WordPress freelancer in Munich for sites your agency no longer maintains

When the agency has moved on

A WordPress site without maintenance keeps running for a while. Then an update of the server, an expired certificate or a plugin that stopped working breaks it, and the firm finds out when a customer does.

An agency builds the site, bills a maintenance plan for a time and moves on to new clients. When the plan ends or the agency closes, the theme and the plugins stay at the versions of the last update, and the admin login may belong to a person who has left.

Patchstack found that about half of the high-impact vulnerabilities in WordPress components were exploited within 24 hours (Patchstack, February 2026). A site that nobody updates stays open to them. Hosts also raise the PHP version on their servers, and an old theme or plugin can stop working after that upgrade.

A Munich court case shows the legal side. In January 2022 the Munich Regional Court ordered a website operator to pay a visitor 100 euros because the site loaded Google Fonts from Google’s servers without consent (LG München I, 3 O 17493/20). A theme from those years that nobody has touched since may still load its fonts that way.

What I take over and what moves

I take the site over as it is, read what it does, and move it to a system your firm controls. The code goes into a repository registered to your firm, and the logins go to the people you name.

The target depends on what the site does. A site with pages, posts and a contact form becomes a static site in Astro, with no admin login to attack. A shop, a customer login or your own data run on Symfony, Laravel or Node.js with a database.

After the switch you choose who maintains the site. Your own AI agent changes texts on request, a developer of your choice takes over the code, or you book me again. The guide you receive at the handover names what each of them needs.

The handover checklist

Ask your old agency for these items before the migration starts. The right column says what the takeover lacks without each one.

Ask the agency for	Without it
The login at the domain registrar and the name of the registered holder	The domain cannot move, and an agency registered as holder controls your address
Access to the DNS settings, including the records for your email	The switch waits, and a wrong change can stop your email
The hosting login, or a copy of the files and the database	The content has to be copied from the live site
A WordPress user with the administrator role, in the name of someone at your firm	Plugins, users and settings stay out of view
The source code of the custom or child theme, with any build files	Functions built into the theme have to be worked out from the live site
The license keys of paid plugins and themes, and the account they belong to	Renewals run on the agency’s account, or updates stop
The latest full backup	There is no way back if the old site breaks during the takeover
Access to the analytics and ad accounts	The history of your visitors and campaigns stays with the agency
The licenses for stock photos and paid fonts	Pictures and fonts may lack a license in your firm’s name
The contract	It stays unclear whether you may keep and change the design and the code

Who I am

I am Michael Wutzke, an IT architect for data platforms in Frankfurt with more than twenty years in IT and media. I have taken over systems that others set up: as Head of Decentralized Finance and Node Operations at the Frankfurt-based company Blocksize Capital, I took over the operation and the documentation of a price data network. I moved this site off WordPress with Claude as coding agent. Details: Background.