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Site Maintenance and Security Hardening (SMASH) keeps your website components current while monitoring and adapting your security stance against hackers. SMASH implements security best-practices as a monthly subscription service. Whether I built your site or not, this service is available to businesses that don't want to deal with the hassle of updates and the problems that can come with them. SMASH is available as a stand alone service with your current web host (see exceptions below under "Scope of SMASH").
Not all web hosts support the security approaches I use, so we would need to review that aspect first.
WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that requires constant updating. These updates can cause problems when a component interferes with some other component, or if the update fails for some reason. Your SMASH subscription allows me to handle all updates and conflicts that might occur at no additional cost.
- Pricing is simple: $100/mo for simple websites, higher subscription rates for more complex websites. Payments can be on a monthly subscription by credit card, quarterly by check or some other combination that works best for you.
- I keep your plugins and themes up to date, and troubleshoot at no charge if conflicts arise.
- Security includes obfuscated login paths, tracking visitor behavior, and blocking known attack originators, including brute force attacks, requests for non-existent pages and files, and shutting down back boors.* I'm always improving my approaches.
- Depending on your web hosting, websites are backed up daily by the web host, along with optional manual backups I sometimes perform before an update. Long term backups up to a year are also kept in a secure location with two such full backups each month. This aspect requires your web host to support the plugins I use for this activity.
- I welcome websites I didn't build.
The Scope of SMASH
Due the specialized, configuration-dependent nature of this service, some things have to be known up front before I can accept a website.
- Due to the way their web hosting works, and chronic problems with the knowledge of their customer service reps, I cannot implement SMASH on WordPress websites hosted with GoDaddy, DreamHost, Host Gator, BlueHost, or Site5.
- All licenses for plugins, themes, or other software need to be current and renewed by you or wherever the licenses originate from. If I need to reach out to a component company for support (for example, a plugin company like WooCommerce) then I need to be authorized to do so on your behalf because the licenses belong to you. It's usually trivial to add me on an as-needed basis.
- By default, my SMASH service doesn't take ownership of custom code, but instead requires whomever created it be available for troubleshooting consultation and remediation. I will always attempt to evaluate and fix it myself first, but that can sometimes be impossible depending on the complexity. Failing that, I do have a very senior developer on my virtual team that charges by the hour to learn and fix complex custom code. I use him regularly for clients that don't maintain a relationship with their original web developers. The fact that he makes a living doing that says a lot about how fickle custom code can be.
- Content updates at my reduced rate of $65/hr. is available, and I don't charge for updates that take less than 15-minutes. Updating content on your website is usually not a problem if a standard page builder or theming system is used such as DIVI, Elementor, or BeaverBuilder. If content updates require something different, I'll need some direction / orientation so that I know what I'm doing.
- I do work that increases the security of WordPress. If in the course of that work the code your developers created stops working because of some security measure I take, I'll need to forego implementing that security measure until your web developers can address it.
- I will always troubleshoot problems as deep as possible before reaching out to one of your vendors for help.
- I will need FTP access, WordPress Admin access, and access to your hosting control panel.
*Please review my Standard Contract for limitations and indemnification.