Before our RUN team supports the maintenance of a WordPress site, a rule applies: the project must follow a very precise onboarding process.
The objective? Submit the project to a full audit of our expertise, align it to our standards, and provide all the necessary tools to ensure quality maintenance, regardless of the type of intervention.
Passage required for serene maintenance
Over time and experience, we have found that onboarding in maintenance lays the foundation for successful collaboration, and offers many advantages:
- Addressing individual needs and expectations
- Complete site evaluation, identifying strengths and areas for improvement
- Operational effectiveness, with a clear roadmap and all the necessary information.
- Adoption of proven practices to ensure safety and performance.
This is the key to ensuring a clear understanding of the project and establishing a strong relationship with our clients, for a smooth and perfectly aligned collaboration.
Alexandre Sadowski, partner at Be API
Step 0: Context and Understanding of Needs
A new project is coming up for our RUN team. This can be:
- a project developed by Be API, which has been completed online.
- a project carried out by another agency.
- a project whose maintenance was interrupted for a period of time.
At this stage, the sales team engages in an in-depth discussion with client-side project managers. We outline the history of the project, map the client's needs and expectations, and clearly define the maintenance objectives.
➡️ At Be API, we offer custom maintenance accompaniments, tailored to each project and customer. Issues may vary: need for support and availability, levels of security, expected comitology, etc...
Therefore, it is important to define precisely the type of support required for each new RUN client.
Step 1: Pre-audit, validation phase
Once the context is established, it is time to put your hands « in the camboo ». We're going. scan back office and source code the site, and determine lconditions for site resumption in maintenance. This first technical step is by experienced developers, in order to determine whether the project can be successfully and securely resumed.
Audit objectives:
- Analyze the theme used, the extensions in place and the necessary updates.
- Assess the quality of specific developments carried out.
- Identify strengths, improvements and attention points.
Passing the site to the fine comb, our experts determine whether the technologies used are compatible with those of the agency, or bring them as close as possible.
Most of the time, we manage to align. But if the project uses development practices too far from our own, we prefer to refer to other more suitable providers. This allows our customers to avoid compatibility problems, delays and potential extra costs, and our team to maintain a high level of quality and efficiency in our interventions.
This is the best way to ensure that each project receives the best possible support
Step 2: Onboarding, technical support
When the audit validates the site's resumption in maintenance, this is the time to actually go into the onboarding phase. Each team will get to know the project, and watch what it hides under the hood.
📆 Duration: about 1 month
Objectives:
- Implementation of tools and environments for maintenance
- Identification of priority actions to be applied in maintenance
Collection of information
At this stage, the agency collects all necessary information, authorisations and documents from customers:
- Project documentation (loads, specifications, etc.)
- Third party services (authentication, external search engines, etc.)
- Application source code (compilation, dependencies, premium plugins, etc.)
- Environments (environment identifiers, hosting, etc.)
- SEO / Analytics (agency perimeter, providers, etc.)
Team coordination
Under the direction of a project manager the interventions of the different teams. A tracking table detailing the actions to be carried out by each specialty is created, providing a clear roadmap and full transparency for customers.
Technical experts succeed each other to verify the whole project:
- DevOps
- Dev Plugin
- Theme Dev
- SEO / Analytics
The different steps:
- Setting up code versioning We follow each change, allowing us to go back if necessary and identify those responsible for the changes.
- Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) : We automate tests and updates to ensure speed and reliability without manual intervention.
- Creation of local development environments : Local copies of the site allow you to test the changes before applying them online, reducing the risks.
- Project technical documentation : A comprehensive guide explaining how the project works and how to modify it, ensuring a clear understanding for all.
Step 3: Customer restitution, balance sheet
Once all the actions have been carried out, the project manager initializes the rendition support and organises a meeting with the client to assess the status of the project.
We take stock of:
- Elements in place
- Priority tickets to start maintenance
- The Agency's recommendations
- The corresponding estimate
- The next steps
The RUN team reviews all the interventions necessary for site compliance as soon as possible. The validation of the Agency's recommendations will allow the processing of open tickets and other proposed accompaniments to begin.
Conclusion
The process of maintenance onboarding at Be API is designed to ensure effective maintenance of WordPress sites. A careful onboarding allows you to start on solid foundations by identifying the specific needs of each project from the outset.
Thanks to our proven methodology and our team dedicated to maintenance, we support our customers throughout the life of their site. We offer complete support, so that you can concentrate on developing your activity in complete serenity.
Ready to optimize the maintenance of your WordPress site?
Contact us today to discuss your needs.
