Keeping your site healthy
This folder is for the people who already run a site on Exponential: the owner, the manager, the person who talks to the host or the partner. It does not teach the commands; those pages exist and are linked from every page here. It tells you what has to happen to keep the site healthy, how often, who on your team should own it, what to check, and what to ask the people you pay.
A healthy site rests on five habits that the reliability pages for businesses also name: stay current, back up and test the restore, keep access tight, watch the site, and know what to do on a bad day (Reliability for businesses).
The pages in this folder
| Page | Read it when |
|---|---|
| How updates work | You want to understand what an update is and why it matters |
| Upgrades with your provider | A host or partner does the upgrades for you |
| Release line and support | You need to know which version is maintained |
| Upgrade day checklist | An upgrade is scheduled |
| Backups | You want to be sure nothing is lost |
| Restore test | You want proof the backups work |
| Security basics | You are responsible for the site's safety |
| Security checklist for owners | You review security once a quarter |
| Administrator accounts and access | Someone joins, leaves or needs more rights |
| Monitoring | You want to know about a problem before customers tell you |
| Logs for owners | You want to know what the logs can tell you |
| Maintenance mode and planned work | Work will take the site offline |
| Speed and caching | The site feels slow, or a change does not show |
| What to ask your host | You are reviewing or choosing hosting |
| What to ask your partner | You are reviewing or choosing a partner |
| Reporting problems | Something is wrong and you need to tell someone |
| The help report page | You want to file a bug from the administration |
| GitHub issues | You want to follow or file an issue in the public trackers |
| Private security reports | You think you found a security problem |
| When the site is down | The site does not answer right now |
| Incident notes template | You want a form to fill in during and after an incident |
Who owns what
Name a person for each line. In a small team one person holds several; that is fine, as long as everyone knows who.
| Task | Typical owner | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Decide when to upgrade | Owner or manager | At least as often as new releases appear |
| Carry out upgrades | Host, partner or your developer | Per release |
| Backups and restore tests | Host or operator | Backups on a schedule; a restore test each quarter |
| Accounts and roles | Site administrator | When staff change; review each quarter |
| Monitoring and alerts | Host or operator | Always on; a person reads the pages weekly |
| Reporting problems | Anyone on the team, through one contact | When it happens |
A suggested order
- Read Release line and support and find out which version your site runs.
- Read Backups and ask your host for the date of the last restore test.
- Go through the Security checklist for owners once.
- Fill in the escalation contacts, so a bad day starts with a list instead of a search.
- Keep When the site is down where you can find it without the site.
Tip
Hosting companies and partners have their own sections in this help. When you want to see what a well-run host does every month, read Monthly operations.
Related pages
- Partners and hosts
- Reliability for businesses
- Operating a site
- When something goes wrong
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
Become an Exponential Partner
Partners share their information, provide funding, contribute back and develop the products with us, and that is how Exponential grows. A partner website and dashboard are planned for mid-2027: please become a partner today to speed up our growth rate and land new features faster.