Services
Your host runs the updates. I open the site and confirm they worked.
Most of what goes wrong with a site never shows on the homepage. A form stops sending, mail from the site lands in spam, or a backup stops running, and I’d rather find it than have a customer find it first.
Gibsonworks Good Standing is my monthly maintenance plan for sites that need to keep working. It comes in three tiers, from $300 to $800 a month on a twelve-month term, plus a lighter option called Heads Up at $150 a month. Every month the site gets a pass I call the Once Over, and you hear about what it found.
Why a plan at all
Sites rarely fail all at once, and they fail in the places nobody’s looking:
- A contact form stops delivering after an update, and the messages go nowhere.
- Mail from the site starts landing in spam because the email authentication behind it broke.
- A backup stops running, and nobody finds out until the day it’s needed.
- A paid plugin’s license lapses, and the plugin stops getting security fixes.
- The domain or the SSL certificate expires.
- Someone gets in through an outdated plugin and quietly adds an unauthorized administrator account.
None of it shows on the homepage until the day it does, and by then it’s an emergency instead of a line in a report.
Earlier this month I fixed one of these for a small nonprofit. The notifications from their payment authorization form weren’t reaching the person who processes them, because Google was filing every one as spam, and as far as I can tell it had been happening for more than a year and a half. The site looked fine the whole time. The cause was one DNS record, and the fix was one DNS record.
If your host already runs updates and takes backups, that’s expected. Good Standing is the part where someone opens the site afterward and confirms it worked.
The report
Every month you get a short report, and the first line tells you whether you’re needed for anything. Most months, it’s quiet.
Underneath that, I keep the numbers month over month, because one reading of page speed or disk usage tells you close to nothing. Twelve readings tell you the plugin count doubled in the spring, the disk is two thirds full, or speed slipped in March and never recovered.
Three tiers. You pick one.
Head to Toe
$800 a month
Twelve-month term
Head to Toe fits when the organization depends on the money that moves through the site, and a silent payment failure could go unnoticed for days.
Everything in Hands On, plus:
- Page speed, tracked month over month
- Dead links found before visitors find them
- A real donation or form payment, tested end to end
Everything Head to Toe adds
- Page speed holds steady month over month
- Links on the site still go somewhere
- A real donation or form payment goes through, end to end
Hands On
$600 a month
Twelve-month term
Hands On fits when people use the site to reach you, and losing it for a week would cost more than this plan does.
Everything in Eyes On, plus:
- I update every plugin and theme, with a fresh backup first
- The backup gets a test restore every month
- The contact form and the site’s mail still reach people
Everything Hands On adds
- Every plugin and theme is current, including what auto-update skips
- A fresh backup comes before any update
- The backup has been proven to restore, every month
- I comb the error and access logs for anything unusual
- Mail from the site lands in inboxes, not spam
- Only the right people have administrator accounts
- The contact form still delivers
Eyes On
$300 a month
Twelve-month term
Eyes On fits when the site is straightforward and you want to know before something becomes urgent.
- I watch the site all month and catch what’s about to expire
- Backups and WordPress updates get checked, not assumed
- A written report every month, with the history
Everything Eyes On checks
- WordPress updated itself, and the site still works
- There’s a recent backup, and it’s real
- The site is watched for downtime all month
- The domain and the padlock stay current
- The address still points at the site
- Paid plugins keep getting security fixes
- The server’s PHP version still gets security fixes
- The site has room to grow on the host
- You hear about a critical security alert within one business day
- Every plugin is still maintained by its developer
- WordPress’s own health check, recorded every month
- A written report with the month-over-month history, and a place to reply to it
Pulse
$100 a month
On any twelve-month plan
Pulse is for a site that sells online. A store loses money in places the homepage never shows: an order email that stops going out, a checkout that breaks after an update, a slow week nobody notices.
What Pulse adds:
- A real store order, tested end to end
- Order emails and the checkout pages, checked
- Orders per week, against the weeks before
Everything Pulse checks
- A real store order goes through, end to end
- Shop, product, cart, and checkout pages all load
- Order emails reach a real inbox
- Receipts and stock updates keep running in the background
- Orders per week, against the weeks before
- The store’s database gets checked for buildup, and I clean it only after I tell you what goes
Pulse goes on Eyes On, Hands On, or Head to Toe, and it comes as one set.
Need less than that?
Heads Up
$150 a month
Month to month
For the site that mostly needs to keep working, and the owner who’d rather not read about it. I watch it, and I tell you if something’s wrong.
- I watch for downtime, and for a domain or padlock about to expire
- You hear about a critical security alert within one business day
- A short note every month: all clear, or what needs you
Everything Heads Up checks
- WordPress updated itself, and the site still works
- There’s a recent backup, and it’s real
- The site is watched for downtime all month
- The domain and the padlock stay current
- You hear about a critical security alert within one business day
- A short note every month: all clear, or anything that needs you
There’s no written report and no history, so there’s no twelve-month term either. When the site needs a closer look, Eyes On is the next step up.
What the Once Over checks and confirms each month
| What the Once Over checks | Head to Toe$800 a month | Hands On$600 a month | Eyes On$300 a month | Heads Up$150 a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Updates and backups | ||||
| WordPress updated itself, and the site still worksCore auto-update verified | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| There’s a recent backup, and it’s realRecent backup verified | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Every plugin and theme is current, including what auto-update skipsEvery plugin and theme current | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| A fresh backup comes before any updateBackup before any update | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| The backup has been proven to restore, every monthMonthly test restore | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| Watching the clocks | ||||
| The site is watched for downtime all monthUptime monitoring | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| The domain and the padlock stay currentSSL expiry and domain expiry | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| The address still points at the siteDNS drift | Included | Included | Included | Not included |
| Paid plugins keep getting security fixesPremium plugin license expiry | Included | Included | Included | Not included |
| The server’s PHP version still gets security fixesPHP end-of-life date | Included | Included | Included | Not included |
| The site has room to grow on the hostDisk usage against the hosting quota | Included | Included | Included | Not included |
| Security and mail | ||||
| You hear about a critical security alert within one business dayCritical vulnerability alerts | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Every plugin is still maintained by its developerAbandoned or closed plugin check | Included | Included | Included | Not included |
| WordPress’s own health check, recorded every monthSite Health screen captured | Included | Included | Included | Not included |
| I comb the error and access logs for anything unusualPHP and access log review | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| Mail from the site lands in inboxes, not spamSPF, DKIM, and DMARC still passing | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| Only the right people have administrator accountsAdministrator account audit | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| The contact form still deliversForm delivery test | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| What visitors see | ||||
| Page speed holds steady month over monthPage speed, homepage and top-nav pages | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Links on the site still go somewhereDead link check across the site | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| A real donation or form payment goes through, end to endTransaction test, donation or form payment | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| For stores, with Pulse | ||||
| A real store order goes through, end to endStore transaction test | With Pulse | With Pulse | With Pulse | Not included |
| Shop, product, cart, and checkout pages all loadCheckout path rendered | With Pulse | With Pulse | With Pulse | Not included |
| Order emails reach a real inboxTransactional email delivered | With Pulse | With Pulse | With Pulse | Not included |
| Receipts and stock updates keep running in the backgroundAction Scheduler and cron queue health | With Pulse | With Pulse | With Pulse | Not included |
| Orders per week, against the weeks beforeOrder volume trend | With Pulse | With Pulse | With Pulse | Not included |
| The store’s database gets checked for buildup, and I clean it only after I tell you what goesDatabase bloat report | With Pulse | With Pulse | With Pulse | Not included |
| Reporting | ||||
| A short note every month: all clear, or anything that needs youMonthly status note | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| A written report with the month-over-month history, and a place to reply to itWritten monthly report and reply channel | Included | Included | Included | Not included |
| Monthly | $800 | $600 | $300 | $150 |
The term
Twelve months, billed monthly, at a price held for the term. The plan starts the first of the month, and everything invoices on the first, including any hourly work that month, so you get one invoice rather than two.
The twelve months are not a lock-in tactic. The month-over-month history is the product, and a three-month plan doesn’t have one.
No plan at all
You don’t have to buy any of these. You have to decide what it’s worth to you, and whether you want to work with me. I’ve lived in my house for nineteen years and never had anyone look at the furnace, so I’m not going to tell you a plan is mandatory.
If you’d rather call when something breaks, everything I do is billed hourly, starting with setting the site up to look after itself: automatic updates on, backups running with enough history to go back, and a quick way to restore. After that, you call me when you need me.
What it isn’t
Good Standing identifies. It doesn’t diagnose or repair. When the Once Over finds something, you get the finding and a recommendation, and the fix is quoted separately.
The plan covers a site’s health, performance, and security. Accessibility isn’t part of it, because accessibility and technical SEO audits are their own engagements and can’t fit inside a monthly pass.
Not sure which one?
Send a note and name the option, or describe the site and I’ll tell you where I’d expect it to land. What the site does and who depends on it is usually enough to answer. Let me know either way.