What Is Website Maintenance and Why Do I Need It for My Drupal Site?

Drupal website maintenance is key to site stability and security. Security releases of Drupal core occur monthly, while contributed module security releases may occur weekly. Keep reading to learn more about ensuring your Drupal site's health.

What does Drupal website maintenance and support mean?

Drupal maintenance and support keep your site running smoothly and efficiently, however they are not the same. Maintenance is a more proactive approach - applying periodic security releases and regular patches reduces risk of attacks on your site or broken functionality due to outdated code. Support is often a more reactive approach, where developers can address questions or issues that may arise or implement prioritized enhancements to a site over time.

What are the main benefits of ongoing Drupal support?

As your business expands, the goals and requirements of your website may change. Engaging an agency for Drupal support services helps you collaborate on and implement a long-term roadmap for your website.

• Ongoing support and maintenance often includes:

• Security updates (and emergency patches if needed)

• Core and module updates

• Database maintenance

• Technical performance audits

• Accessibility audits (code and content)

• SEO optimization 

• Analytics reports

While these activities are not unique to Drupal, one of the benefits of this open-source platform is the organization's upkeep and streamlining of Drupal core and contributed modules. Staying up-to-date with the latest releases is paramount for keeping your site secure. However, it also ensures your codebase is nimble enough to allow for newer enhancements that meet user experience needs as digital trends shift.

What to look for when selecting a service partner for ongoing support

When engaging with an agency for Drupal maintenance and support, you're entering into a partnership to protect, scale, and optimize your digital presence. With transparency around maintenance timelines, deployment milestones, and budget management, your staff can gain efficiencies for content entry and other updates, and you can provide a continually engaging experience for your users.

Sandstorm offers a wide range of maintenance, support, and optimization services, which typically include:

• Quarterly (or monthly) Drupal core updates and evaluation of security-related patches 
• Maintaining a Git (code repository) and dev environment(s) for testing
• Assessing and applying any immediate security releases
• Annually, reviewing and applying .PHP “point” upgrades
• Site fixes & error resolution
• Feature enhancements
• Strategic analytics & optimization meetings
• Proactive analysis of technical performance and ongoing improvements
• SEO analysis & optimization
• KPIs, goals and metrics alignment
• Accessibility scans
• Proactive strategic discussions & execution plan

If you are interested in learning more about Sandstorm’s security, maintenance, and support capabilities, you can read more on our Website Maintenance & Support page.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in February 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.