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“Ask Anca” is a website advice column written by Anca Mosoiu. Anca owns Tech Liminal, a co-working space and technology hotspot.

With a WordPress site, there are several things that constitute maintenance.  Here is how I break it down:

1. Change text or graphics on pages. This is done through the WordPress interface, usually by our clients.
2. Add new pages or blog posts. Clients can do this on a WordPress site.
3. Change the navigation menus (add new links, remove old links). Clients can do this on a WordPress site.
4. Create particularly complex pages. This includes things with tables or graphics that have to line up just so.  If the client knows HTML, they are fine on their own, but we do help our clients with those types of issues.
5. Change the template for the site. Add a new column, change the colors, fonts, etc.  This is something that we would do for our clients.
6. Add something to an existing column on the site (e.g. subscription forms for email newsletters). This is something that we do for clients. We can also show them how to work with widgets and they can do it themselves.
7. Keep the WordPress software up to date. This is something a client could do through the administrative interface. We could do it for them or we could recommend a web hosting provider that does it.  I would probably recommend the latter option, as dealing with software upgrades isn’t always the most fun thing to do.  Ninety-nine percent of the time the upgrade goes well – but the one time it blows up- it’s worth having support.

Here are three example sites:

Heyday Books   We set up the site for them. They add their own books, authors and events, which appear in the proper place on the site.  Occasionally, they want to change how the site looks (e.g. moving a column from the left to the right, or changing how the search results are displayed).  We do this programming for them as needed.

Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation   We set up this site for them in WordPress. We loaded the content and now they pretty much keep it up to date on their own.  Occasionally they call us to add a PayPal button to their donation page.  As you can see, this is not a “blog” site – it’s more of an informational site.

Get Cooking Simply   These food bloggers come to Tech Liminal for help with a few technical issues and occasional help with laying out the format of their recipes, but for the most part they create their own content and manage the site on their own.  Once in a while I help with updating the WordPress software since their website host is occasionally finicky.