just taken, uptime checks, security hardening, and a monthly allowance for small changes. Bigger work is quoted separately.
How much does WordPress maintenance cost?
Priced monthly, not by the hour, after the audit. A five-page brochure site and a thousand-product store carry very different risk, and the plan reflects that. You get a number before anything starts. My guide to website maintenance cost factors explains what moves that number.
Do I have to move my hosting to you?
No. I maintain sites on other hosts. Sites on my managed WordPress hosting, a dedicated server behind Cloudflare, get the fastest response, because I control the whole stack, and that move is often the first thing the audit recommends.
My site is already broken. Is that maintenance?
That is a repair, and it comes first. Fix it, then keep it fixed. Start with the WordPress repair page if the site is down or hacked right now.
Can you take over a site someone else built?
Yes. Most of the sites I maintain arrived that way. The audit tells us what is under the hood, and you get a plain-English read on what is fine, what is behind and what is risky.
Who hosts it, and who do I call?
I host it on my own dedicated server behind Cloudflare, and you call the person who built it. Hosting, updates and support are one relationship, not three.
Is a WordPress care plan the same as a maintenance plan?
Different names for the same promise: somebody is responsible for the site. Maintenance plan, care plan, support plan and website care all mean scheduled updates, verified backups, monitoring, security and a person to call. What matters is what is actually in writing, which is why every plan here is scoped to the site.
Is WordPress still worth maintaining in 2026?
Yes. WordPress runs a huge share of the web and is actively developed, and the sites that get into trouble are the ones nobody updates, not the ones built on it. A maintained WordPress site is fast, secure and easy to hand to any developer; an unmaintained one on any platform is a liability.
What happens if my site is hacked while on a plan?
It is caught early, because the plan includes monitoring and off-site backups, and the cleanup is part of the relationship rather than a surprise bill. If a site arrives already infected, the cleanup comes first: see WordPress malware removal.
Ready to stop worrying about the website?
Tell me what the site is and what worries you, and get a straight answer on what a care plan for it looks like, from the person who would be watching it.
Of 593 independent Louisville business websites checked in October 2026, 21 did not load a working homepage. Among pages showing a copyright year, 18% still showed 2024 or earlier. See the method and limits in my Louisville small business website study.
Connect with me
Tell me about the project.
What happens next
- 01I reply, usually the same day. Every message comes straight to me, not a ticket queue.
- 02A short call. What the site needs to do, who it is for, and what has not worked before.
- 03A written scope and flat quote. Before any work starts, with hosting and ongoing care listed separately.
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