Those who are directly connected with web development know that creating a website is just the beginning. After launching a web product, there are several stages of maintenance. Yes, yes, after the ship departs for a long voyage, you will still have to work as a cabin boy on deck. And since maintenance involves quite a lot of things, we’ve put together three WordPress maintenance checklists for weekly, monthly, and yearly chores.
At first glance, this may seem like a waste of time, but in this post, we will talk about why website maintenance is a very important stage of any website’s existence.
What is WordPress website maintenance?
No website can work by itself, whether it’s a WordPress or a no-code-based one. To maintain its vital activity, the hands of a professional and a certain list of actions are needed. In simple words, the maintenance of the WordPress website is a set of tasks aimed at ensuring security, website backups, the relevance of updates, and many other things. Provide maintenance = assure the client that the site will live happily ever after, meeting constantly changing standards. Website maintenance services play an influential role in attracting and retaining customers as well as increasing customer loyalty.
Why do we need regular maintenance for WordPress?
Security & Protection
- WordPress is a common target for hackers. Regular updates help patch vulnerabilities in core files, themes, and plugins.
- Security scans and malware removal prevent potential breaches.
Performance Optimization
- Outdated plugins and themes can slow down your site.
- Cleaning up databases, caching, and optimizing images keeps the site running smoothly.
Bug Fixes & Compatibility
- Updates fix bugs and improve compatibility between WordPress, plugins, and themes.
- Ensures your website functions correctly on the latest browsers and devices.
SEO & User Experience
- Regular updates prevent slow loading times, which can hurt rankings.
- A well-maintained site enhances user experience, reducing bounce rates.
Backup & Data Protection
- Regular backups ensure you can restore your site in case of failures, hacks, or accidental deletions.
Weekly WordPress Maintenance Checklist
Visiting the website
Don’t laugh. Even the visit to your site’s front-end and clicking around to a few key pages can contribute to the early detection of problems. This is the easiest way to make sure everything is still working as you expect it to.
Time for backup
This is extremely important for ensuring the protection of site data. The optimal frequency of backups of your site depends on how often you edit it or replenish its content.
Don’t forget – always backup your WordPress site before an update. Read in our post why this is so essential and what other features the backup process has.
Apply Updates
The world of WordPress does not stand still and constantly releases new updates. To keep up with the times and ensure maximum performance of your site, it is essential to apply updates promptly. Three sections are subject to updates: Core, Plugins, and Theme. In addition, you need to prepare for updates – you can learn about its subtleties in our special post.
Checking comments
This is a point for sites where users’ comments are allowed. This section is the brand image, so it is extremely important to remove any kind of inappropriate or spam comments before everyone reads them.
Key Features Test
If your site has fundamental features on which the functioning of the company depends, they need to be checked weekly. For example, if we are talking about an e-commerce site, then you need to check the serviceability of the order form, payment form, and other related functions. If you do not identify the problem in such an important section of the site in time, then the whole sales process may stop, and you will not even know about it.
Browse the reports
This task will help to make sure that SEO and mobile optimization work without interruptions. One of the key points of verification should be Google Search Console checking. This service receives alerts if Google encounters any issues. For that reason, it’s essential to frequently check in to see if it has flagged anything.
Monthly WordPress Maintenance Checklist
Traffic analysis
Web analytics is a key tool of your brand’s marketing strategy. Regular statistics checking will help you to see the entire picture and catch trends. Pay particular attention to traffic analysis from the SEO point of view. Regular keyword monitoring is a way to track your site’s rankings in Google.
By the way, Google Analytics is an excellent representative of the web analytics tool.
Review WordPress Security
Any website can become a tasty morsel for hackers. The most dangerous case is when you find out about the attack too late. That is why it is better to take a number of preventive measures and constantly check the site for potential or active security threats.
Check the access and error logs monthly to see if there is any unusual activity on your site. To optimize the security verification process, you can also use WordPress plugins with automatic site security mechanisms scanning.
Checking broken links
Good links are a key factor in comfortable user interaction with your site. In the case of external sources, many sites eventually stop working or move to other addresses, so the link to them becomes irrelevant. The internal link may also break due to problems with the image format or errors in the link itself.
Anyway, it’s better to ask for help from the plugin to check broken links. This way, you will be sure that your audience will find everything you have shared.
Find and Fix 404 Errors
404 errors usually occur due to incorrect input of the link address. An abundance of inaccessible pages can create an aura of an unreliable source for your company, so it’s better to avoid them.
To find the pages that visitors tried to access, which resulted in 404 errors, you can search for “Not found” in Google Analytics.
Image Optimization
Another thing that has a huge impact on brand perception as a whole is the quality of visual accompaniment of information on the site or posts in your blog. Some images that are too large can significantly reduce the loading speed of the site pages because their loading is a more complex and lengthy process than for text.
The analysis of the media library will allow you to pay attention to weaknesses and optimize some images that are too big for the Internet.
Test the performance of the website
Changes of any kind can greatly affect site performance. It is better to regularly check this aspect to constantly improve the user experience. In addition, a fast website increases your ranking in the web space.
Try our Website Performance Analytics tool powered by Google PageSpeed. Check the main page and the key pages of the site first.
