Tips to Maintain Your WordPress Website
WordPress is easy to maintain yourself, but you need to know what to look out for. Here are some tips you can easily follow to ensure your website is always up-to-date:
- Stay Up-to-Date! Always update your WordPress site to the latest version and keep your plugins up-to-date. This helps prevent your site from being hacked. WordPress continuously provides the latest security updates for their content management system, but you need to download them. If you don’t stay up-to-date, there’s a higher risk of your site crashing or being hacked. TIP: Log in to your website at least once a month via www.mywebsite.com/wp-admin and perform all available updates.
- Regularly Check Your Site Even if you have a static website without an active blog or news page, it’s still a good idea to regularly review the content. Your contact information might have changed, or new members might have joined your research team who deserve a spot on the site. It’s frustrating for visitors to find incorrect information, so make sure your website doesn’t display outdated information. There might also be issues with your site, so stay alert and check your site regularly.
- Use a Secure Password Ensure you create a new secure password for the website (a random password 12-16 characters long). If multiple people work on your website, make sure they also use a strong password. Remove users from your WordPress site (under ‘users’ in the main menu) who are no longer part of your team. This prevents their accounts from being used by hackers to exploit your site. TIP: You can create a strong password using a secure password generator and use a password manager like LastPass. Learn all about secure passwords.
- Make Backups of Your Site Things can always go wrong with your site. Ensure you have a backup of the latest version. You can do this by using backup software or manually copying the site to your computer. ManageWP is a great tool for updating, monitoring, and backing up your website. Monthly backups are free, and daily backups cost only €1.80 per month. If you’re making significant changes to your site or updating it, make a backup immediately to avoid losing all your hard work.
- Remove Old Plugins and Themes Delete any plugins you don’t need, as they can slow down your website and pose security risks if they’re outdated. This also applies to themes that are lying around unused. Always keep one theme as a backup (preferably a standard WordPress theme like TwentyThirteen) and remove the rest.
Advanced Maintenance Some tasks are better left to experts. If you don’t have much experience with WordPress, ask your web designer to check the following tips for you:
- Secure Your Website with a Plugin Not all hosting companies are equally secure. First, choose a good host for your WordPress website. If you can’t move the website, it’s a good idea to use a security plugin. Two good plugins are:
- iThemes Security (also has a paid pro version)
- Sucuri Security (also has a paid firewall)
- Ensure Your Website Loads Quickly If your website takes 10 seconds to load, you’re sure to lose visitors, and it’s bad for your SEO. Read more about how to speed up your website in…
Feel free to ask if you need any more help!