Building a website is similar to building a house in many ways. Information architecture may be compared to a set of blueprints, your CMS to a building's base, and your design comps to the options for decorating and installing fixtures. As far as maintenance is concerned, that same analogy holds true. Both require frequent attention, care, and maintenance to work correctly.
Ongoing wear and tear on a home are more predictable than on an online property. This makes maintenance more difficult for a website. Every aspect of a home's design and construction is considered by architects and engineers. That's why you don't need a handyman to come to your house every month to fix things (hopefully).
Websites, on the other hand, must be vigilant against an almost endless number of unforeseen components. Maintaining a website is virtually a daily need due to the constant changes in SEO recommendations, security upgrades, and web standards (including accessibility).
Even if your website, services, or product are excellent, disregarding regular website maintenance might jeopardise your company's success. Or, in many circumstances, you may even see a decline in your share of the market.
The most efficient use of a CMS like Drupal, which is well-known for its high level of security and reliability, needs regular maintenance. Your website's investment quickly depreciates if you do not have a support and maintenance strategy in place, regardless of the platform. If you're looking for a technology partner for support and maintenance, here are our top seven reasons.
Benefits of adopting ongoing support and maintenance for your Drupal site
1. Security, 24 hours a day
Security is a major factor in the selection of a website support and maintenance company by many organisations.
It is undeniable that Drupal is one of the most secure CMSs on the market today - but this comes at a price. To prevent data breaches and cyberattacks, your Drupal website must be updated with security upgrades and fixes on a regular basis.
Thanks to the work of the Drupal community and the Drupal security team, a robust ecosystem of security patches, fixes, and upgrades has been created.
Some security tweaks and patches will necessitate your quick attention when new risks to websites emerge. Keeping a staff on the lookout for high-alert patches like these is essential if you want to keep your website protected from new attacks.
As an additional consideration, if your website is still running on Drupal 7/8 (or Drupal 6), upgrading to Drupal 9 now is essential for both maximising your website's potential and ensuring its safety.
2. Spot and remove bugs early and quickly
It's all about the timing! Ignoring even the tiniest of bugs might lose you a customer or cause more serious problems in the future.
For a variety of causes, bugs and mistakes might suddenly appear. Because of a prior vendor's hasty implementation of new features, it might lead to problems for new customers.
Inadequate testing, misunderstanding, a scarcity of knowledge, bad third-party tools, and other factors can all contribute.
(If you find any of these issues, don't hesitate to get in touch with us. We'll be happy to help you. Nothing surprises us now).
3. Always utilising the latest Drupal version
Continuous innovation, introduced in Drupal 8, has allowed for more regular release cycles for upgrades and minor version releases, which has helped alleviate long wait periods for new features and enhancements.
In November 2023, Drupal 7 will continue to get security updates, but Drupal 6 and Drupal 8 have already hit end-of-life (no security patches or additions).
To get long-term Drupal 7 support, you'll need to find a provider that offers it (like the LTS plan for Drupal 6 support). It is, however, time for you to upgrade to Drupal 9 if you want to take advantage of Drupal's latest and greatest features. Keep up with Drupal's current version to ensure that your clients get the best possible digital experience from your site. Again, we can help with this.
4. Your site grows with your business
Your company's growth necessitates proactive and long-term solutions. You need to remain on top of things if you want to acquire an advantage over your competitors. So you'll need updates and improvements to your content on a regular basis.
It goes without saying that Drupal makes it simple for anybody, regardless of their level of technical expertise, to make changes to their website's content. However, you'll need some technical know-how to take advantage of the latest features and improvements that can enhance your customers' user experience and journey.
There is a slew of modern Drupal features that can benefit your organisation, like content personalisation, language support, content moderation, and many more.
User behaviour is never static, which is why your website must be constantly updated to meet the changing demands of your users and your company objectives.
5. Free your time to focus on your business objectives
Focus on your strengths. Allow people to assist you in any areas of weakness.
It happens... All of a sudden, your website is in desperate need of all of the latest security patches, improvements, and updates. Even if you were capable of doing so, managing a division or organisation would take up too much of your time. It is possible to better focus on your business's objectives by outsourcing your Drupal support and maintenance to a partner that handles it on a daily basis.
6. Maintain healthy SEO
You can't just set and forget when it comes to increasing your organic search engine visibility or enhancing your SEO rating.
Algorithms and criteria for search engines are always changing to meet the demands of a dynamic market and a diverse audience.
Drupal has a plethora of SEO-friendly features and modules, but you won't see benefits until you have regular Drupal SEO assistance. There must be someone on your team who is always monitoring and responding to the SEO industry.
7. Your website will scale
Many things change when your company grows. Your website should be scalable as your company expands. There will be an increase in the number of visitors, necessitating the addition of new features, enhanced security, further third-party integrations and API updates, as well as enhancements to the Drupal user experience.
With the appropriate Drupal support partner, you'll get more than just assistance; you'll get a system that can grow with you.
How to choose the best Drupal support agency
There are many areas of support. Some sites require a lighter touch than others. Tasks can include:
- Adding new features or maintaining compatibility
- updating Drupal modules (core and contrib)
- Providing frequent security updates, upgrades, and fixes for Drupal
- Service to assist with the transfer of Drupal content and databases, as well as fixing bugs that may arise during the process
- Code review to ensure the best site structure, quality, logic and performance as well as testing and design
- Performance testing of a website's predicted workload, response time, speed, resilience and scalability
- Assisting with current integrations and new integrations with third-party apps and APIs
You now know why you need Drupal support and maintenance services, so here are a few things to keep in mind while looking for the right Drupal support agency to work with you on your project.
Firstly, a site audit is reccomended. A thorough audit should be conducted by an expert Drupal. Your website's performance, security, bugs, and accessibility and SEO status should all be assessed. Knowing the areas of improvement is an important consideration so you can factor in these issues while developing a Drupal support and maintenance strategy.
What about Drupal 7 support?
Drupal 7 is still being used by a significant number of users today. Such users, as well as the teams responsible for creating and maintaining these older Drupal installations, play an important role in the Drupal ecosystem.
Users who fail to update from Drupal 7 before its end of life may hold the Drupal community liable if a vulnerability like this is discovered. As a result, the Drupal 7 End-of-Life date will be re-evaluated every year from now on.
In truth, Dries, the Drupal project lead, the Drupal Association, and the Drupal Security Working Group have been looking after the Drupal 7 ecosystem since the previous end-of-life extension.
As a big number of sites in the Drupal project are still on Drupal 7, they have felt the need to give further assistance to the members of the community that is still using this version. They'll make a final decision on whether or not to extend community support for Drupal 7 by July 2023. They'll also look at things like community support, Drupal 7 use, and the number of people actively maintaining Drupal 7.
Choosing Drupal support with Code Enigma
If you choose dedicated assistance, this is normally established on a monthly retainer or blocks of a set number of hours (for example, with us, it's 5). This guarantees that your website is customised and appropriately supported both proactively and on-demand, ensuring that your website is adequately supported. Most support service providers additionally offer to spend your unused help hours into the creation of a new feature or upgrading interesting features.
It's our job to maintain your Drupal website, ensuring it works at its best.
In the event of an issue, you'll have immediate access to our in-house team of developers and system administrators as part of our maintenance packages. All of our specialities are available to you as a client through our multidisciplinary support services for your website.
It's possible to request an accessibility assessment or to inquire about broken links or new functionality if we manage your AWS environment. Alternatively, you can ask us to assist you in resolving difficulties with the Linux hosting environment for your application (whether or not we manage it).
Alternatively, you can rely on us to take care of all aspects of your website management when you choose our fully managed service.
You may create and manage your tickets and their priority in our online ticketing system while we work on difficult queries or challenges.