WordPress is the software that runs the internet, or at least 43.2% of the websites you visit as of 2022. Maintaining a WordPress website can be a daunting task for most business owners and we offer Website Maintenance Packages to help you delegate this task to the professionals.
But if you are ready to get your hands a little dirty here are the top tips to maintaining a WordPress Website.
Backups
Backups are crucial to any successful website and storing them correctly matters too. WordPress has two main items that need to be backed up on a regular basis.
WP-Content folder, and your database.Â
The WP-Content folder holds your plugins, themes and image uploads that are unique to your installation of WordPress, and the database holds various sets of data for plugins, WordPress, users and more.Â
Several plugins exist to help you backup such as Updraft Plus, and BackWPUP. Both plugins offer the ability to backup to Google Drive, Dropbox and more! It’s important to ensure that you save your backup to a location that is not your website hosting.
Firewall & Security Scans
It’s important to make sure your website is secure to any current threats and prevent any future threats. A basic firewall for your website can exist in several different forms including the use of a DNS firewall like Cloudflare, or a WordPress plugin like WordFence.Â
A DNS firewall works as a buffer between the public and your website to identify any bots, or bad actors. For our clients, we routinely will create a subset of rules on Cloudflare that will have increased security for certain countries, and known IP addresses. These rules on Cloudflare help greatly reduce threats and potential attacks on our clients websites.
WordFence is a WordPress plugin that provides daily scans of your website and patches for known vulnerabilities in plugins, WordPress and themes. WordFence can also be taught to actively block bots as they discover your website and attempt to gain access.
Keep your plugins and themes updated
Maintaining updating plugins and themes is crucial to keeping your website operating smoothly. In the last year WordPress has offered the ability to set themes and plugins to auto update to ensure you are running the latest and greatest at all times.Â
You can also use a service like ManageWP that will help you process updates on your own timeframe, provide backups and daily security scans. ManageWP can also help restore a bad plugin update.
Use a cache plugin
Maintaining a website isn’t just about backups, and updates. It can also be about speed and keeping your website fast.Â
A cache plugin helps reduce the load on your server and provide a quick version of your website to visitors.Â
Combine a Cache plugin with a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and you can achieve stellar results with budget hosting.
