Your WordPress website is based on open-source software, which means its code is available to anyone to read, use, and modify. This makes it easier for anyone to contribute to the WordPress ecosystem, such as its plugins and themes.
One of the upsides to open-source software is that it’s often more secure and has a larger community than closed-source software. The slight downside is that there will always be bad people looking for ways to exploit it.
Below are the top 3 most important website maintenance tasks that every small business owner should be aware of.
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Ensuring cloud backups are in place and working
Depending on your WordPress website, you can implement automated cloud backups that regularly save entire copies of your website daily, weekly, or monthly, and if there’s any sort of issue, you can quickly restore your website to it’s previous working state.
Having backups in place for your WordPress website isn’t just for when something goes wrong. If you want to try out a new plugin or theme but are unsure how it will interact with your website, a backup copy can help prevent downtime.
Tips For Backing Up Your WordPress Website
- Store your backups offsite in the cloud, not with your website host.
- Regularly perform backup restoration tests to ensure your backups are working.
Update your WordPress Core, Plugins and Themes
Keeping your WordPress Website’s Core, Plugins and Themes up-to-date is an important part of monthly website maintenance. It ensures your website is kept safe, secure, and performing smoothly for optimal functionality. It also ensures that your website has access to the latest features and performance enhancements.
Before you run any WordPress core, plugin, or theme update, you should first read the changelog. A changelog lists all the changes that have been made with the update, such as bug fixes, security patches, new features, and other improvements.
The changelog will help you decide if an update is applicable to your WordPress website and if there’s any potential compatibility issues.
Tips For Updating Your WordPress Website
- After running any updates to your WordPress core, plugins, or theme, double-check for compatibility issues or broken elements.
- For major updates, schedule them after-hours to avoid any potential issues during the day for your website visitors.
Keep Optimising your WordPress Website
There’s a number of things you can do to optimise your website for mobile responsiveness, speed, and performance, such as:
- Image compression
- Implementing a caching plugin
- Optimising your WordPress database by deleting old revisions.
This ensures your website is responsive across all mobile devices, loads fast for your clients, and slightly improves your search engine ranking.
You can also use tools such as Google Lighthouse and Pingdom Website Speed Test for further optimisation.
Depending on your WordPress website, you should consider moving your site to a managed WordPress hosting service and implementing a content delivery network (CDN) service. This will definitely improve your website’s performance and speed.
Bonus: Troubleshooting WordPress Maintenance Issues
Now and again, your website may encounter an error during maintenance. This can be related to either your WordPress core, plugin, or theme.
Here’s a couple of general troubleshooting tips to help you get you started:
- Clear your website and browser cache.
- Deactivate plugins one by one to see if it resolves your issue.
- If you find the plugin giving the error, restore it to the previous working version if you have a backup.
- If it’s a theme-related issue, change your WordPress theme to a default one.
- If you have backups in-place, restore your website to a previous working version.
These steps should help you address most common issues.