WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist header image - Jay Burt Web Development, Bristol

WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist

Web Development | WordPress

Like cars, beards and that bit of your garden you were going to sort out ages ago – websites need maintenance.

So I devised a WordPress website maintenance checklist, which should be done regularly in order to keep your site working quickly and to keep it secure.

I offer an annual ‘spring clean’ which can involve a range of tasks from the list below. Prices vary due to the size and scope of your website, but I’d be glad to have a chat to see what I can do to make sure your site is working perfectly.

This will ensure your site is up-to-date and, most importantly, running securely as we head into the new year.

Before I undertake any of the below tasks I undertake a database backup, to ensure no data gets lost.

I systematically check the speed of your website. This is very important, as it improves the user’s perception, and the result gives more traffic and sales.

In order not to lose the new features and ensure your website has the highest level of security, it is very important to update WordPress to the latest version.

To make sure that your site/blog is not littered with spam and is well optimised,  I remove spam from comments. This also clears room on your server.

Obsolete themes are the most common reason for having a website hacked. Therefore, to maintain the security of your site at a high level, I will delete unnecessary themes from the WordPress directory.

For additional functionality and efficiency of your site, I will update the WordPress theme to the latest version.

Too many plugins can slow down your website and put security at risk. Therefore I will check all the plugins in WordPress and remove any unnecessary ones.

Outdated plugins expose your site to the risk of being hacked, so you should regularly update any WordPress plugins.

A site backup is always recommended before doing this to avoid any issues with the front-end of your website.

Emptying the recycle bin of data means your site will continue working quickly and efficiently. This will also use less energy to load your site – one of the key issues in sustainable web development.

The main reason for the lack of space in the site’s file storage in the temporary and duplicate media files – images and videos that are unused but still stored on your site.

Therefore, removing unnecessary files from your site’s media library will improve its performance and make the site easier to navigate.

Cleaning and optimising up the database after removing a plugin or theme helps to speed up the operation of your site. It also makes it easier to perform future updates to your site.

By using optimised images, your site will load more quickly, which will lead to better indexing of the site by search engines and better user experience.

As a rule, I always use Tiny JPG before uploading any images – this is a tool which compresses images without losing quality. This keeps your site loading quickly – one of the main metrics Google looks for when ranking your site.

Navigation can be a source of frustration for users. Therefore, I check all the navigation links to ensure the users have a pleasant interaction with the site.

Revisions and draft posts and pages take up space and clutter the back-end of the website. I perform a sweep of all of these to get rid of any unneeded items.

So there we go! It’s quite a long list, but if these tasks are undertaken at regular intervals you are less likely to run into severe issues with your WordPress website.

In addition to my WordPress website maintenance checklist, there may be some specific issues that you would like me to look at from a maintenance perspective on your site. If that is the case, please let me know.