Website maintenance is a critical part of running a successful online platform. Unfortunately, many developers forget to perform maintenance tasks which results in a broken web platform and a bad user experience.
This can lead to a serious decline in traffic and a lot of hate from Google.
In order to keep running your word press website as smoothly as possible, make sure you give adequate time to website maintenance.
Here is a crucial checklist for maintaining a WordPress website
Visit your site often – in order to see the errors your readers or traffic are facing, it is important you access your website as an end user.
Try to visit your own website every other day, especially after you create new content. This will give you an idea of where the maintenance is needed the most.
Get security plugins – your website is always prone to outside attacks. To make sure it runs smooth and doesn’t create trouble for your readers; get the best security plugins available on WordPress.
This will ensure that any virus attack or other hackers trying to obtain your website will stay away.
Update WordPress – WordPress throws consistent updates to the users whenever new security threats are detected. Furthermore, these updates will remove any bugs in the system and add new features to the site.
Plus an update also deals with the speed and load times of your website. So make sure to update your WordPress site whenever an update is available.
Create consistent content – content is a part of website maintenance as it ensures you keep getting a steady flow of traffic. With at least 1 blog post a week, you can assure more traffic comes to your website and you get a better understanding of how things are running.
Eliminate broken links – when you are managing a large website, there are bound to be several broken links.
Broken links mean a lot of harm to your website because a single broken link can trigger Google to lower your ranking in the search engine. You can manually check broken links or use different plugins available to do the job for you.
Backup your data – backing up WordPress is crucial. There is a lot of threat on the internet, especially with websites that have sensitive user data.
This makes your website quite vulnerable to attacks from hackers and other unidentified software causing your website to instantly breakdown. If you keep a backup, you can instantly bring your site back for your users.
Don’t keep extra plugins – using too many plugins is a serious threat to your page and may even slow your site down significantly.
Make sure that any plugins that you are not using are removed from your system by completely deleting them.
Update plugins – last but not least, with every WordPress update, your plugins may get outdated and may not perform smoothly.
To ensure maximum speed and load times and full security, update your plugins as soon as WordPress throws in an update. Most plugin creators will take 2-3 days to release their own updates.
If you would like a professional WordPress developer to handle all of these WordPress maintenance tasks for you. Contact us today about our WordPress maintenance service.
Sarwar Abdullah is a co-founder at VATASK. He is a software engineer. Follow him on Twitter @maasarwar