Operating a WordPress website is equivalent to raising a child, as your work does not end there; it is just the beginning of building a beautiful and highly functional website. As we look after the child’s upbringing and growth, a business owner needs to take care of their website by regularly inspecting their WordPress site’s performance or task to ensure it is up and running, secure and serving their users as per the company’s expectations. The ongoing process rewards your effort with reliability and stability, which every website owner needs to get hands-on expertise. You can either hire a WordPress maintenance service provider or do it yourself. This article will cover the essential WordPress maintenance checklists and tips.

Why WordPress Maintenance Plan?

WordPress – the most popular Content Management system, accounts for almost 42 percent of total websites online, providing high-quality services. Operating a WordPress website is like handling a company. Just like a company needs maintenance service on a timely basis, a WordPress website to require a regular maintenance service to ensure your website runs smoothly.

Benefits of WordPress Website Maintenance

In WordPress, regular maintenance is a useful routine, as it consists of multiple elements that all have to work perfectly in concert. Overlooking an update or two might mean that your website becomes prone to theme and plug-in conflicts, not to mention dangerously exposed in terms of security.

Update the WordPress Software

You can easily update to the latest WordPress version with a click of a button. The software is frequently updated to fix bugs, improve, and add new features. All you need to do is ensure that your website has the latest security patches, the newest features, best speed and performance. The WordPress core, plugins and themes can all be set to update automatically, resulting in insufficient time to evaluate how everything might work together. The best practice is to update all files in a staging environment first. Once you know how updates will play out on your live website, you can implement them on your live site.

Frequently Change Passwords

Changing passwords might sound weird, but using the same passwords for a long time is one main reason to protect your website from getting hacked easily. WordPress experts recommend changing passwords regularly to protect your website from phishing and brute-force attacks. The best practice to change your passwords is every 60 days, and add two-factor authentication to gain more security for your site.

Run Performance Tests

The performance test must run regularly to improve your site. Most people mistake running a performance test only at the start and never again. Suppose you have made any major changes to the appearance of your website, like trying out a new theme; you must always check to see that all your website’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are compatible with major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Therefore, regularly performing testing helps you keep track of your site’s speed and response time from the user’s experience and also give clues about what factors might slow down your site.

Catch and Fix Broken Links

We often must have come across the ‘404 not found error’ page while browsing a website; it is nothing but a broken or dead link, either deleted or moved to a different location. In simpler terms, broken links are URLs linking to content that no longer exists. It is highly recommended to check and remove broken links from your site to avoid any negative user experience and harm to your WordPress SEO and rankings. You can easily check your website for any broken links by using a broken link-checking plug-in such as Broken Link Checker by WPMU Dev. Once the plug-in is installed, it will automatically check for broken links.

Backup Your Website Regularly

Imagine that one day you wake up and notice that your site suddenly shuts down. It becomes a nightmare as all your important data is gone. To avoid such circumstances, frequently taking a backup of your site is a good approach. It is the most fundamental maintenance task, as having an updated backup will always be just a few clicks away from coming back to life.

Audit the Content

Keeping the on-site content up to date helps build trust between you and your customers. The best practice would be staying one step ahead of everyone else by constantly improving your content, as search engines appreciate updated content. Moreover, using a paid SEO tool like Ahrefs, you can learn more about how your content performs compared to the competition.
Hence, these WordPress maintenance tasks may make it look simple, where anyone could do them, but not everyone has the time. A professional WordPress maintenance service will have expertise in all the discussed areas. You need to take on many maintenance tasks, including but not limited to visiting your site in the front end, backing up your site daily, or even considering hosting your site in another provider. Make sure your site is performing well and is reviewed weekly, monthly, and yearly.