WordPress contributes over 33% of the internet, whether it’s random blogs or some high-end business websites.
Unless and until the site breaks down, we do not focus on maintenance. One can face a lot of backlash because of negligence. The worse is to lose out all the business.
To avoid such haphazardly, here is a 9 Point Checklist for Monthly WordPress Maintenance. They are plugins or some simple tasks one can perform easily.
- Make Backup your best friend
You can’t risk your website as it’s an important member of your brand or business. Backups help to save the content and the software at some other location for your WordPress website. When your website gets hacked, this helps you in restoring the whole.
The most common way that a website could break down are plugins or incompatible themes at the time of update or file transfer. Post-breakdown, backup is your only savior. It can help you get your website started in no time.
You can choose from various free and paid WordPress backup plugins. These plugins work well and help you in scheduling your backup activities.
- Scan, in case of security negligence
Security is a serious issue and cannot be taken lightly in any manner. This should be a part of your daily activity, ideally. You can always tick it off in your monthly maintenance work.
Plugins help you add new features every day as WordPress is an open-source platform. Subscribe to the WordPress news to stay away from any low-code plugins and attacks. It’d be very wise to update all the themes and plugins regularly.
It’d be very wise to update all the themes and plugins regularly.
- Keep a watch for the downtime
Every other second of downtime can cost you your hard-earned money if the website is your primary portal.
When you can’t access the website, we can consider it as downtime. It can pull your customers away from you by creating a negative impression. Angry and irritated customers are not something you’re looking for.
There are cases when famous websites like Facebook and Twitter went down. The good part is that you can always take care of such situations. There are several websites like UptimeRobot and Pingdom that offer you such service. One is free while the latter is a paid one.
- Constant Updating of WordPress extensions
Regular updates for your website play a very vital role in keeping it functioning. These updates go to WordPress core but theme developers always come up with the newer versions. WordPress releases its newer versions at regular intervals.
Updates not only offer you new features but also cover you with security problems too. A survey says that the highest chances of your website getting hacked are because you are using an older version.
This means that you should keep your plugins and themes updated. For that, visit your Updates page and do the rest.
- Erase Spam content
Your WordPress site might be chocked up with nonsense data, over time. This includes spam comments, idle users, etc. Just like you do the regular dusting of your house, dusting for your website is essential too.
Unused data can be in the form of settings from the themes and plugins, disliked media content, etc. This all can slow down your website. The major threat can be inactive users. This includes a set of users who sit idle after registering themselves. You should delete them after a stipulated period.
Once a month, go through everything and delete all the unnecessary data and free your website for the threats.
- Improvement in load times
Most visitors rule out the option of optimizing the website. What they do is they keep adding a new piece of content like media, themes, and plugins. This ends up in taking all the room and brings down the website’s performance.
You can lose out an on lot with that slow website. SEO has a role in this too. The speed of your page can directly affect the ranking of your page and user experience. According to the statistics, an ideal page load time should be less than 2 seconds. There are some tools out there to check website’s performance such as Google Pagespeed Insights, Pingdom. Keep both the versions of a website in check i.e. mobile and desktop.
- Regular updates for broken links and images
Always check up on the links that you have added in your website. The link can become invalid after a point of time. In this case, the link need to be updated.
The reason can be different such as website moving to a different location or a complete shutdown. Another reason can be caused due to adding broken images or links. WordPress can show an error of 404. This all creates a big bad user experience. The solution is to add some plugins which replaces broken links to the new ones.
- Manual Testing
One of the best ways to check the status of the website.
You can make some kind of mandatory task to check the website manually atleast once a week. It should be done from different devices to quickly spot out the mistakes related to layout, content and forms.
Contact form is the most essential element and aspect for the website. A contact form full of defect can lead to lose out on your potential clients.
- Update the content
Giving new content to the readers is very essential. If you cannot update it regularly then make a note to add new content.
If you want your bunch of readers to stay, new and updated content is what will keep them coming. Whether it’s a blog or an image or a video, keep the engaging content coming. You can always make your existing content relevant.
Conclusion
Performing these 9 tasks will keep your website seamless and efficient. This is not everything that can be done. IT also depends on the size of your Website. There can be some underlying code and platforms to check the errors.
This goes without saying that you can always reach out to us for your WordPress needs. We’ll take care of every error.
