Managing several installations.
THE PROBLEM
Three applications across two domains, installed at different times, with different update schedules and different people who installed them.
Something will be forgotten, and that is the one that gets compromised.
WHAT TO MAINTAIN
A single list: application, version, location, database, administrator account, licence and renewal date, last updated.
Kept somewhere other than the server.
A ROUTINE
- Weekly: check for updates across all of them
- Monthly: scan, review administrator accounts, check disk and inodes
- Quarterly: review what is still needed, remove what is not
AUTOMATING WHAT YOU CAN
Enable automatic updates where you trust them, remembering they depend on a working cron job.
Set up monitoring so you know when a site stops responding.
THE CONSOLIDATION QUESTION
Every few months, ask whether you still need all of them. The answer is frequently no.
FOR CLIENT SITES
The same list, plus who is responsible for updating each. Ambiguity here ends with a compromise and an argument.
