Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

WordPress

WordPress maintenance for your clients...?

Hey guys,

I need to start offering WordPress maintenance to my clients. Do you keep WordPress updates and server maintenance support separate. My thinking is I can keep WordPress up to date and keep the plugins up to date, but if the server goes down then that's a hosting issue and they need to take that up with their hosting company.

The other question is, what if an important theme update comes out but because of all the customizations you made to the site updating the theme breaks the layout somehow?

I'm just trying to get an idea of what others are doing - if you have any contract templates you can send my way regarding monthly maintenance that would be awesome!

Also what would be an appropriate price? I'm thinking $40 dollars p/m for WordPress, plugin and theme updates.

Best wishes, Mike

1 Answer

Tiffany McAllister
Tiffany McAllister
25,806 Points

I'm not a professional WordPress developer or anything so I can't really offer you any advice regarding maintenance but as for the theme issue, I believe the best way to customise an existing theme is by creating a child theme. This way the theme won't break when there is an update.

Hey Tiffany, I'm using child themes, but I've had a situation once before where the theme developer updated the theme and changed some of the class names. Plus that's not to mention, sometimes a new theme update can conflict with a plugin...