When I was 11 years old, my 5th grade teacher came into class ranting one day about how we must never forget to change the oil and perform maintenance on a car.  I  believe there was some sort of domestic dispute about someone failing to perform proper care giving on the car, and as a result, the engine seized,  costing thousands of dollars. I remember him distinctly, "Maintenance comes with the territory of owning a car!"

This same lesson needs to be applied to a website, especially those with lots of content and/or functionality. We have seen multiple times where the client budgets for the initial build, but doesn't take maintenance into account. However 90% of a website's lifespan is spent in maintenance and that is when 100% of your users interact with it. Failing to plan (and budget for) maintenance is like buying a new car off the lot and never planning on putting in gas, changing the  oil, or taking it in for regular maintenance.

What do we mean by maintenance?

We divide maintenance into three rough categories:  infrastructure, content, and usability/features.  These categories also roughly correspond to how required these maintenance efforts are, with infrastructure being essential, content being important and usability/features being recommended.