How to maintain a WordPress website: 5 Actionable Tips

WordPress is open-source software, and on its own it doesn’t do much. We add themes to make it look pretty and plugins to add more functionality. These are all made by other developers for use on WordPress. If you’ve got a phone and computer, you will know that you regularly get notifications for updates. These can be feature updates where new features or improvements are added, or you often get security updates. It’s the same on WordPress, you just get a few! To update your website, though, is simple! When you have an update, it will show under the updates on your WordPress dashboard. Click updates, then select the updates available and click update. Plugins can also auto-update, so it’s even easier for you. Simply go to the plugins page, and next to each plugin, you will see the auto-update feature. Just enable it, and you’re done! If done manually, you will need to be doing them at least once a month. Most people who come to us with site glitches or things going wrong usually haven’t done their updates for months.

This is one of the most important ways to maintain a WordPress website. If you’ve ever worked with technology before, you will know just how much stuff can go wrong! If you’ve spent time and money on your website, can you imagine if something went wrong and it all got deleted? I remember once getting a notification that someone was trying to hack my website, and by the time I got to it, it had all gone. But as I had a backup, it was restored within minutes. It’s not just hackers either; there could be an issue with something going wrong on your website, or things could have been messed up when you add a plugin or edit a page, and you need to go back to another version from before things started to go wrong. Backups can often be taken by your hosting company (although sometimes there is an extra charge), but you can also backup using the free Updraft Plus plugin. Simply install and go to settings, select a daily, weekly, or monthly backup (depending on how often your site changes) and select a cloud storage option, and connect. Google Drive and Dropbox are available in the free version. It will then automatically back up your website at the specified times.

Did you know that around 30,000 WordPress sites a DAY are hacked? It’s not just the fact that themes and plugins are made by many different developers, but the biggest reason is that around 65% of all the world’s websites are built with WordPress. The next platform, Shopify, is 6.7%, and Wix is 2.9%, with other platforms lower, so you can see that with the majority of sites being built using WordPress, it is no wonder so many get hacked.

Therefore, it is good practice to maintain a WordPress website to install protection. I use a free plugin called Wordfence that not only provides my site with a firewall but also weekly scans for any vulnerabilities or malicious code on the website. Think of it as a burglar alarm. Wordfence then sends you an email after each scan to let you know so you can take further action. Once set up, you don’t need to do anything unless alerted.

Whatever platform your website is built on, it’s new and updated content that keeps it going. Just having a website sat there that’s never updated isn’t good for search engine rankings, as Google can see when you add new content when it crawls your website.

How annoyed do you get when you land on a website and the information is really out of date, so you click off? Visitors clicking off the website also shows Google that something is up. At the end of the day, Google is a business just like us, and its business is to give us relevant results for what we are searching for. If it’s out of date, it’s not good for business. To maintain a WordPress website, therefore, go into your site at least once a month and make sure the content is up to date. A blog is also a really good way to keep adding new and fresh content to your website.

Is your website in need of an MOT? WordPress has a built-in Site Health function (under tools) which will let you know if there’s anything that could be hindering your site’s performance and usability. Take a look to see if anything comes up on your health check. It’s also good to pop into your site at least once a month to make sure everything’s working and have a plugin clear out every six months, as the more plugins you have, the slower your site can become (and the more glitches can happen). If you no longer need the plugin, then deactivate and delete!