Maintaining your WordPress website
by direct_admin
Like anything in your business, your website is an investment that needs nurturing. Without maintenance, your WordPress site is probably giving you no return on investment – and at worst, it would be vulnerable to hackers.
You cannot afford to have a static website – technology is changing and you need to be prepared to change with it.
Here at Direct Digital Solutions, we suggest to all our clients that that need to be proactive in maintaining their WordPress website – starting with a plan that includes the following:
Regular backups: This is importance to ensure that, should your website be corrupted for one reason or another, or you lose content, you have a backup that can go live almost immediately. If you rely on you WordPress website to run your business, you cannot afford a long downtime to fix any issues. How often you backup depends on your needs, and you can automate it through such things as the free BackUpWordPress plugin
Check plugins – Speaking on plugins, these also need to be updated regular. This can be challenging because an update of one plugin can negatively affect a different one. You can mimimise risk by checkin the plugin homepage to see if anyone has had problems. And remember, while plugins are a great way to customise your site, the more you have, the slower your website will be. So deactivate (or, better still, delete) any plugins you don’t use.
Update WordPress software – WordPress regularly releases updates – often for security reasons, so it is vital that you make the update. And it’s easy – you just have to click a button on the dashboard. However, like plugins, an update may cause problems. In some cases, it may not be compatible with your theme, or may affect plugins, files and folders on your site. For this reason, WordPress updates and upgrades are perhaps best left to the experts at Direct Digital Solutions.
Ongoing maintenance: Just like a regular visit to your GP, regular “health checks” are important for your site. You need to do such things as remove spam comments; delete used photos and files; update passwords; check for broken links; and delete old themes and dialled plugins.
The kind of maintenance your WordPress website needs will depend on the business needs and preferences. Some of this can be challenging without technical knowledge and skills, which is where Direct Digital Solutions can help. Call us on 02 9557 7623 or email us@directdigitalsolutions.com.
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