Finish updates and design changes by Friday afternoon, then freeze the site until the Tuesday after Cyber Monday. Allow only content within existing pages, fixes for things already broken, and urgent security patches.

Eight days out

Black Friday is a week tomorrow. The store works today: products load, the cart adds up, payments go through and the confirmation emails arrive.

Every change made between now and then is a chance for that to stop being true, at the moment a problem costs the most and help is hardest to find.

Developers and hosting support are at their busiest that weekend too. A broken checkout on Friday morning may wait hours for someone who can look at it.

That is why large retailers stop changing their sites before the season's biggest days. The practice is called a change freeze, and it suits a small store just as well.

What a freeze does

During a freeze, nothing about how the site works changes. Content can still be edited within the pages that exist, but the code, the plugins, the design and the settings stay as they are.

The benefit is not only fewer problems. It is that when something does go wrong during the busy week, you know it was not a change you made.

That narrows the search at once to traffic, the host, or an outside service such as the payment processor, and saves the hour spent wondering which of yesterday's tweaks did it.

What the freeze covers

The fourth is the one that slips through. A tracking code pasted into the header by someone in marketing does not feel like a change to the site, and it runs on every page, checkout included.

Maintenance before it starts

A freeze only works if the site enters it in good order, so this week is for the jobs that would otherwise be tempting next week.

Apply the waiting updates now, on a weekday morning, trying each on a copy of the site before applying them singly to the live store. Done this week, they have several days to show any problem before the traffic arrives.

Finish the sale banners, the landing page and the discount codes, and test them on a phone.

Take a full backup, confirm it can be restored, and ask the host whether the plan will cope with the traffic you expect.

Then stop. Anything not finished by Friday afternoon waits until December.

What is still allowed

A freeze is not a lock. Some changes are part of running a sale, and they carry little risk because they use pages and settings that already exist.

Prices, stock levels, product descriptions, banner text and new products added through the normal product screen are all fine. So is switching on a discount code that was created and tested before the freeze.

Fixing something that is broken is allowed, one change at a time, with a backup first. So is a security update for a plugin under active attack, which cannot wait for December.

Everything else waits.

A worked example

A small company making soap and skincare by hand sells most of its gift sets online between late November and mid-December.

Last year, on the Wednesday before Black Friday, the owner installed a countdown timer plugin above the sale banner. It looked right on the laptop, and the owner went home.

On Friday morning customers began emailing that the order button did nothing on their phones. The timer loaded its own copy of a common script library, which clashed with the one the checkout relied on.

The developer was booked solid and reached the problem late in the morning. Deactivating the timer fixed it at once.

This year every sale feature, the timer included, went in by mid-November and was tested through to payment on two phones. The freeze started on Monday, and until December the owner's login is for prices and stock only.

Who can say yes

A freeze needs one person who approves exceptions. Without one, every request is decided by whoever happens to be asked.

Everyone with a login should know the dates: staff, the web company, whoever runs the ads, anyone who installs things for marketing.

A short email saying no changes from Saturday until Tuesday, December 3, and who to ask, covers it.

Keep a note of any change made during the freeze, with the time. If something breaks at four, the note says what happened at three.

Automatic updates

Some changes happen without anyone pressing a button. WordPress applies its own small security releases in the background, and that is worth leaving switched on, freeze or no freeze.

Plugin updates are different. If your host or a management service updates plugins automatically, ask for that to be paused for the fortnight and resumed afterwards.

On hosted store platforms, the platform's own changes are not yours to freeze. The theme and the apps you add are, and the same rule applies to them.

After the freeze

Updates released during the freeze are queued, not ignored. The week after Cyber Monday, apply them the usual way: on a weekday morning, each tried on a copy of the site first.

Resist applying a fortnight of updates at once. That is the same gamble the freeze was there to avoid, moved to a quieter week.

And a store whose busiest days run on to the shipping cutoffs may want a lighter version of the freeze through mid-December as well.

The counter-case

A site with no busy week, such as a firm that takes enquiries at a steady pace all year, gains little from a freeze and can keep its usual maintenance routine.

A business whose rush comes at another time, an accountant in April or a pool supplier in May, should freeze then instead.

And a freeze is never a reason to leave a known security hole open. That is the one change that cannot wait.

For any store with a weekend that matters more than the rest of the year, finish the work this week and change nothing during it.

By Friday afternoon

  1. Apply waiting updates on a copy first.
  2. Finish banners and codes, tested on a phone.
  3. Take a full backup and confirm it restores.
  4. Tell everyone with a login the freeze dates.
  5. Name one person who approves exceptions.
  6. Pause automatic plugin updates for the fortnight.
  7. Keep a note of any change made.

Step four is the one that makes the freeze real. Most changes during a busy week are made by someone who did not know there was a freeze, not by someone who ignored it.

How to apply the updates themselves is covered in clicking update all on a Friday afternoon.

Frequently asked questions

What is a change freeze?

A period when nothing about how the site works changes: no updates, no new plugins, no design changes. Content inside existing pages can still be edited.

When should the freeze start and end?

From the weekend before Black Friday until the Tuesday after Cyber Monday, with maintenance finished by the Friday before. Stores busy until their shipping cutoffs may extend it.

What changes are still allowed?

Prices, stock, banner text, new products through the normal screens, discount codes tested beforehand, fixes for things already broken, and urgent security updates.

How does a freeze help when something breaks?

You know the problem was not a change you made, which points straight at traffic, the host or an outside service such as the payment processor.

What about automatic updates?

Leave WordPress's own minor security releases alone. Ask your host or management service to pause automatic plugin updates for the fortnight.

What happens to updates released during the freeze?

They are queued and applied the week after, on a weekday morning, on a copy first and one at a time, never all at once.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Updates still waiting before Black Friday?

Send us the site this week. We will apply them on a copy, test the checkout, and then leave it alone.

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