What is WordPress maintenance?

WordPress maintenance is a process that requires you to undertake several tasks which will help you optimize your site, keep it secure, and make it run like a well-oiled machine. WordPress maintenance checklist largely includes tasks like deleting out-of-date plugins, fixing broken links, upgrading WordPress, and more.

A. Use a maintenance plugin

If you are the kind of person who needs to ensure that your site is functioning properly, without handing the reins to a complete stranger, using a maintenance plugin like WP Remote is the best bet for you. A maintenance plugin will allow you to keep a track of everything from security, to backups and updates from a single dashboard. 

Why is WordPress maintenance important?

Like any system, your WordPress website benefits from regular maintenance. Over the course of daily operations, WordPress sites suffer from issues like malware, data bloat, unused plugins and themes, spam, and broken links. As such, you should be performing WordPress maintenance tasks regularly, fixing all these small issues before they snowball into a series of consequences like:

• Plummeting SEO
• Hacked website
• Data loss
• Loss of visitors

1. Prioritize your WordPress site security

The first and most important WordPress maintenance task is to create a website security plan and execute it. Your WordPress site security should be your no. 1 priority, because even a hint of malware can make you lose customers, blacklist your site, or even lead to lost data. The consequences are just far too great to risk your site security. 

2. Backup your site regularly

If your website is crucial to your business in any way, backups are an absolute necessity. Often, site owners underestimate the need for backups, because backups seem unnecessary until they are required. But in case your website is hacked and all your data is lost, or your web host suspends your account and deletes your site data, short of starting entirely from scratch, backups are your best bet. 

A good backup can have your site up and running within minutes, reducing downtime, and minimizing losses. 

3. Optimize your WordPress site performance

One of the biggest reasons visitors leave a website is if it’s too slow to load. Thanks to the many tools and plugins available for WordPress sites, you can optimize your site to improve its performance. This includes removing junk data, optimizing images, and more. We use a site-optimizing plugins to improve your site performance. 

4. Upgrade WordPress version

Arguably the most important piece of WordPress maintenance task you’ll have to perform is upgrading your WordPress version. WordPress version upgrades are released regularly, approximately twice a month, and need to be installed as soon as possible. They usually contain patches, bug fixes, enhanced features, and other improvements. However, they also plug any newly discovered security holes, making them an indispensable part of your maintenance routine.

5. Update WordPress themes, and plugins

Just like your WordPress core, the themes and plugins on your site also need to be updated regularly. Ideally, you should update these as soon as an update is released. Theme and plugin developers often fix any vulnerabilities discovered by releasing patches through updates. Therefore, it is crucial that you update your site regularly. We use premium themes and plugins.

6. Identify and delete spam

Spam is a real issue, especially for high traction sites. If you allow comments on your site, you may have noticed that a lot of them are spam. Some are just random posts trying to promote something, but there are others with links that can be malicious and trick your visitors into giving away their information. 

Spam comments make it difficult for your real visitors to engage with you. Not to mention the security risks of having malware on your site. In order to get rid of all this spam, you need to delete these comments.

7. Fix broken links

Broken links on your WordPress site may seem like a minor issue, but if your links are broken, it can interfere with googlebot and other search engines crawling and indexing your webpages. This means that no matter the amount of SEO and content that you spend time on, your website won’t rank on search engines.

In order to avoid this, you need to check for broken links across your site from time to time. You can use a site audit tool that crawls your site and checks for any issues that it might have. This will give you a list of broken links, which you can then update.

8. Check downloads and social media links

If you have offered any downloads on your site, or given out social media links, you need to regularly make sure that these links are functional. Sometimes, due to bugs or inefficient code, provided links and downloads may be broken. This can severely hamper the user experience of your visitors and make them question your business’ credibility. 

Visit your site from an incognito window and make sure that all the links lead to the right webpage, and all the downloads are available without any issues. 

9. Check device and browser compatibility

We’ve already discussed why website performance is important. An average visitor is only willing to wait 3 seconds for your site to load and wow them. But sometimes, your site may perform amazingly on a desktop browser, but not load well at all on a mobile device. Similarly, websites can perform differently on different browsers. 

Therefore, it is important to periodically test your site performance on different devices and browsers to make sure that the user experience of your site is uniform for all visitors. Plugins like LambdaTest can help you check device and browser compatibility for your site easily.

10. Check user accounts

The user accounts on your WordPress site are as vulnerable as the admin account. Hackers can gain access to your site through any user account by simply escalating the privileges and making their way into your site. Therefore, a large part of your WordPress site maintenance is to keep a track of all your user accounts, and ensure that they are safe. You can do this by following these steps:

• Enforce a strong password policy across all accounts
• Use the principle of least privileges when assigning user roles
• Regularly delete old and inactive user accounts
• Enforce frequent updating of passwords

11. Update site information

As your business grows, there are several changes that are pertinent to your customers. These changes may be recorded officially, but the only way for your visitors to know of them is through your website. Updating your site information such as the About Us page, contact information, and significant changes to the products and services is important to stay in touch with your customers. 

12. Review Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Your site data is a treasure trove of insights, reviewing which can help you maintain your site better. Especially in terms of security, you must frequently review your website statistics on Google Analytics and Google Search Console. 

Your Google Analytics account can help you notice any major spikes in visitors on your accounts, and if it is from a particular region, without any reason, it could be a sign of an attack. Similarly, reviewing your Analytics can also help you understand what kind of content your visitors are engaging with, and help you improve your offerings.

Google Search Console also offers similar insights. Most importantly, the security issues tab on the Search Console alerts you if Google has detected malware on your site, and allows you to take care of it before your site is blacklisted. You can also review the keywords your audience is interested in, and use it to make your content more relatable and discoverable.

13. Clear database trash

Your WordPress database is where all your content is stored. Every post, image, and comment on your website is stored in the database. Over time, this content can accumulate in the tables and start to slow down your site. So it is important to clear database trash from time to time. You can do this manually, but if your site has a lot of content, it will be difficult for you to determine manually which content is necessary, and which needs to be deleted. 

You can simplify this process by using a plugin like WP Optimizer which will automatically optimize your database tables and clear trash frequently to enhance your site’s performance.

14. Clean up temporary media files

Media files enhance the user experience. Whether it is an image on a landing page, a video, or audio, media files take up a lot of space and affect website performance. But you can’t do away with them. The best way to deal with media files is to optimize them before uploading, and to clear up any temporary media files that you don’t need anymore. Plugins like WP media cleaner can come in handy to clean up large sites.

15. Run your site through check-up plugins

Check up plugins run your site through a series of checks to tell you how your site is doing. It is exactly like getting yourself a medical checkup once a year. Most people may avoid it, but it is best to stay on top of any issues. Use a check-up plugin like Health Check & Troubleshooting

 to get a quick report of your site security, performance, and overall health. However, if you use a maintenance plugin like WP Remote, it will monitor your site constantly by default.

How often you should perform WordPress maintenance tasks

Different WordPress maintenance tasks require to be undertaken at different frequencies. Some tasks such as scanning your site or taking backups are needed to be done daily, whereas tasks like checking on your hosting plans and domains can be done annually. We have created a table for the WordPress maintenance checklist to help you understand the ideal frequency of each of these tasks below.

Site Maintenance & Monitoring Services

Site Maintenance Services for Your Website Is Basically for Routine Maintenance, Predetermined and Unforeseen Changes and Upgrades.

Many website owners think that having a website presence is all that they will need to succeed with their online presence. There is more to it than designing an elegant and feature-rich website. You will have to address all the site maintenance requirements so that the site stays up-to-date and is regularly monitored for performance.

Affordable Websites is a trusted web designing and maintenance service provider that addresses all aspects of your website management. It offers affordable plans to ensure that your site’s maintenance requirements are professionally addressed.

Site Monitoring

Your website needs periodic maintenance in order to keep it safe, secure and functional. WordPress projects have plugins that provides features, security, SEO and much more. However, the developer of these plug-ins updates them often for compatibility and to be functional with any new internet update that arises.

We go one step further and install “premium plug-ins” from qualified developers. These plugins are updated as frequently as once a month to 2 times a week.

Traditional HTML and CSS projects also needs periodic maintenance to keep it safe, secure and functional. They use extensions instead of plug ins. Again, we use premium extensions to keep your project running without issues. These extensions are updated less frequently, approximately as once or twice a month.