Website maintenance, how often?

Question

How often does a website needs to be maintained, and what exactly does the maintenance entail?

Answer 1

If the website has only static content and never changes, then it never needs any maintenance (unless the web server goes down and you are also responsible for hosting the site).

However these days, most websites are full of dynamic contents, that is continuously generated or changed. For example in a webshop you may want to regularly update the product catalog and price list, on a forum you may want to censor comments.
As a developer, it is in your best interest to automate these processes as much as possible, so that the key users, business owners, moderators etc. are able to do most of the admin tasks on their own, without technical help. But even with all precautions there is a chance that something will go wrong :)
If the website is linked with business-critical processes, then it is even possible that 24x7 support is needed to ensure a quick solution. (think what happens if Google goes offline for a minute...)
There is no specific answer to your question without more details about the website.