The below policies apply to WordPress websites that we host but did not develop.

  • Your hosting includes:
    • A powerful server with dedicated resources for the site.
    • 15 minutes of support per month: We will provide guidance and recommendations for any questions you have about WordPress and the site. This time does not accumulate, but we are flexible, and consider past usage of support time.
    • 90 days of daily backups.
    • Managed WordPress updates & licensed theme & plugin updates. (please see limited liability information below)
    • Caching & server file optimizations on your site, where possible.
    • WordPress application firewall monitoring.
  • On updates, we take the following approach:
    • Research
      • Whenever we update a site, we research the changes to be made to plugins and themes on the site. We do this by reviewing changelogs, looking for bug reports from other users, and considering how long the updates have been out.
      • If an update doesn’t contain any major changes, is not causing bugs, and has been out for a while, we are generally confident that it can be safely applied.
      • If there are reported issues or if the update has major changes, we will hold off until fixes are available, and test in a controlled environment.
    • Safe Update w/ Rollback
      • At the point that we update the site, we create a snapshot of the site immediately prior to applying updates.
      • After that we apply updates and review a before / after comparison screenshot to ensure nothing has changed visually on the site’s homepage.
      • Finally, we check the backend and site pages for server errors, or obvious visual changes.
      • Limited Liability on updates of websites created by other developers – If we note any problems, we rollback to the snapshot we created, and would contact you regarding the issue. Any development to correct issues will be billable time.
    • Staging / Testing
      • For major updates we do launch staging sites to test on as well.
      • This is rarely necessary since a majority of updates are incremental in nature, and have a low-risk of causing problems.
      • To clarify further: For a site that is actively in-development, it makes sense to use a staging site since sites in development change rapidly.
  • When it comes to bugs & issues with the site or with updates, we don’t fix those as part of hosting. All we can do is rollback the update, and provide a quote on fixing problems. This is due to a few factors:
    • Software is always changing: Updates are necessary for security & new features, but by their nature can break existing functionality. We can usually fix these problems, but it does take a lot of time and research on our part.
    • Customizations by others can cause problems: If developers or other administrators on the site make changes to the site or customize code, that can cause problems. Especially if these changes rely on parts of a plugin or theme that aren’t “public” for developers to use. Which takes additional time & research to fix.
    • Support contracts: Generally, licensed plugins & themes have support contracts that can help troubleshoot bugs & problems. If these are not available, we have to do the research instead. When you do have a license and a plugin causes a problem, we will usually make small fixes for no additional cost, since we have support resources. However if a plugin update requires significant changes to other parts of the site to continue working, that would be billable work.

If you have any questions or concerns about these policies, please email info@pronetsweb.com and we would be happy to discuss.