Hacked site cleanup
Malware removal, Google blacklist resolution, and hardening so it doesn't recur.
WordPress Support & Maintenance
WordPress Support & Maintenance That Keeps Your Site Fast, Secure and Online
A WordPress website that isn’t actively maintained is a liability. Outdated plugins, unpatched security holes and creeping slowness cost you visitors, rankings and customers — usually without you realising until something breaks publicly.
Still Waters Digital’s WordPress maintenance plans take the whole worry off your plate. We handle everything behind the scenes — updates, backups, security, speed — for businesses across South Africa, so your website stays an asset while you focus on running the business it serves.
The risk
An unmaintained WordPress site is a liability with a countdown
WordPress powers over 40% of the web, which makes it the single biggest target for automated hacking bots. They don’t care how small your business is — they scan every WordPress site on the internet, around the clock, looking for one outdated plugin.
Here’s how neglect typically plays out:
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1
Updates get postponed — nobody's watching, and everything seems fine
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A vulnerability appears — in an old plugin or theme
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A bot finds it — often within days of the vulnerability becoming public
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The damage lands — spam pages injected, customers redirected to scam sites, Google flagging you as unsafe, or the site simply going down
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The cleanup costs more — than years of maintenance would have — plus the lost enquiries, and the trust of every visitor who saw the warning screen
Maintenance is insurance that also improves performance. Neglect is a gamble where the downside compounds.
What we do
What our WordPress maintenance plans include
Everything behind the scenes — handled, tested, and reported in plain English every month.
01
Security & Updates
Threats neutralised before they become problems — and tested after every update.
We proactively manage every update and security layer so threats are neutralised before they become problems — and, critically, we test after updating, because updates themselves can break things when applied blindly.
✓ WordPress core, plugin and theme updates — tested, not just clicked
✓ Malware scanning and removal
✓ Security hardening and firewall configuration
✓ SSL certificate management and renewal
✓ Login protection and brute-force prevention
security & updates dashboard
02
Backups & Recovery
Daily off-site backups and fast restore when things go wrong.
Things go wrong — a bad update, a server failure, an accidental deletion. With daily automated backups stored securely off-site, we can restore your website quickly and completely.
✓ Daily automated backups, stored off-site
✓ Fast, tested restore capability
✓ Uptime monitoring with instant alerts — we usually know your site is down before you do
✓ Disaster recovery planning
backup & recovery status
03
Performance & Speed Optimisation
Keep your site fast as plugins, revisions and clutter accumulate.
A slow website frustrates visitors and drags down your Google rankings — and WordPress sites slow down gradually as plugins, revisions and database clutter accumulate. We keep yours tuned.
✓ Page speed optimisation and Core Web Vitals monitoring
✓ Image compression and lazy loading
✓ Caching setup and configuration
✓ Database cleanup and optimisation
✓ Monthly performance reporting in plain English
pagespeed scores
04
Support and Content Changes
A real human to call on — not a ticket queue.
Maintenance plans include a real human to call on. Need a page updated, a banner swapped, a form changed? Send it through — small content changes are part of the service, and bigger jobs get priority scheduling and honest quotes.
✓ Small content updates included in your plan
✓ Banner, page and form changes handled promptly
✓ Priority scheduling for larger jobs
✓ Honest quotes when work falls outside plan scope
content change support
Emergency work
Website hacked, broken or painfully slow? We fix that too
Not every enquiry starts with prevention. If you’re here because something has already gone wrong, we handle emergency work for WordPress sites:
White screen / fatal error recovery
Diagnosis and repair, with a backup regime installed afterwards.
Speed rescue
For sites that have become unusably slow.
Abandoned-site takeovers
If your previous developer has vanished, we'll recover access, document everything, and put your site on stable footing.
Once the fire is out, most rescue clients move onto a maintenance plan — because they’ve just experienced exactly what it prevents.
The value
What proper maintenance actually prevents
The value of maintenance is everything that doesn’t happen:
- • No "this site may be hacked" warning next to your name on Google.
- • No lost rankings from slow pages or downtime — protecting the SEO investment you've made.
- • No lost sales from a store that's down over a weekend — especially critical for WooCommerce sites.
- • No data loss — daily backups mean the worst case is hours of rollback, not years of content.
- • No emergency developer bills at crisis rates.
Fit
Who our maintenance plans are for
- • Any business running WordPress without a technical person watching it.
- • WooCommerce store owners, where downtime and slowness cost money by the hour.
- • Businesses whose site was built by someone no longer around.
- • Companies that had a security scare and don't want another.
- • Clients of our web design service — every site we build is offered a plan at launch, because a well-built site deserves to stay that way.
We maintain WordPress sites we didn’t build, too. A short onboarding review gets us familiar with your setup, and from there it’s covered like one of our own.
Process
What happens each month on a maintenance plan
No mystery retainers. Here’s the actual monthly rhythm:
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Weekly: updates applied and tested, security scans reviewed, backups verified
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Continuously: uptime and security monitoring, 24/7, with alerts to our team
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Monthly: database and performance tune-up, plus your plain-English report — what was updated, what was blocked, how the site is performing
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As needed: your content changes and support requests, handled with priority
If a month goes by and the report says “everything ran smoothly, nothing to worry about” — that’s the product working.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is WordPress maintenance and why do I need it?
WordPress maintenance is the ongoing care a website needs to stay secure, fast and online: software updates, security monitoring, backups and performance tuning. WordPress sites don't stand still — plugins age, threats evolve and databases bloat — so an unmaintained site degrades even if nobody touches it.
How much does WordPress maintenance cost in South Africa?
Plans vary with your site's complexity — a brochure site needs less care than a busy WooCommerce store. We offer fixed monthly plans quoted in rand, itemised so you know exactly what's covered. Ask us for the plan options; the cost is a fraction of a single emergency cleanup.
Can't I just update the plugins myself?
You can — but updates occasionally break sites, which is why we test after every update and keep a backup from immediately before. The value isn't clicking "update"; it's knowing what to do when the update goes wrong, and noticing the problems that don't announce themselves.
My website was built by another company. Can you maintain it?
Yes. We take over WordPress sites built by others all the time — including cases where the original developer has disappeared. We start with a health check and access recovery if needed, document the setup, and then maintain it as if it were our own build.
My WordPress site has been hacked. Can you fix it?
Yes — malware cleanup, Google blacklist removal and security hardening are part of our emergency service. Contact us as soon as possible; the faster a hack is contained, the less damage it does to your rankings and reputation.
Why is my WordPress site so slow?
Common causes: bloated or conflicting plugins, uncompressed images, no caching, cheap overloaded hosting, and years of database clutter. Our site health check identifies which apply to you — often the fixes are straightforward once diagnosed.
Do you maintain WooCommerce stores?
Yes, and we recommend it strongly — stores have more moving parts (payments, stock, checkout) and higher stakes when something breaks. Store plans include extra attention to checkout testing and order flow after every update. See our e-commerce service for store builds and improvements.
Are backups really necessary if my host does them?
Host backups are better than nothing, but they're often infrequent, stored on the same server, and slow to restore. We keep daily, off-site, independently tested backups — so recovery is measured in hours of lost changes, not weeks.
What's included in the free site health check?
We review your WordPress version, plugin and theme status, security posture, backup situation, and speed — then send you a plain-English summary of any risks and what to do about them. No obligation, and useful even if you maintain the site yourself.
Stop gambling with your website
Your website works for your business every day. A maintenance plan makes sure it can keep doing so — quietly, securely, and without midnight emergencies. Start with a free site health check. We’ll tell you exactly what shape your site is in.
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