WordPress: Don’t Break Your Site!Feb172021

When’s the last time you did maintenance tasks on your WordPress site?

If you never have or aren’t sure what ‘WP Maintenance’ means - then we have a few helpful tips for you.

If your website is built on the WordPress platform, performing regular maintenance tasks is important to ensure your site runs and functions smoothly, and doesn’t become exposed to potential security issues.

Operate a Small Website with Just a Few Pages?

Rule of thumb is to perform maintenance on your site every few months.

Operate a Busy Website with High Traffic?

Rule of thumb is to perform maintenance on your site monthly. 

Maintenance Tasks Include:

Backup

Create a complete backup of your site.

Almost all web hosts offer frequently scheduled backups as part of your hosting plan. As long as this is being done, you don’t have anything to worry about for this task.

Update Versions --> If you're not comfortable doing this, we offer Wordpres software update service

Update WordPress version, plugins, and theme.
Click on ‘Updates’ located under ‘Home’ within the admin dashboard.

The running version will be displayed, and you’ll be asked to Update Now, if needed.

Review plugins and themes and update to newest version available.

Note:
If you’ve downloaded plugins and themes from third-party sites WordPress won’t offer updated versions to you. Those will have to manually be updated from the original source. 

Change WordPress Passwords
Change for WordPress website, FTP accounts, and database.
Remove admins from your Wordpress account that are not used or needed any longer.

Test Website Forms
Forms are known to fail. Send a “test’ communication to confirm all are functioning properly.

Review Spam and Delete Comments

The plugin ‘Akismet’ comes with each install of WordPress, and keeps spam out of the comment moderation queue. Be sure yours is activated. This plugin has been known to tag legitimate comments as spam, so it’s a good idea to scan the spam comments to make sure there aren’t any being blocked that should be allowed.

Scan for and Fix 404 Errors

These errors appear most often when a requested webpage is no longer available.

Scan for and Fix Broken Links

Broken links can be a result of external or internal links to include broken images or url’s.

Optimize Media Library
Scroll through and remove any videos, audio or image files no longer used or needed.

Optimize the Database

The WP database stores all of your site settings, users, comments, content – and as time goes on, stockpiles unneeded and unnecessary data. Optimizing the database clears out clutter, and improves performance. This is a task you may want your web host specialist to perform, or you can read more here.

Review Google Analytics and Console

Review weekly/monthly.

Google Analytics and Google Console Tools can give you insight into issues/problems as they unfold. Use to query:

• Backlinks
• Broken Links
• 404’s
• SEO
• Keywords
• Search Queries
  and more.

A regular schedule of WordPress maintenance will keep your site running smoothly!

Read more about our Wordpress software update service.

Don't have a website? See our development packages!

 

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