Eleven years ago, I got an email from a new client. She ran a high-traffic local news site – her only source of income – and she was at het wits’ end.
Her website crashed every couple of days, her advertisers were getting upset, she was losing money and credibility… In short, she was at her wits’ end. And the people she was paying to help? They weren’t helping. In fact, they were making things worse.
The Problem with “Having Someone”
She was doing everything right on paper. She had a developer, she had premium hosting (at $150/month), she was even paying for monthly maintenance from a well-known company.
But having technical help and having the right technical help are two completely different things.
Her developer kept promising he’d get the urgent fixes “done by end of week”. Then radio silence for days. Eventually he’d show up with a new deadline. And that happened on repeat.
Her hosting company was worse. After days of waiting for support, they’d just shrug and point elsewhere. “That’s a coding issue, not a server issue.” “You’ll need to handle that on your end.” She’d hang up more confused than when she’d called.
Then there was the maintenance company, the cherry on top of this disaster. They installed a caching plugin at maximum settings, hoping it would magically fix the crashes. They didn’t bother understanding what the site needed, and they didn’t tell her what they were doing. Suddenly, her new posts weren’t showing up. She couldn’t clear the cache. Comments were delayed. Her news site looked frozen in time – which is the last thing you want when you run a news site.
This wasn’t maintenance. This was chaos with a monthly invoice.
Meanwhile, she was spending hours every week on support calls with the host and the maintenance team. And more hours refreshing her email, hoping her developer would finally respond.
A Happy Ending: What Actually Fixed It
When she reached out to me, she needed a “Plan B”. Fast. Yesterday.
I started with an audit – to figure out what was on fire and what just smelled like smoke. Then worked on the urgent stuff – reconfigured the cache, fixed the responsive design issues that were upsetting her advertisers, and moved her to a better host. Gradually, I was able to fix everything else – hardening security, optimized loading speed, built a custom theme that was responsive.
Over the next eleven years, I’ve handled everything website-related for this client. Her site website hadn’t crashed once since. Problems got fixed timely, before they turned into emergencies. She could update her content as often as she wanted without worrying about technical disasters.
More importantly, she got her time back. And her sanity.
I don’t want to brag (or maybe I do, a little), but this is what she said after working with me for over a decade. And this makes me so grateful and so happy for what I do and for the clients who stick with me for the long haul:
Eugenia managed my website for over a decade, and I’m so grateful for how effortless she made everything. I’m a worrier by nature, but with her, my website was one thing I never had to stress about. She was reliable, consistent, and always patient with my questions — quick to respond and on top of anything that came up. I never had to chase her down or wonder when something would get done.
She handled all the technical stuff so I could just focus on my content, and that peace of mind meant everything to me. Eugenia not only knows her stuff, but she treats your website as if it were hers.
I can’t thank her enough for all the years of support and peace of mind she gave me!!
You Shouldn’t Need to Worry About Your Website
You shouldn’t be googling error messages, chasing your developers for fixes, or talking to tech support more than to your family members. If that’s your reality, something is off!
I’ve worked with enough clients who’ve been burned by developers (and I use that term loosely) to know the pattern. And if I can give you one piece of advice about choosing your developer or maintenance team, it’s this: start small. Give them a small task and see how they handle it. Then give them something slightly bigger. Let them build up enough “good credit” with you before you trust them with your entire site – and consequently your entire business.
And if you want to know more about what I do and whether we’d be a good fit, check out my website care plans and get in touch. If I don’t think I’m what you need, you’ll at least walk away with some clarity and recommendations for what to do next.
