If you pay someone to manage your website it is because you understand the importance of maintaining your website. If you maintain your own website you either know how much time it consumes, or you aren’t doing it correctly.

I maintain over 100 websites and the tasks I perform for each are done quietly in the background. But, that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Here is a list of some of the tasks performed:

• Nightly backups. These are performed automatically, but every day I perform a check on the websites from one letter of the alphabet to make sure they are being backed up and to ensure the off-site storage isn’t overwhelmed.
• Comment moderation. Every comment that is posted on every website is moderated. I receive an email from the website indicating that a comment is waiting for moderation. I log-in and either approve or disapprove comments when I receive a notification.
• SSL Certificate validation. SSL Certificates renew every 6 months. Just because they are set to auto-renew doesn’t mean it always happens. So, I have a reminder for every website of the expiration date. I manually pull up the website to check the SSL Certificate and set the next reminder.
• Malicious Log in Attempts. Special software installed on each website that will notify me when someone has tried to log in unsuccessfully and will block IP addresses that are malicious. It will send me a notification so I can permanently block someone who shouldn’t be attempting to log in. I permanently block to 6 – 12 log in attempts daily.
• Event Updating. When a client requests me to add an event to their website I also set a reminder to take down the event after it has taken place.
• Auto Blogging. For clients that pay for the auto blogging feature, I have a reminder set so I log in to their website, select an appropriate article from the RSS feeds we have established and post it to all their social media channels, as well as their Google Business listing.
• Google Business Listing. If a client has a physical location I also manage their business listing with Google. When they change their hours, post a blog, have a sale, etc. I update their business listing accordingly.
• Google notifications. Google sends out notifications to websites when they detect a problem. The problems are related to any issue that may cause Google to downgrade your website or keep them from searching your website. These notifications can be difficult to diagnose and sometimes difficult to fix. I respond to several a week.
• Website Down notifications. Special software is installed that will notify me when a website goes down. This actually happens every time a website performs an update to the software so I have the sensitivity dialed down to 5 minutes. If a website goes down for more than 5 minutes I am notified. I also get notified if the website response time is slower than expected.

The reminder system I use is Asana. I also have special groups of tasks; like the implementation of a new website, so I don’t forget tasks, tips & tricks with links to resources, maintenance tasks, and events.

So, if you haven’t heard from your webmaster lately, don’t worry. Things are just getting done quietly behind the scenes so you can focus on other things.