Website Maintenance

Website maintenance for Yellowknife businesses

Updates, backups, security and quick content changes for Yellowknife sites, so hours, packages, event dates and notices stay right from aurora-viewing season to the long June evenings.

  • WordPress updates
  • Off-site backups
  • Security checks
  • Seasonal content
  • Form and booking tests
Hand tools hung on a grey pegboard over a tidy workbench with a wooden toolbox

The calendar here keeps changing what a site must say

Few places swing through the year like Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. January averages −26 °C, the city gets about 155 cm of snow a year, and December daylight lasts roughly five hours; by June there is light for about twenty. Businesses follow that swing. Aurora-viewing packages run through the November to March peak, the winter road sets the pace for suppliers from late January, Snowking and the Long John Jamboree fill March, and Folk on the Rocks arrives in July.

Each of those shifts changes something on a website: hours, prices, package dates, what is still bookable and what is sold out. Many customers check the site before they call, and visitors planning from overseas may never call at all. A page still advertising last winter’s packages, or summer hours in February, tells them nobody is minding the shop.

Under the pages sits software that keeps ageing. WordPress core, the theme and the plugins all update on their own schedules, written by different people. Left alone through a long winter, one of them eventually breaks something: a reservation calendar that stops appearing on phones, or a contact form that thanks the visitor while the message goes nowhere. Routine care spots both early.

  • 155 cm of snow in an average year
  • Nov–Mar peak aurora-viewing months to keep current
  • Every month test submissions to every form and calendar
Drawing of a shield beside a ticked list and a flat, steady uptime line

Search demand

Searches that show why pages must stay current

Nobody searches for website upkeep in Yellowknife. These October 2026 Google.ca suggestions show something more useful: the dates and conditions that make yesterday’s page wrong today.

Search term Intent Why it matters
yellowknife events this weekend Medium Event listings go stale within days if nobody updates them.
snowking winter festival yellowknife 2026 Medium A yearly date that has to change every season.
folk on the rocks 2026 lineup Medium Summer plans built around one July weekend.
yellowknife ice road open High Opening and closing dates that suppliers and carriers follow closely.
yellowknife northern lights tour packages High Package pages need current dates, prices and availability.
yellowknife snow removal schedule Urgent Snow days change access, parking and hours across the city.
yellowknife wildfire smoke Urgent Summer conditions that can change outdoor plans at short notice.
yellowknife daycare waitlist High Parents joining a waitlist will not try a broken form twice.

Routine care is cheaper than a rescue

Broken sites are usually discovered by customers, after weeks of lost inquiries. Routine care finds problems while they are small and quick to fix. Yellowknife sites also get a same-day notice routine: if extreme cold, smoke, a power outage or a road closure changes your plans, send us a message and a clear notice goes up on the site as fast as we can manage.

Silent problems

Five quiet faults we keep finding on Yellowknife sites

Each of these can go unseen for months, because the home page still looks normal.

  1. 01

    Last season’s packages still on sale

    Aurora-viewing dates from the previous winter, a summer price list in January, or festival dates from a year ago. Visitors take it as a sign the business is careless or closed, and book elsewhere.

  2. 02

    An inquiry form that quietly fails

    A confirmation appears on screen, but the email lands in a spam folder or never leaves the server, and no one knows inquiries are missing. Sending mail through a proper delivery service and testing it every month closes the gap.

  3. 03

    The calendar that died after an update

    After a plugin or core update, a reservation calendar may refuse to load on mobile. Staff checking from office computers see nothing wrong, while overseas visitors on phones give up and book another operator.

  4. 04

    No one knows who holds the domain

    The person who set the site up has left town or changed jobs, the hosting password went with them, and renewal notices land in an inbox nobody opens. We track down each account, confirm who controls it and move it into your company’s name.

  5. 05

    Junk pages planted out of sight

    Through an outdated plugin, an attacker plants pages full of spam links. Visitors never land on them, but Google crawls them, and your rankings drift down for no obvious reason.

The care schedule

Weekly, monthly, seasonal, yearly

Different parts of a site need attention at different rhythms. Spreading the work across them keeps every task small.

01

Weekly

Updates and backups

Plugin, theme and core updates applied after a fresh backup, with major WordPress versions held back until the plugins you rely on support them. Uptime is watched around the clock.

02

Monthly

Forms, bookings and security

A test message through every form and booking tool, a malware scan, a sweep for unused accounts and plugins, and a quick look at the key pages on a phone.

03

Seasonal

Content that follows the calendar

Hours, prices, packages and event dates switched over as the seasons turn: aurora-viewing season, the winter road months, summer on the lake.

04

Yearly

Domain, certificate and server

Domain and certificate renewals confirmed, the server’s PHP version reviewed with your host, and a full restore from backup rehearsed so we know the copies work.

The work

What upkeep covers

01

Updates on a schedule

Core, theme and plugin updates run on a regular cycle, each preceded by a full backup and followed by a check of the main pages on mobile.

02

Copies stored away from your host

Files and database saved somewhere other than your hosting account, and restored as a test from time to time to prove they are usable.

03

Security housekeeping

Malware scans, login protection, removal of old user accounts, and urgent patches as soon as a plugin vulnerability is announced.

04

Uptime monitoring

The site is pinged around the clock, and if it stops answering, someone on our side hears about it within minutes.

05

Seasonal content changes

Next winter’s packages, a festival weekend, new hours, a revised rate sheet or a new face behind the counter: email the details and we publish them.

06

Same-day notices

A clear banner for closures caused by cold, smoke, power outages or road conditions, taken down again once you are back to normal.

Done carefully

Your access, always

The standards we keep on every account, written down so you can hold us to them.

Our practice
We look after the site through a login of our own. The hosting, the domain and the main administrator account remain yours, and you can remove us at any time.

Maintaining a site and owning it are different things, and we keep them separate. Everyday upkeep is part of each monthly plan. Neglected or compromised sites need a one-off clean-up first, priced in writing before we touch anything.

Your login
Never removed
Backups
Kept off your host
Extra work
Priced before it starts
Ask us about your business
Two people at a pale wooden table, smiling as they go through a notebook and a stack of printed sheets in a bright room
  • We never change passwords to lock you out.
  • No update runs without a backup in place.
  • Anything outside routine upkeep is priced and approved first.
  • Only licensed plugins; cracked copies are a common way malware gets in.

How we work

How the work runs, step by step

From the first review of your listing to a brief report each month that takes minutes to read.

  1. 01

    Audit

    Your site and listing get a close read, and we test what someone sees searching from Downtown, Range Lake, Niven Lake or Kam Lake.

  2. 02

    Pick the targets

    Together we choose the phrases that bring paying customers and give each one a home: a page, or a change to the listing.

  3. 03

    Fix and build

    Listing, website, content and directory work, starting with the changes most likely to help quickly.

  4. 04

    Report

    Every month you receive the calls, messages and rankings we measured, plus the plan for the month ahead.

Questions

Website maintenance questions from Yellowknife owners

What does maintenance cost?

Day-to-day upkeep rides along with each tier, Starter at $300, Growth at $500 or Pro at $700 monthly, charged in CAD and cancellable any month. Sites that have fallen badly behind, or been broken into, get a separate one-off repair price once we have inspected the damage.

Can you post a notice if we close for cold, smoke or a power outage?

Yes. Text or email us and a plain banner appears at the head of every page as soon as one of us is free, along with a nudge to set special hours on Google. Once you reopen, it disappears.

Our packages and prices change every season. Can you handle that?

Yes. Give us next season’s dates, prices and inclusions ahead of time and we schedule the changes, including the opening hours in the site’s structured data, so the switch happens on the right day.

Our original developer has disappeared. Can you take the site over?

Usually. We start with an inventory: what the site runs on, which plugins it uses, who owns the domain and hosting, and what is insecure or out of date. A plan and a catch-up price follow from that.

Strange pages and redirects have appeared on our site. Can you clean it up?

Yes, as a one-off job. We strip out whatever was injected, find and close the weakness that let it in, put back clean copies of your files, and, if Google has flagged the site, file a review request once it is clean.

Is hosting included?

No. The hosting company bills you directly and the account stays in your name, which keeps you in control. If your current host is unreliable, we can suggest a sounder one and handle the move with you.

Further reading

Related articles

Further articles on this subject for Yellowknife business owners.

Related services

Each service stands on its own, and plenty of clients start with only one.

Industries that use this service

People in town look for each trade differently, so each industry page has research of its own.

What does Yellowknife see when it searches for you?

Request a free audit showing where you appear from Downtown to Kam Lake, which competitors rank above you, and the fixes worth making first.

Send me the free audit