Why Website Maintenance Matters More Than Ever

TL;DR: A website needs ongoing care to stay safe and working. WordPress security holes rose 42% in 2025, almost all of them in plugins, and attackers often exploit new ones within hours. Updates fix those holes, but they can also break forms, pages, or the whole site, so each update needs a backup first and testing afterward. Hosting protects the server; effective critical website maintenance protects your site itself, and it takes hands-on work for every site. I’ll be sharing updated website care options in the coming weeks.

Your website is no longer something you can build once and leave alone. It’s closer to a car than a brochure: it runs every day, it has hundreds of moving parts, and it needs regular service to stay safe and reliable.

Regular attention through critical website maintenance is vital for long-term performance and security.

Most business owners never think about what happens behind the scenes to keep their site running. That’s a good thing; it means the work is being done. But the amount of that work has grown sharply over the last two years, and it’s important for you to know why. This post explains what keeps a website healthy, what can go wrong when it isn’t maintained, and why the stakes keep rising.

Your website is built from many pieces

A typical WordPress website is assembled from four kinds of building blocks:

• PHP:  The engine that runs the foundation of the site (read my post on what happens when there’s an issue with PHP)
• WordPress core: the main software that runs the site.
• A theme: controls how the site looks.
• Plugins: add features like contact forms, galleries, online booking, SEO tools, and security.

Many business sites run a dozen or more plugins, and each one is written and updated by a different company or developer. When any of those developers finds a bug or a security hole, they release an update. If the update isn’t applied, the hole stays open on your site.

Think of it like the locks on a building with 20 doors, each made by a different manufacturer. Every so often, one of those manufacturers announces that its lock can be picked. Someone has to notice the announcement, replace the lock, and make sure the door still closes properly afterward.

Security Vulnerabilities are being Exploited at an Alarmingly Increasing Rate

The number of known security holes in WordPress sites is climbing quickly, and attackers are getting faster at using them. Patchstack, a WordPress security firm, tracked these numbers for 2025 in its State of WordPress Security in 2026 report:

• 11,334 new vulnerabilities were found in 2025, a 42% increase over 2024.
• 91% of them were in plugins. Only 6 were in WordPress core itself.
• The most dangerous kind, holes that can be exploited by automated mass attacks, rose 113% in a single year.
• 46% of vulnerabilities had no fix available yet when they were made public.

The speed is the most worrying part. Patchstack found that about half of high-impact vulnerabilities were attacked within 24 hours of being announced, with a typical time of about 5 hours. Updating “sometime this month” is no longer fast enough.

These attacks aren’t personal. Bots scan millions of websites around the clock, looking for any site running an outdated plugin. A small local business is just as likely to be hit as a large company, because the bots don’t care who you are.

Artificial intelligence is speeding things up further. Patchstack expects attackers to increasingly use AI tools to find and exploit holes automatically. That means more discoveries, faster attacks, and less time between an announcement and a break-in.

Why you can’t just click “Update All”

If updates fix security holes, why not set everything to update automatically? Because updates can also break things.

Each plugin is built by a different developer, and they don’t test their updates against every other plugin you use. When one changes, it can clash with another. The results range from mildly annoying to costly:

• A contact or quote form quietly stops sending messages, and leads disappear without anyone noticing.
• A page layout falls apart on mobile phones.
• A booking calendar or online store stops taking orders.
• The whole site shows an error page instead of your homepage.

That’s why proper updating is a careful process, not a button. It means backing up the site first, applying updates in a controlled way, checking that key pages and forms still work, and being ready to roll back immediately if something goes wrong. Skipping updates leaves you exposed to attacks. Rushing them puts your site at risk of breaking. Good maintenance does both safely.

What this looked like last week

Here’s a real example from my own work. Last week, I upgraded most of the websites I host to newer, more secure versions of PHP, the software WordPress runs on behind the scenes. I also moved most of them onto Cloudflare, a network that sits in front of your website to filter out malicious traffic and help pages load faster.

The PHP upgrade was necessary because older versions stop receiving security fixes. As expected with an upgrade like this, a few sites needed theme and plugin updates to work properly with the newer version. I worked through those site by site, updating and testing each one until everything was running smoothly and securely.  Time consuming and frankly, outside of the scope of what I charge for annual hosting. 

A few days later, PHP released emergency fixes for two critical security flaws, and only supported versions received them. As I wrote in my last post, the upgrade work done the week before is why those sites were ready.

This is what website care looks like today: anticipating what’s coming, doing the careful work ahead of time, and handling the details so you don’t have to worry about them.

Hosting and maintenance are two different jobs

I’m often asked why maintenance isn’t simply part of hosting. The short answer is that they protect different things.

Hosting is the building your website lives in. Maintenance is the ongoing care of what’s inside it.

Hosting prices are fixed based on the amount of space used on the server and a well-run server protects many websites at once. Maintenance can’t work that way. Every site has its own mix of plugins, its own layout, and its own critical features, so each one needs its own attention. As the number of security updates has grown, so has the time each site needs to keep it up to date and secure. 

What proper maintenance looks like

A well-maintained website gets steady, behind-the-scenes care. Here’s what that involves:

• Regular updates: WordPress, the theme, and every plugin are kept current, with urgent security fixes applied quickly.
• Backups before every change: if an update causes a problem, the site can be restored to a working version within minutes.
• Testing after updates: key pages, forms, and features are checked so problems are caught before customers notice them.
• Security monitoring: the site is watched for suspicious activity, malware, and known vulnerable plugins.
• Uptime monitoring: if the site goes down, someone knows right away, not when a customer calls to mention it.
• Cleanup and repair: if something does go wrong, there is a plan and a team ready to fix it.
• Reporting: you see what was updated, what was checked, and how your site is performing.

None of this is glamorous, and when it’s done well, you’ll rarely notice it. And that’s my goal.

A healthy website protects your business

The cost of a neglected website goes beyond repairs. A hacked or broken site can lose you leads, damage customer trust, and hurt your search visibility. Google may flag a hacked site with a warning, which sends visitors away before they ever reach you. And as people increasingly find businesses through AI search tools, a fast, secure, reliable site matters more than ever to how you show up.

Maintenance is how you protect the investment you’ve already made in your website and your online visibility.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing updated website care options designed around the keeping your site updated and secure.  My goal is simple: to make sure every client’s site gets the level of care it needs to stay secure, working, and visible. If you have questions about your own site in the meantime, I’m always happy to talk.

Sources

• Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026