Regular maintenance

Imagine that your home’s air conditioning system just gave up the ghost in the middle of August — and you learn that fixing it requires you to have your house rewired to accommodate the replacement.

Sure, you don't think very often about your home's wiring, or all the other systems that live in your walls and attic. But keeping them up to date is a matter of smart ongoing maintenance.

As it happens, I'm now dealing with several site owners who find themselves in a similar situation:

Now that CiviCRM has announced a security update that will require PHP 8, I and other CiviCRM specialist I know are dealing with a number of sites that need a surprising amount of catch-up work.

The owners of these sites are the unwitting victims of deferred maintenance:

• CiviCRM extensions, CMS plugins and modules, and even the CMS itself, that have not been actively upgraded for quite some time.

• Confusing and non-standard file structures that need significant effort to untangle, to be sure the site will function properly under the new technical requirements.

And it all needs to be cleaned up — right now.

For the site owners, it can feel like a lot of hassle and expense, all at once.

But here's the thing:

They could have avoided it by ensuring someone was responsible for the regular ongoing maintenance of their site.

It could have been an internal team member, or an outside expert. But it would have been someone.

Of course, that comes with some expense, whether in staff time or in outside support fees.

But it would have ensured things were running smoothly day-to-day, month-to-month.

And they wouldn't be dealing with the surprise and stress they're getting now.

It's worth thinking about:

Who's responsible for keeping your CRM well maintained?

If you're not sure, you may be in for some unhappy surprises when the deferred maintenance gremlins start to crawl out of the woodwork — and eventually, they will.

All the best,
A.