Like a car, a photovoltaic plant, a boiler or any product that is a bit complex and that is intended to last over time, a website needs to be maintained so that it can continue to function well over time, but also to prevent the site or its users from being exposed to security breaches or being the target of cybercriminals.

There are different types of maintenance:

• preventive maintenance: we will regularly work on the product to limit the risk of breakdowns or failures that could occur if we left it as it is

• corrective maintenance: unlike preventive maintenance, this involves intervening following the appearance of a breakdown or a major bug on the product

• evolutionary maintenance: it allows you to add something new to your site such as new functionalities or design updates...

As we saw at the beginning of this article, it is important to maintain your site so that it continues to function well over time.

By maintaining or maintaining your website or web or mobile application, you ensure:

• the security of the maintained product and that of its users (in particular their data shared on its site or application), it is important for them, for you, but also for the image of your company

• to have professionals ready to intervene if the product suddenly stops working (this can represent significant sums, especially on e-commerce sites)

• that it continues to meet legal constraints (GDPR for example)

• that it is up to date from a technical point of view and that its code uses up-to-date components and libraries that are always supported

• to be still up to date with market uses, for example the growing adoption of new mobile terminals with a new specificity (as was the case for the first time at Apple with the arrival of the iPhone X) , or new browsers (like Brave) or the appearance of new uses such as dark mode (dark mode)

Beyond that, prevention is better than cure, and it would be very risky for a company to be satisfied with having a website or a web or mobile application without considering that a breakdown or mandatory upgrade of a technical stack items may arise and interrupt service, potentially costing more than paying for a maintenance fee.

The service provider in charge of maintenance can also offer you:

• to make regular backups of your system, it is important to avoid losing everything if the database of your site or application were to be overwritten by mistake or suffered a major breakdown

• to send you regular reports on the performance of your site (availability, critical bugs, etc.)

To properly maintain your website or mobile application, it is important to:

• follow the recommendations and major updates of the libraries and components used in your product

• consult the automatic tools that detect the presence of vulnerabilities

• set up automatic alerts in the event of crashes on key points of the product

• keep up to date with current trends to be sure the product is still relevant to your users

• make regular backups of your users' data and the content of the website or web or mobile application

By following all the recommendations in this article, you should now have a better understanding of website or application maintenance!

If you wish to entrust us with the design, development or maintenance of an application or a Wordpress or other site, write to us at partners@blacksmith.studio!