How would you like a WordPress website that remains fast, secure and performs at its best all year round?

Unfortunately many business owners neglect their website maintenance. It’s not enough to build a new website and just leave it. Setting and forgetting your site is not an option, especially if you rely on it for business.

WordPress is an amazing platform because you can literally make your website do anything you want. It’s very powerful but with great power comes great responsibility.

In this article I’ll show you how to maintain a WordPress website so that your site is open for business 24/7/365.

Table of contents:

– What is Website Maintenance
– Why is Website Maintenance Important
– How to Maintain a WordPress Website

What is Website Maintenance?

WordPress website maintenance is the process of updating, securing and testing your website on a regular basis to keep it performing at its best.

Some websites like eCommerce stores need to be maintained on a daily basis while others like simple business websites can get away with maintenance on a monthly basis. But the more often you perform maintenance the better.

Why is Website Maintenance Important?

On average, ~30,000 websites are hacked into EVERY SINGLE DAY. Keeping your website secure is one of the most important reasons to maintain your website. Don’t become one of the statistics.

Taking a proactive approach to website maintenance is key. You could wait until your site is hacked into or breaks and then fix it then. But at what cost?

If your website was down for days, you would not generate leads or sales that you normally would.

Possible scenarios if you don’t maintain your website…

• your website goes down for an extended period of time
• extremely bad first impression for first-time visitors
• loss of leads
• loss of sales
• stolen data by hackers (including customer credit card details)
• injected malware
• high costs to fix your website
• slow website
• problematic website
• incompatible software

Hopefully the above list gives you some good reasons to proactively maintain your website.

How to Maintain a WordPress Website

1. Check Hosting Resource Usage
2. Take Daily Backups
3. Update Software
4. Scan for Malware and Security Threats
5. Test Website Speed
6. Fix Errors
7. Clean Database
8. Test Contact Forms

1. Check Hosting Resource Usage

This is a really simple check but important to ensure you always have enough server resources. Doing this check can also uncover server and website problems. For example, many shared hosting providers have low CPU limits so if you are always exceeding this, then it’s potentially time to upgrade to a better hosting provider.

Monitoring resource usage for a client’s site.

This is a closer look at CPU usage over the last 7 days.

2. Take Daily Backups

Before you perform website maintenance, it is absolutely critical to take a full website backup. One that you can restore if something goes wrong during website maintenance like a new plugin breaking your website due to incompatibility or by accident deleted something you shouldn’t have.

Most good hosting providers will allow you to take daily backups, restore backups and take backups on demand.

If your hosting provider doesn’t support backups, I’d suggest moving to one that does. It makes life soooo much easier. However, if you can’t be bothered doing this, then I’d suggest using BlogVault. This is easily the best backup plugin you can get. Trust me, I’ve tried quite a few!

BlogVault is the best backup plugin that I’ve tried. 

3. Update Software

Updating your website software (aka WordPress, theme and plugins) is extremely easy to do. You just click a button. Keeping your WordPress version, theme and all plugins up to date keeps your website secure and running at its best.

When a software update is available, it usually means there is a security patch that is needed and/or improved functionality.

PRO TIPS:

– make sure the available update is compatible with all your other plugins and WordPress version (it will tell you within the ‘plugins’ section).
– ALWAYS take a full website backup before updating software.
– if possible, perform updates in a staging environment to ensure everything is working smoothly before pushing live.

WordPress Dashboard where you run software updates.

4. Scan for Malware and Security Threats

It’s not often that your website will get infected with malware but it’s still important to check. When websites get hacked, oftentimes the website owner is completely unaware.

Your website could be redirecting visitors to dodgy sites for ages before your realise. So it’s important to scan your site for malware and security threats on a regular basis. Monthly at the bare minimum!

I recommend using Sucuri SiteCheck to scan your website for free.

You could also use a security plugin like WordFence, which comes with an inbuilt security scan. Keep in mind this will slow your website down a bit.

PRO TIP:

– add a firewall to your .htaccess file. Go to PerishablePress and copy/paste their 6G Firewall into your .htaccess file.
– if you don’t know how to do the above, just integrate their BBQ plugin.

Security scan using Sucuri.

5. Test Website Speed

Have you ever visited a website that took forever to load? And then clicked away because you couldn’t be bothered waiting? I know I have.

If your website is slow, visitors are not going to stick around. People expect websites to load almost instantly.

Website speed is also a ranking factor in Google; for both desktop and mobile.

I recommend running speed tests using GT Metrix. Make sure to create a free account so you can use a testing server closest to your location.

For more tools, check out the best website speed test tools.

GT Metrix speed testing tool.

6. Fix Errors

Websites will eventually show errors in one way or another. Especially if your website is built using WordPress.

It’s quite easy to hope for the best and assume yours doesn’t have any errors but this could cost you.

Imagine if one of your website links was broken? Perhaps you changed it and forgot to add a 301 redirect from the old one to new one. The old one will still be indexed in Google, so everytime someone visits it they get taken to a 404 page. How would you know if this is happening?

Well, the best way to get started finding errors is by using the Google Search Console (GSC). GSC will monitor your website for you and let you know when errors show up.

Check out the GSC Coverage Report below that shows errors, warnings, valid pages and excluded pages. Make sure you integrate GSC so you can start monitoring your site for errors.

GSC is also great for tracking rankings in Google for specific keyword phrases.

Google Search Console coverage report.

7. Clean Database

Cleaning your WordPress database is important to reduce server resource usage and to keep your website performing at its best. The basics include removing post revisions and trashed posts.

I recommend using a free plugin called WP-Optimize. Just make sure to delete it when you are done.

8. Test Contact Forms

The very last thing you should be doing to maintain your WordPress website is testing contact forms.

This is especially important if you have updated software and/or if you use a caching plugin. Just fill out your contact form and make sure your email notifications are working.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully the above has helped you understand why website maintenance is important AND how to maintain a WordPress website.

I know there is a fair bit of work involved but it’s crucial to ensuring your website remains fast, secure and performing at its best.

Don’t be the business owner who neglects their website. If you are proactive in maintaining your website you will be rewarded.

Good luck!

The post How to Maintain a WordPress Website appeared first on Max Jacobs.

When we hear the term ‘Website Maintenance’, we often don’t know what to think. What is it? Why do we need it? What does it do?

Like getting your car serviced, it is an easy thing to ignore. As long as nothing goes obviously wrong, it is easy to think that everything is in excellent shape. If we don’t take steps to pre-empt problems though, by the time we detect them, there are often serious consequences.

We’ve compiled a short list of the issues and the business benefits of website maintenance to ensure your online house is in order.

If any part of your business relies on a website, these are issues you’ll want to know about.

1. Security Measures + Security Scans

Those who want to steal your data are always innovating. WordPress is always taking steps to protect you against their attacks. It’s an arms race between good and evil, legitimate business and crime, and it all hinges on your site being updated and current.

By regularly updating security measures and scanning for any breaches, you protect yourself and your customers from those who would steal important data like credit card information, customer names and addresses, and confidential business details.

2. Performance Monitoring + Optimisation

Our tolerance for delay on the Internet is almost zero. We want sites to load instantly, and a wait of three seconds is enough for us to think a site is dysfunctional, or substandard. And well… it is.

In addition, by making sure your site kicks back the requested pages and data in the blink of an eye, you know that you’re getting the upload and download speeds you’re paying your provider for, and that your site is optimised to use as little of your bandwidth as possible. Fast and efficient. That’s a message your customers can appreciate. It’s a message we can help you deliver.

3. Monitoring Website Uptime

If a website goes down, it’s the same as if a tornado picks up your store and drops it in Oz… it’s effectively gone. Non-existent.

To prevent this, 24-hour monitoring is recommended. You or your maintenance provider can solve the problem, but only once you know there is one. An Aussie site, down all night, means that the American customers had a day without access, just an error page. So much for making money while you sleep!

We offer 24/7 monitoring, and know immediately if there is a problem.

4. Daily Backups

Important information is kept on your site. If something goes wrong and it’s lost, the consequences can be substantial. Imagine making a contact for a major contract and losing it due to a crash. Even if you know the potential client’s contact information, calling them to get the details again, before the contract is even signed? It can kill a big deal right there. Your customers and partners need to know they can trust you with their financial and other information.

It doesn’t make sense to keep only one copy in only one place.

By backing up your data, we remove the risk of having to start all over again. Your customer lists, product information, and other data is not at risk.

5. Scanning for Broken Links

Another event that deflates our sense of a high-quality site, is a 404 message. This comes up when we click for information and the link doesn’t go anywhere. It’s broken. Now, the customer’s anticipation of seeing that great product, or of receiving that key information, is deflated. They instead stare a dead end in the face. In most cases, that’s enough for them to move on to another site.

With dozens, hundreds, or thousands of links on your site, some may be broken. Find them. Fix them. We can help.

6. Audience and Visitor Analytics

The best way to make your marketing money hit the mark is to know exactly what’s working and who is responding. Moving resources from areas that are making little or no impact to areas that are generating solid leads and sales? That’s a no-brainer. But it’s only possible if you have access to that information. Audience and visitor analytics is where to find it.

We get this information and make sure you understand what it means.

7. SEO Ranking Analytics

The Web is a big place, and getting to the top of a list of 100,000,000 results is an important part of online marketing. We can help get you to the top of those lists, and keep you there from week to week. Getting businesses found online is what we do best.

8. Updating Software

WordPress is an innovative company, and software updates, theme updates, and plugin updates are released regularly – sometimes quite rapidly. These updates are mix of security updates and functionality updates. To keep your site secure and running at its best, updates should be made every week.

Returning to our car servicing analogy, this is the equivalent of making sure the tyre pressure is right, checking the oil, and filling up the windscreen washer fluid. Little jobs that are easy to overlook or procrastinate, but that keep your site secure, looking sharp and functioning well as technology advances.

9. Support

New products? Find a typo? Ready for an overhaul of your look or structure? Those are big jobs to take on by yourself – especially alongside running your business day-to-day. Having someone on hand to take that burden on can help a lot, and ensure that it gets done quickly and well.

10. Weekly Maintenance Reports

No one likes to pay for a service and never be sure if that service is being done. You’ll also want to be made aware of any problems that occurred and were solved, or any potential issues that you might want to consider to increase sales or open up new marketing opportunities.

When we cover maintenance for our clients, we provide a weekly report that details everything done in the previous week and, where applicable, strategies or intentions for the week to come.

We’re Here to Help

Like with servicing your car, some people learn how to maintain their own WordPress website. Others, who either lack the desire, expertise or the time to do it themselves, hire others to make sure small, inexpensive problems don’t turn in larger, more expensive ones.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you ensure that your site is secure, up to date and always running smoothly, feel free to reach out. Please view our website maintenance plans or send us a message if you have any questions.

The post 10 Business Benefits of Website Maintenance appeared first on Max Jacobs.