Friday, July 22, 2016

WordPress Maintenance 101: Keep Your Site Running Smoothly

One of a good things about WordPress is how easy it creates regulating a website. But WordPress can’t do everything…


You need to be a tiny active – here are some things we need to do on a unchanging basement to keep your site regulating smoothly.


If we don’t, your site competence delayed down, be exposed to confidence attacks, mislay contacts, or even dump in a hunt engines.


How to equivocate that?


Develop a plain devise for unchanging maintenance. It doesn’t take many time – we usually need to dedicate to progressing your site on a schedule.


Here’s what we should do:


Keep mixed backups of your site


One of a many simple upkeep activities we should perform is ensuring that we always have a new backup of your site. From removing hacked, to a problem with website changes or your server, carrying a new backup of your site can save your life. Backups let we rest easy meaningful that your information is always safe.


You can also automate them, so they don’t even need many primer work. It’s a no-brainer.


The 3-2-1 order is always good to follow – have 3 backup copies of your site, 2 of that are internal (on opposite storage devices) and one of that is offsite. It competence seem like a bit of a pain, yet it’s like word – when we need it, you’ll unequivocally wish we have it.


How to set adult backups:


screenshot-1


There are copiousness of plugins that make WordPress backups easy. Here are dual of my favorites:


  • Updraft – lets we report backups and automatically download or store them in a cloud.

  • BackupBuddy – lets we automatically backup, store off-site, and revive your WordPress site.

When to run backups:


You should behind adult your site any singular day. Because you’re substantially creation lots of changes to your site, we wish to always safeguard that your backup information is as new as possible. And remember to always keep a few opposite backup versions, usually in case.


Update your WordPress core to stay safe


If, for some reason, we have involuntary updates incited off, we need to make certain to frequently check for updates and always keep your core up-to-date.


56% of hacked WordPress sites were regulating prehistoric WordPress software, so gripping your core updated is one of a biggest things we can do to keep your site safe.


I suggest involuntary updates so we never tumble behind, yet if not, check for updates during slightest any few days.


Update and mislay old-fashioned plugins


I know how easy it can be to implement 7 thousand plugins and afterwards forget that they exist (ok, maybe some hyperbole). But it’s dangerous to leave new or outdated plugins fibbing around. They can turn a good matrix for hackers to attack.


Plugins can also means harmony issues with a rest of your WordPress site if they’re not frequently maintained.


If you’re no longer regulating a plugin, undo it completely, rather than usually deactivating it (unless we know you’ll use it again soon).


If a plugin hasn’t been updated in a prolonged time, cruise perplexing to find a different, some-more updated, plugin that offers a same functionality. That approach we can safeguard it’s some-more secure and some-more compatible.


You can always check when your plugin was final updated by going to your plugins page and clicking on “View Details” subsequent to a plugin:


plugin-update-date


Check for passed links or 404 pages


Broken links harm your SEO efforts and are bad for user experience. But as your site grows and we pierce things around, they turn roughly inevitable.


Don’t worry though, we can simply check for damaged links as partial of your slight WordPress maintenance. Dead Link Checker will automatically yield your site and find any damaged links. It will afterwards forewarn you, and we can go directly to a page and repair things.


Another choice to check for damaged links is Screaming Frog, yet we like Dead Link Checker since it’s cloud-based.


Clean out your WordPress database


Over time, your WordPress database can turn cluttered with post revisions and other nonessential data. To keep things streamlined, we should spasmodic do a tiny open cleaning on your database. This is generally critical for incomparable sites.


Here are some plugins that will assistance we do it:


WP-Optimize is a plugin that will purify your database with a click of a button.


wp-optimize


Another good choice is WP-Sweep, yet my welfare is WP-Optimize.


You don’t need to purify your database any day, yet try to do it any month or so.


Update aged calm to boost traffic


No matter how accurate your calm was when we initial published it, as time goes on, it’s firm to turn prehistoric in some places. Updating aged posts not usually keeps a information accurate, it can also boost your SEO and get we some-more traffic. You can follow Oli’s guide in a related post, yet here’s what we should generally do:


  • Use your statistics program to find comparison posts that get good traffic

  • Update those posts with stream information, yet always leave a URLs intact

  • Republish a posts by giving them a new tell date (optional, yet a good approach to boost traffic).

Clean out your comments section


Hopefully you’re regulating a spam filter for your comments section. But no matter how good your spam filter is, it will still skip some spam comments and give fake positives on others. Try to peek over both sets of comments any day to make certain all looks good.


It’s also a good thought to respond to any comment. Responding to comments can assistance we boost your trade and emanate some-more sharp-witted discussions on your site. You might have beheld we try to always respond to comments on my posts during WPLift – there’s a really good reason for that.


It doesn’t take many time, yet we really suggest we try to peek over your comments sections during slightest once per day.


Check page speed to make certain we don’t delayed down


pingdom


It’s good to emanate a page speed benchmark that we can exam opposite to make certain zero new is adversely inspiring your site performance. Keep a record of your measurements to lane any changes. If we notice any problems in your slight checks, we can puncture in and find out more.


How to check page speed:


  • Pingdom – Pingdom’s page speed apparatus gives we an easy series to compare. You can always select to exam from a same plcae to keep things consistent.

  • Google PageSpeed Insights – PageSpeed Insights will also give we a unchanging series we can use to compare.

Test your forms for any issues


Wouldn’t it siphon to have people who wish to hit we yet are incompetent to? It can occur some-more mostly than we think.


Once we set adult a form, it’s easy to forget about it and assume it will always work.


This is a bad idea:


Every month or so, we should check critical forms for any acquiescence or deliverability issues. Make certain we don’t skip out on any opportunities for a stupid reason. I’ve had this occur to me, and it’s a terrible feeling.


Final Thoughts


Basic WordPress upkeep doesn’t take a lot of time, yet it will really make an alleviation to your site’s usability, security, and traffic. Take a tiny volume of time currently to forestall any vital problems from function tomorrow. These tips might not cover any teenager detail, yet they should give we a substructure we need to get started.


Colin Newcomer is a freelance author and long-time Internet marketer. He specializes in digital marketing, WordPress and B2B writing. He lives a life of danger, roving a scooter by a disharmony of Hanoi. You can also find him on Twitter.


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