WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE & UPGRADES
For over 10 years, we’ve been developing, managing, updating and moderating WordPress-based websites. One thing we’ve learned along the way, similar to ANY website and ANY content management system, keeping the foundation integrity solid requires minimal, but constant digital TLC = aka love, care and maintenance (like any relationship!).
In today’s digital age where security and data integrity are critical to ALL (from the one wo(man) show to the Fortune 100), we all desire to NOT be hacked, to NOT have downtime, to MAINTAIN our website integrity, to ENSURE security… to give you and your staff peace of mind!!!
Here’s a quick and dirty list of things we do as part of our one-off or monthly retainers!
WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE CHECKLIST
- Website Backups
- Back-up core files using BackUpBuddy or BackUpWPPro that make your website work!
(can also backup WordPress natively via FTP as well as backup the MySQL database via your
hosting account’s cPanel or PhpMyAdmin) - File/database backups – auto performed once per weekly (min)
- Backups stored offsite (Amazon S3)
- Restore from backup once every 3-4 months to ensure backups valid;
this ensures that if/WHEN the site gets hacked, we’ll get up and running FAST!
- Back-up core files using BackUpBuddy or BackUpWPPro that make your website work!
- Software Updates
- Apply available security patches / updates
- Update & Maintain content management system updates
i.e. Upgrade WordPress to the latest version - Upgrade all plugins to their latest version to maintain stability
- Backup existing custom WP theme
- Ensure that the site is not vulnerable
- Remove any unneeded website extensions
- Remove any inactive website administrators
- Check for Broken Links
- Run link checker to crawl site and look for broker links that frustrate users
and reduce search engine rankings - Check for 404 (Page not found) errors and fix link or set up redirect
- Update broken links, broken images, etc.
- Run link checker to crawl site and look for broker links that frustrate users
- Site Speed
- Check website load time using Pingdom to identify load time issues
- Use Google PageSpeed Insights and/or Yahoo’s YSlow to identify issues that might slow down site
- Use Google Analytics to spot trends (good or bad) in site performance (Go to Behavior > Site Speed > Overview)
- Search Engine Optimization
- Check Google Webmaster Tools for any crawl errors.
- Identify structural issues with site that may affect how search engines view our site (i.e. missing titles, duplicate content – (PAID service – Moz.com – Search > Crawl Diagnostics report)
- Identify new referrers that are sending traffic to your site.
(In Google Analytics go to Acquisition > All Referrals) - Make recommendations to freshen content on website
- Analytics
- Create a Google Analytics dashboard to highlight the most important metrics for your site.
- Look for trends (good or bad) in your key metrics.
- Spam
- Incorporation of DISABLE comments ensures that we’ve closed up ANY loop holes in the site by preventing comments or other potentially spam-like content!
- Functionality
- Test any important functionality (i.e. working contact/signup forms, donation forms, etc.) to make sure everything is secure and working properly 🙂
- Test website across all internet browsers and multiple devices and provide feedback
- Administrative / Operation Management IT Tools
- Domain, Hosting and Dedicated IP address management – remind you when things are due to expire to ensure smooth operation . Want to learn more about DNS, CLICK HERE
- Update your copyright date in your footer and update other date references
- Ensure any dated content is up-to-date
For TIPS ON UPDATING YOUR SITE, CLICK HERE
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