The Situation
Sites Need Care
Hosting your own site and having control over your data and costs can be great, but it comes with the burden of keeping it up to date. You’re probably here because you’ve learned the hard way that neglected software updates can be a growing problem.
Like backups, you often don’t know how important they are until you’re paying for disk recovery or working around something you lost.
I learned this early in my career when we’d ship a project with a brand new CMS without any plan or contract for handling maintenance. I eventually learned to have that conversation before a project started.
What I Do
I Can Help
I’m Matt (👋) and I have a lot of experience with Craft CMS projects and the different sorts of hosting they can live on. I can take a look at your site, estimate what it would take to get it up to date, make it happen, and either help keep it that way or train someone else to maintain it.
Most projects can be revived, or even decoupled from the CMS and archived if they no longer get content updates and the hosting situation is excessively complicated.
Common Questions
FAQ
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Is this expensive?
Playing catch-up will always be more expensive than routine maintenance, and the cost ultimately depends on the site’s complexity and how far out of date it is.
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How much does recovery cost?
The range can vary wildly. I’ve restored and updated hacked sites for around $1,500 and I’ve migrated large, complex ones for closer to $10,000.
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What’s helpful to know up front?
- What version of Craft CMS are you running?
- What operating system, PHP, and database version is the site on?
- How many plugins does the site use, and are they still actively developed?
- Does the site utilize any custom modules or private plugins?
- Do you have access to the project’s source code repository?
- Has the site been hacked because of an unpatched vulnerability?
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What can I do if we need to move fast?
Often the most cumbersome aspect of this work is sharing access. I insist that you own your services, but I’ll need to work with them. I recommend collecting these things:
- An email forwarder like webmaster@example.com you can control that sends to both of us.
- Server/hosting account credentials (Laravel Forge, Craft Cloud, Ploi, Arcustech, AWS, etc.).
- Domain registrar credentials (Hover, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Porkbun, etc.).
- Cloudflare credentials.
- Source code repository access (GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, etc.).
- Transactional email service credentials (Postmark, Mailgun, Resend, etc.).
- Cloud storage access (AWS S3, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, etc.)
- Credentials for service accounts your site uses: YouTube, Google Maps, Google reCAPTCHA, Intercom, etc.
- Project documentation, development notes, or design discussions that might offer more context.
- Latest backup(s) if your site has been hacked.
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Why should I trust you to help with this?
I’ve worked with Craft CMS for most of my career, even as an employee of Pixel & Tonic, and I’ve built, maintained, or supported easily more than 100 projects. I’ve seen quite a bit, I’m able to work fairly quickly, and I genuinely like to leave things better than I found them and make sure they’re cared for.
Get in Touch
Let’s Talk!
Tell me about your project and I’ll see if I can help! I’d be happy to provide a free estimate if I can get a look around.