At That Point In Time When You Take Over Your CMS Designed Web Site…

There should be some things that you should realize for the time you plan to take over your content management system (CMS) designed site completely.

You will be responsible for your hosting. This includes your database server, and if there are problems with the site that relate to the database server, you’ll be responsible for getting this corrected. Most of the time this will turn out to be quite easy – such as the hosting company simply needing to reboot a database server, and it can be fulfilled by calling the server company.

You will be responsible for your versions, modules and updates. The CMS and the plug-ins or modules that may be incorporated into your site come out with updates that will, from time to time, need to be incorporated into your site. Depending on the CMS, it can happen pretty often. It’s usually pretty easy to install the updates/upgrades, but again, it will be your responsibility once you take over a site completely (meaning that you are not paying someone else to maintain the site). This includes finding new plug-ins to replace prior plug-ins if they fail, or fail to be maintained by the original plug-in author.

Setting up new editor/admin accounts and providing training. Fortunately WordPress is quite intuitive, and there’s a lot of good documentation available online. But you’ll have site-specific documentation that you’ll want to have – what you’re using a specific feature or category for, how you want navigation to flow, etc.

Maintaining current backs up for everything.  The database export, the templates, etc.

And that’s just the start of it.

Bottom line – when you take over your site, you are responsible for the operating capability of the site. In the old days of static pages that was pretty easy, but today with content management systems it requires greater responsibility.

(P.S.  We take care of these items for our maintenance clients.)