Website Maintenance is like Vehicle Maintenance

Do you own or have you ever owned a car? If so, then you're no stranger to the fact that a vital part of keeping that car running properly is routine maintenance. Air in the tires or an occasional new set of tires, fresh oil and a new oil filter and even some new windshield wiper blades for the occasional rain storm; guess what those all cost money! Now outside of a few luxury dealers that now include that, odds are you had to pay for all of those things and if you don't you're car won't run properly and could need major repairs. That car, is a sophisticated machine with lots of moving parts that need to all work harmoniously to get the most from it. To illustrate my point, say you didn't do the maintenance on your car for over 2 years and it finally just stopped working. If you took the vehicle back to the dealership, odds are they won't fix it for you after all you failed to properly maintain the vehicle. Now, lets contrast that to your high end Drupal based website. Drupal is a sophisticated platform that is currently being used by some of the worlds largest brands, but guess what it doesn't do? That's right maintain itself. As great as Drupal may be, keeping it running smoothly, just like your car, it needs proper care and maintenance. Modules often have security updates and patches, server configurations can be changed by your hosting provider causing less than desirable results to your site and even hackers could potentially get in through a vulnerability. Fortunately we're starting to work with Acquia more and more and they have some great hosting and support packages that go well beyond what we could provide our clients. If you're looking at moving to Drupal, remember that it's built to power some of the most complex websites and as such needs to be properly maintained; if your not having it properly maintained, don't expect the dealership to fix it for free when you blow the motor. Photo Credit: Naveg