Hi,

 

As most of my work is WordPress based, I was wondering how to go about keeping client site's up to date. Not just the core WP install, but plugins and backups too.

 

Does anyone else here do this? If so, how do you go about it? In terms of selling the service to your clients and at what cost? (I don't expect specific figures here. Hourly rate? Monthly fee?)

 

I was thinking of using WPManage to 'manage' all of the client sites who sign up to it. It seems really good.

 

Thanks

Hi @welshhuw,

 

I've come across your question because I've just started to look into the same thing. I run a small web company where we build sites in WordPress and now we're looking at better ways to serve our clients.

 

What seems to happen is a client comes to us for a design & build and then does not consider how the site will be updated.

 

We tend to host all client sites on a VPS so there are many WordPress sites out of date potentially causing security risks.

 

Thinking about your question I believe most would offer a monthly monitoring service whereby when updates to the WP Core and/or Plugins become available you would login to the site and install the update.

 

I have issue with this, which mainly comes down to the process of launching a site and the environments used:

• Local Dev
• Staging / Testing
• Production

Our process always involves version control via git/github. We develop locally, pushing to a staging area for testing and then again pushing to production on launch.

 

Therefore I have issue with a typical "login to WP and hit the update plugins button" because code under version control quickly becomes out of date. Plus, it would be a good idea to test these updates before applying them to a live site.

 

This is why I am also looking into the best way to approach this. I suppose finding the right workflow and service to offer boils down to who's sites you want to manage (clients who you've built sites for or anyone who has a site they'd like you to manage).

 

I did come across details of this service from a company called Connected - http://www.connected-uk.com/2014/03/keeping-wordpress-up-to-date-staying-secure/

Edited March 31, 201412 yr by philipbenton

@welshhuw For your information I have asked a similar question over at Stackexchange - http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/139773/managing-wp-core-plugin-updates-for-clients

Not sure if you have seen these guys around but they seem pretty rock solid. Not exactly sure about what updates they keep control of if any, but I would assume they keep their WordPress installs to the latest and greatest... Which doesn't answer any plugin questions.

 

http://getflywheel.com/

 

Updates is a cost that's transferable to the client under maintenance etc, and considering WordPress has one click updates for most plugin scenarios it doesn't seem to be time intensive (until your theme gets broken).

 

This really isn't something I've given much thought to, most of my clients were small businesses and not too interested in managing their website routinely, so their site was locked down as best as possible and left to bit rot unfortunately.

 

Good to see you've got the need to keep things up to date though, progress.

Thanks for the reply guys. It's just a thought at the moment.

 

Not sure how one would go about it and charging for it, let alone selling it?!

 

Would you charge a monthly fee? Hourly fee? As who knows when updates will come in and how long they will take, especially if you get issues.

 

I would assume you would need to backup the site beforehand and deffo not upgrade anything on a live site. So as phil mentioned above, you would need to keep a local copy of the site... Not ideal if you had a ton of clients and of course you would need something like Migrate DB Pro to sync the database with the up to date content.

 

It's starting to sound like a right pain in the butt! I do like the thought of keeping clients site secure and up to date though and I think it would help them and us in the future. (No crazy emails about their site getting messed up or hacked!)

 

I'll follow the stackoverflow question too.

 

Thanks

It will never be straight forward if done correctly. It all depends how you manage the build process in the first place, we use version control and never include things like the Uploads folder within the repo so updating should be a little easier.

 

I would charge a flat monthly fee, how long it will take is irrelevant. The client is paying for your expertise at keeping their site secure and up-to-date so charge accordingly. If one month their are very few updates then in theory you've made plenty of money for little work, however a few months later their may be a lot of updates plus a few bugs to fix which may take longer than you'd want. So the fee will most likely even itself out over the course of a year.

 

I have looked at getflywheel and similar but at the moment that just doesn't fit with our workflow, it's aimed more at designers and not developers.

Currently I don't use Version Control. I just have a local copy, staging copy and live copy. Once I update the local copy, I upload the files manually. Tedious I know and it's something I need to address. Just not sure on the best solution?

 

Your idea of a set monthly fee sounds ideal. Yes, there will be smooth updates and then those tricky ones when something goes wrong will make up for it indeed!

 

Thanks for your advice. Will be looking at this further and working out a 'selling point' for this service.

If you host your own clients sites it's worth considering adding software updates into the hosting fee, or as part of a maintenance package if you do them.

We tend to do as BlueDreamer has mentioned, our yearly hosting fee includes the cost of our time updating (and testing) plugins and core updates.

 

We make it very clear from the start what our hosting price includes (domain registration included) and why it is considerably more expensive than a basic hosting package from any industry recognised host (123, 1&1, etc etc).

 

As you say, most of your clients are on a CMS (WordPress in this example) and as such should have been advised from the start that any CMS will require regular updates to the plugins and core files.

 

Depending on the size of the site, plugins being used, any additional packages (ongoing SEO, social media management, content creation etc) we either roll al the costs in to one yearly price, or spread it out over 12 months. We favour the 12 month option as this increases cash flow for us, whilst making it easier for the client to manage their spend.

I think you're idea is great Roothost. Thanks for the advice.

 

I tend to find myself updating client sites for free on occasions, it just bugs me when I see an update!

Hello

I appreciate this thread is a couple of months old however I wanted to post to let you know what I use...

I use a wordpress plugin called MainWP it's similar to InfiniteWP only it's based in Wordpress. It's free and has a whole host of reasonably priced addons. I used to use InfiniteWP only I wanted a solution with just one login that would allow me to update my sites (about 50 at the moment), manage projects and tickets and allow my clients to login to check.

So here's what I have done, I have installed wordpress on a subdomain with the following plugins:

• MainWP and various paid plugins to manage my clients sites
  
• WP Project Manager PRO - to manage my projects, this also includes frontend shortcodes so clients can check also.
  
• For the ticketting system I search and tested so many free and paid solutions however none of them did what I needed which was to import emails from an email account and allow my clients to reply to tickets that the system will then import. So for this I installed OSTicket (open source) configured it and then used the plugin 'Key4ce osTicket Bridge' which allows you to manage tickets from within wordpress.
  
• For Document management I use User File Manager plugin.
  

I have set this all up so that when my clients browse to my subdomain they get the wordpress login (customised of course) and then once logged in they have options to view their projects, tickets and documents.

It all seems to work perfectly at the moment.

As for charging clients for updates, I include this in the cost of hosting.

Hope this helps anyone….