Essential WordPress Maintenance Tips to Keep Your Site Shipshape

More than 43% of websites on the internet are on WordPress, making it the most popular content management system among users. It is an open-source, free software that lets anyone create a website within a few minutes. Even after the website creation, the user work hasn't finished. 

If you build websites for your own projects or even for your clients, your work doesn't end here as you also have to make sure that your website functions properly in the long run. For this, a website needs timely maintenance. When we consider using WordPress, most people often go for it because of its ease of building websites. However, the creation of a website and its maintenance are two different things altogether. Proper WordPress maintenance tips of your website is needed to keep your website performing well over time. Fortunately, this isn’t very difficult. There are tools and plugins that can make the entire process a lot easier. Professional WordPress themes on VW themes are the best in the market for a reason.

In order to ensure that the website you created works well and is secure from outer threads, it is essential to take regular maintenance of your WordPress website. However, most WordPress users are unaware of the importance of maintenance.

In this article, we share the proper WordPress maintenance tips to keep your website performing well over time. Furthermore, we also understand what WordPress maintenance is, when to perform it, and how to make it more efficient using tools.

What Is WordPress Maintenance?

WordPress maintenance is the only way to keep your website secure, safe and running smoothly for your users. WordPress maintenance includes backing up your site, running malware scans, optimizing SEO, and more. In this way, you can improve your website's speed, enhance user experience, and protect against outer threads (malware and hacks).

Importance Of WordPress Maintenance 

WordPress maintenance is similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Both are crucial for the website's performance on the search engines. If you take WordPress maintenance lightly, then it will hurt your website in the long run. Performing basic maintenance tasks, such as updating themes and plugins, backing up your website, and optimizing performance, can significantly improve site performance and user experience while minimizing security risks.

However, many business owners prefer to hire someone to carry out WordPress maintenance for their websites. But it's often unnecessary if you're familiar with basic maintenance tips. However, finding these tips can be challenging. It's essential to prioritize maintenance to ensure a healthy website and prevent errors. Additionally, some tips, such as performance optimization, checking for broken links and making your site more mobile-friendly, can enhance your pages' SEO.

The more time you spend on maintenance, the more you see its benefits on the website's performance. You'll see less downtime and fewer site-breaking errors.

WordPress Maintenance Task Routines that Should be Followed

Here are some tips for making regular WordPress maintenance tasks easier:

1. Go To Your Site's Dashboard

You can view your website's health and access important areas for detailed work from the WordPress dashboard. If any part of the dashboard needs attention, a red circle notification appears. For example, the Updates section on the navigation bar displays the total number of available updates for your website themes, WordPress, and plugins.

You should log in to your site's dashboard frequently, even if you don't make regular modifications.

2. Update WordPress To Its Latest Version

Keeping your WordPress version up-to-date is crucial for the long run. Here's how you can update WordPress to its latest version. It is possible to update manually or automatically.

To automatically update, first go to Dashboard and click on Updates. If your site is on automatic updates mode, you'll see a message This site is automatically updated with each WordPress new version. When you don't see this message, your WordPress version might need to be updated manually.

To update WordPress manually, go to Dashboard and click on Updates. If there's a new version available, you'll see a blue update button with the new version number. Before updating it, make sure to back up your website. Then, click the button to update to the latest version of WordPress. Once the update is complete, you'll see a confirmation message.

3. Take A Regular Backup Of Your Website

It is recommended to always take a backup of your website whenever you are doing any changes to it. Taking a backup is just like a survival plan or an emergency exit for you for whatever things you are doing on your site because backup saves all the information and data as it is. So you are safe even if things go wrong. It is even more important to take a backup if you are making changes in the files existing in the root directory. It is an absolute necessity. You can checkout our tutorial for how to backup WordPress website for better understanding the procedure.

However, taking backup on a regular basis is a good practice because you never know when an unexpected incident or cyberattack may create turmoil around your website. So never ever forget to take a backup of your website and be relaxed to think that at least you won't lose your website and its data.

Many WordPress backup plugins are available that save every change you make and make it easy to restore your website. With just one click, you can revert to any previous version of your site while still retaining your customer and order information. They also include an activity log that allows you to see the changes that led up to a problem.

4. Make Sure You Keep The Plugins, Themes And Tools Updated

This is one of the important tips for WordPress maintenance tips for your website. Whenever an update of the WordPress core or the themes you are using as well as the plugins, is released, you should update them immediately. As WordPress is constantly evolving, every now and then there are fresh changes in the form of WP updates. Every new update comes with more advanced features, tools, and other improvements. Updating to new versions can get you access to these new tools and options. The optimal sequencing of updating WP is as follows: first, update the plugins, then the theme you are using, and at last the core.

5. Delete Spam Comments 

You may not noticed at first but over time spam comments can pose a significant problem for website owners who use WordPress as a primary way to manage a website. Not only do spam comments on the website make it appear unprofessional, but they can also harm your search engine rankings and visitors' experience by including malware-infected links. Therefore, many WordPress experts recommend managing and handling spam comments regularly as part of the website maintenance routine.

The good news is that you can manage spam comments from your WordPress dashboard alone. To start, navigate to Settings, and follow Discussion. Here you will find various settings that apply specifically to comments on your WordPress site.

6. Delete Unused WordPress Themes And Plugins

Most of the time, WordPress users only install a plugin or theme to test it out. However, they may forget to delete it later, or your requirements may change. It's essential to regularly audit the tools you have installed on the dashboard and delete any that are no longer necessary. 

If you have unused WordPress themes, you can delete them by going to Appearance and following Themes. Hover over the theme you want to delete and click on Theme Details. A window pops up!  Click the Delete link located at the bottom right.

Unwanted plugins can slow your website, create code conflicts, and pose security risks. Therefore, it's crucial to delete any WordPress plugins that you're not using. To do this, go to Plugins following Installed Plugins. Locate the plugin you want to delete and click on the Delete link at the bottom right.

7. Optimizing Your WordPress Database Is A Must-Do

In this WordPress maintenance tips If a system is loaded with a lot of data and trash, it is going to cause an access load on it making it work slowly. Similar is the case with a WP website. For your site's better and speedy performance, its WP database optimization is something you should and must do. If your website has a cluttered database with a huge amount of old-dated comments, links, and plugins, it will surely cripple your website’s performance and make your site slow. So when you clear all that clutter caused by outdated and unnecessary information, you give your site more empty and free space to function to its full potential and speed. It will now take the minimum time to load. If you want to do this easily, so many convenient data optimization plugins are available. Any of these reliable plugins will further automate the optimization process.

8. The Security Of Your Website Should Be Your Prime Concern

Any unpleasant interventions on your website are the last thing you want to happen. So, securing your site against any such things, as internet bots, or hacks is important. Any WordPress maintenance tips of your website service keeps it a priority. However, many website owners often neglect this point considering that their site is too small to be noticed by digital swindlers or hackers. Just forget that the size of your website matters. Every website, no matter how small or big it is, is liable to hacking attacks. So it is better to find a good and effective security measure and keep on monitoring it constantly.

There are so many security plugins available that can make your WP website more safe and secure. Just find one of these plugins and make your site well protected.

9. Keep An Eye On The Speed Of Your Website

For website users, speed is the most important concern. It is also important for search engines too as search engines index those websites easily that is speedy and fast working. So all that stuff that may cause your page’s speed to fall, should be removed. You can maximize the use of tools and plugins that are there to boost the overall performance of your website. The removal of unused files, plugins, reducing HTTP requests, using compressed files and images will definitely help you in making your website work fast and quick at all times. To help you keep an eye on the speed of your website, Google PageSpeed Insights is there using which you can test the speed by testing and scoring it as this will give a better idea regarding the need for further optimization.

10. SEO Works Matter

The SEO of your website plays a decisive role in making you lose or win in this digital world. You need to keep the rankings and status of your site in search engine results in check. Higher ranks are always good as people notice them easily and you can reach the objective of getting to the target audience. For this, you have to keep on making efforts and try to work in all possible ways by regularly updating your website’s content and proper use of keywords.

So far, we have discussed a few tips that will be handy in WordPress maintenance tips of your website and make your website function flawlessly. Following these tips will nurture and develop your site to keep pace with the changing times and deliver outstanding performance that will mark your success.

Try it yourself choose from among Top WordPress themes and start creating your website with all the options and ease.

Conclusion

WordPress is a complete content management system that simplifies website maintenance in the long run. For example, updating the WordPress core is as easy as clicking a button. In addition, WordPress backup plugins can make backing up your site a lot easier. Installing and uninstalling plugins is also a straightforward process. However, it's important to be aware of the critical steps that must be taken.

By following the website maintenance tips outlined in the article, you can rest assured that your site will remain healthy for a long time.

Additionally, consider leveraging a WordPress theme bundle to enhance your site's design and functionality further. With a theme bundle, you can access a collection of professionally designed themes that are regularly updated and supported, providing you with a variety of options to customize your site according to your needs.