This topic has 3 voices, contains 3 replies, and was last updated by 
Brian Krogsgard 135 days ago.
| Author | Posts |
|---|---|
| Author | Posts |
| December 27, 2011 at 6:36 pm #33577 | |
 Brian Krogsgard | I’d like to start a general conversation on maintenance for client work. There are probably a few things that would be interesting to hear about how different freelancers and development studios operate:
I’m certain I’m missing some things, but please feel free to answer any relevant questions above, add your own, or just tell your story. I’d love to hear what different people do. |
| December 27, 2011 at 6:52 pm #33578 | |
 Daniel Immke | I usually get a lot of maintenance requests on sites I build, and I think a lot of others do too. Instead of quoting every one out, I created SupportPress in hopes of standardizing the process for myself and other people’s clients. For people with needs larger than that I work it out separately. I only find version control to be necessary for larger projects, getting confused has never been an issue for me. Generally I only work as requests come in, though I do make an effort to update WordPress installations and plugins for sites under my care if they’ve given me access to do so. Right now maintenance is still a relatively small portion of what I do, but I’m hoping to eventually switch to running SupportPress full time instead of doing freelance work. |
| December 28, 2011 at 8:15 am #33587 | |
 Ryan Imel | (Fixed your original post’s formatting Brian. Looks sooo much better now.) When I freelanced, and I think primarily because of the kind of work I was doing, I didn’t end up doing very much maintenance work at all. Most of the time I would develop sites and ship them off — sometimes others would take over the maintenance, and other times the site owner would manage that themselves. That said, I think if I was still freelancing and wanted to get more serious about it, having a legitimate maintenance setup with a growing base of clients on it would be pretty important. So hypothetically, if I was going to do that, I would probably insist on controlling as much of their setup and environment as possible. Taking on maintenance for a site that’s set up poorly would just not be any fun at all, so I’d much rather just have that set up for them. Workflow-wise, I would likely set up a project/bug management system so that clients could drop in questions or support issues any time. Then, assuming those were cleared out (which shouldn’t take long, assuming clients are liberal in using the system) I would make a point of scheduling a support call with them every six weeks or so, just to check in and see what’s up. This is also a selling point to get them on maintenance contracts, too, since these checkups and small contract payments will likely save them from needing a complete and expensive website overhaul in a year or two. |
| January 3, 2012 at 12:34 am #33749 | |
| Brian Krogsgard | I found an interesting post on some folks’ workflow with regard to version control here: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/218/getting-started-with-subversion-git-or-similar-version-control-system-to-keep As far as maintenance, it’s a significant part of my company’s business (maintenance / hosting / general support), and part of my job is to handle more in depth issues that may arrise after launch. I tend to spend a little time every day on maintenance issues. We also have an in-house system for Projects, tasks, etc. much like what you can find in a Basecamp type system. |
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
