Most enterprises nowadays rely on their website to sell and market their goods or services online. And with it comes a greater responsibility of ensuring a website operates and runs at all times. WordPress is one of the most prominent content management systems (CMS), powering millions of websites globally. While it is fairly easy to focus on the how’s of web development, knowing how to maintain your WordPress website and keep it live is a must-know for every business to avoid website downtime and missing your potential sales because an excellent business knows how to maintain its website.
Here are the best practices you can follow to maintain your WordPress website.
Regular Updates & Backups
The consequent seed of overlooking a website entails frequent implementation of regular updates and backups to protect valuable data and enhance and preserve the string of code needed for the integrity of your WordPress website.
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WordPress core is the heart of the website, which keeps everything up and functioning as intended. However, it can be vulnerable to unauthorized access and data loss/corruption since attackers often find loopholes and exploit websites according to their vulnerabilities. Implementing regular updates and backing up valuable data strengthens your website’s security while improving its functionality and reliability for users.
You can update your WordPress website by visiting your WordPress dashboard for any available updates on WordPress core, plugins, and themes. Nevertheless, always backup your website data before proceeding with an update to prevent data loss and ensure you have a recovery plan in case. These updates should never be ignored as they address critical security issues and vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, review any major updates to be aware of possible changes and have them tested in a staging environment before implementing them to your live site.
Optimize Website Database
Optimizing your database is necessary if you happen to have an enormous WordPress website. It is not something that is left untouched after opting for web development. As an integral website maintenance task, keeping an optimized database signifies better performance and efficiency no matter how much content and pages are within your website.
Website databases tend to be cluttered and messy with unnecessary data, such as spam comments, transient options, and post revisions, dragging down your site’s performance and causing database-related issues over time. Thus, one way to optimize your website’s database is through regular cleaning to improve your site’s response times and reduce database size. You can use plugins, such as Advanced Database Cleaner
or SQL queries to help with cleaning operations, no matter how complex it may be.
Additionally, monitor your website’s performance regularly to determine necessary points and find the ideal occasion to optimize your website.
Updating WordPress Website Security
Your website’s security is a top priority that should never be neglected at all times. WordPress sites are a common target for cyber attacks due to their widespread use. Over time, an unchecked website grew more exposed to cyber threats. Hackers find a way to steal valuable data or cause sudden downtime. Robust security measures add a layer of defense to help protect and minimize your site from malicious attacks and data breaches. Here are a few helpful techniques to strengthen your WordPress website’s security:
Install Security Plugins
WordPress has abundant trusted plugins, such as Sucury, Wordfence, and Defender Security that aim to enhance and fortify WordPress sites against various threats. From firewall protection to malware scanning and comprehensive protection, these plugins are essential for any WordPress site maintenance and can perform tasks for detecting and blocking activities with real-time monitoring before they compromise your site.
Regular Scanning for Vulnerabilities
Malware can harm your site’s functionality, steal sensitive data, and can be transmitted and spread from one visitor to another. Most security plugins and even other external tools help you secure your site from facing potential malware elements. Consider running regular vulnerability assessments periodically to identify potential weak spots in your site’s security defense.
Set Up Firewall & SSL Certificates
A firewall serves as a barrier that separates your site from potential threats. On the other hand, SSL certificates help encrypt the data transmitted between your website and visitors to help secure sensitive data, such as login credentials and payment details. Having a firewall and SSL certificates is critical for your website’s security in the long run.
LEARN MORE: How Do You Implement Strict Security Measures on Your Website?
SEO Maintenance
SEO maintenance is something to consider if you are looking to attract and retain visitors, which affects your site’s SEO performance. Having relevant, up-to-date, quality content can improve your site’s credibility and help you climb up search engine rankings. Regularly reviewing and updating your content increases its relevance and engagement over time. This includes refreshing old blog posts, publishing new content, and incorporating new keywords to keep your readers or audience engaged.
Lastly, you can check for broken links since it can negatively affect your site’s SEO and frustrate visitors. Regularly check and fix broken links on your WordPress site using tools, such as Broken Link Checker or Google Search Console to help simplify and automate the process. Alternatively, you can manually scan for dead links or seek an SEO agency.
Performance Optimization
Performance matters in every website. A slow website can affect user experience and SEO ranking. Optimizing your WordPress site for better speed and performance is a crucial focus for maintenance efforts, and you can start it by compressing media files before uploading them. Tools like Photoshop or any online compressors can reduce file size without noticeable quality loss. Larger media files, such as images and videos can take a while to load, dragging down page load times, which is something to be considered.
Additionally, you can utilize caching plugins like WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and WP Rocket, to store static versions of your site’s pages without needing to generate the page again from scratch each time. On the other hand, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can boost your site’s content distribution across multiple servers worldwide. So when a visitor accesses your site, the CDN delivers content from the closest possible server to reduce latency and increase speed loading times.
Conclusion
Conducting WordPress maintenance requires a proactive approach and demands a lot of effort. However, the payoff bears fruits that businesses can harvest and enjoy for long-term success and support their online goals.
Regular maintenance is a valuable asset and a non-negotiable responsibility to take; which is why seeking professional WordPress maintenance service is critical for tackling issues and addressing website vulnerabilities for better security and performance. Contact OOm today to start your partnership with a trusted web development and SEO agency in the Philippines.
