Your vehicle is a crucial investment. It takes you where you need to be, and without it leaves you standing still while others fly right past you. However, having a vehicle comes with responsibility. In order to continue meeting your needs, a vehicle requires regular maintenance and care to operate as it should. Your WordPress website is very much like your vehicle. It too is an important investment that takes your business where it needs to be. Without it, your competitors will be the ones flying past you.
Just like a vehicle, it too requires regular maintenance to continue meeting the needs of your business and operating as it should. It is important, so you can garner more traffic, increase brand recognition, and generate additional profit. For vehicles, there are different types of maintenance that need to be done such as oil changes and tune-ups. Similarly, your WordPress site has different types of maintenance requirements as well. Let’s look at some of these WordPress maintenance requirements and why they are important to keep your site running like a fine-tuned machine.
Plugin Updates:
Plugins are the tools that can be added to your WordPress site to increase the functionality of what it can do. There are many different plugins available to help you do everything from creating visitor forms to adding visual effects. Plugins are created by different authors and regularly updated. If the author updates your plugins, but they are not installed on your website, you could be missing out on enhanced features or causing issues with your website.
Core WordPress Updates:
WordPress itself is a fast-moving platform, and new features are added and regularly improved. Like plugin updates, if the latest version is not installed your website will not be performing at the level it should be.
Offsite Backups:
The WordPress platform is stable, but that does not mean it is invincible. In the event that your website is hacked or goes down for some reason, having a backup offsite can save you from the devastating effects of having to start from scratch. Offsite backups of your website should often be done, especially as you post more and more fresh content.
Security:
Security is not something taken lightly by WordPress, however, even as the platform is strengthened; malicious individuals will explore new ways to overcome them. Ensuring that your security is up to date and at its best is certainly something that should often be considered. Understanding the vulnerabilities and taking the necessary precautions is vital to the protection of your website and possibly your brand image.
Theme Updates:
Themes are the framework that makes your site look and act the way it does. There are many themes available that are well suited for any purpose. Themes, however, are often improved and updated just like plugins and the platform itself. Using an out of date theme limits the function and form of your web presence.
Checking For Dead Links:
When people on a website come across issues such as dead links, it can wreak havoc, and the cost can be alarming. Dead links send a message to your visitors that you do not care enough to do your website right, and that you likely don’t do other things with your business right either. Checking your links regularly to make sure your visitors do not run into problems and run away to your competitors should be a high maintenance priority.
Removing Unused Plugins:
Though it may seem harmless, having a bunch of plugins on your WordPress site that are inactive or not being used should be avoided. Maybe at one point you needed that calendar plugin but now use a different one, leaving that old one can be confusing at best and cause problems with your site’s speed and function. Going through your plugins and eliminating them is a wise maintenance move for a smooth operation.
Cleaning Out Spammy Comments:
A blog on your WordPress site can be an exceptional method of generating traffic and building your brand image. Comments on your blogs can also be a great value to provide additional information and generate discussion on topics important to your visitors. Unfortunately, like email, comment postings can be used as a vehicle for spamming. If the comments are visible to other visitors, your reputation can quickly go south. Spending the time to clear out those spammy comments will keep your visitors happy and engaged.
Updating the SiteMap:
When the search engines like Google are crawling your site, your sitemap is what quickly tells them how it is organized. It also provides the valuable information called metadata. Having an outdated sitemap makes it difficult for the search engines to follow and can hurt your SEO and search engine ranking. It is so important to have a high ranking site and an outdated sitemap is an easy way to ensure that happens.
It should be clear by now that just like your car, your WordPress site requires maintenance to keep you safe and moving forward. It may seem like a hassle, but completing the WordPress maintenance on your site is a crucial step in ensuring your website is working for you like it should.
