Establish the baseline
Inventory the domain, DNS, hosting, repositories, plugins and external services. Confirm who owns access and how recovery works. Record critical pages and contact journeys before making changes. An inherited site may need an initial repair project before routine maintenance is predictable; separate that work from a recurring support scope.
Updates and release checks
Review dependency or platform updates, test changes in a suitable environment and preserve a rollback path. Content changes can also break navigation, metadata or page layout. A compact regression checklist should cover the routes that generate enquiries, including mobile navigation and external account or payment handoffs where they exist.
Monitoring and incidents
Define meaningful alerts for outages, broken forms, certificate problems and failed integrations. Agree support hours and response expectations explicitly; do not assume round-the-clock coverage. Alerts should identify an owner and a next action. Monitor real failures without fabricating transactions or submitting customer enquiries solely to create activity.
Continuity and scope
Test backups and document where exports are stored. Review access when team members leave and keep renewal responsibilities clear. Distinguish security fixes, content changes and new features in the agreement. Bring the current technology stack, access owners and the three most important site journeys to a maintenance review so the plan covers actual business risk.