26 Jan 25 Essential WordPress Maintenance Guide for Beginners

WordPress is one of the largest content management system (CMS) with wide array of themes, widgets and plugins and many large businesses choose WordPress CMS for their website design and development.

custom software development like website is however a one-time job but running it smoothly and keeping users’ experience at its best will require WordPress to be maintained and serviced quite often.

Many webmasters fail to keep its maintenance which is why WordPress becomes subject to hackers, spams, provides poor user experience and most importantly lacks to boost SEO.

Therefore, using the guidelines given below will cover almost all the areas that requires maintenance resulting in a well-functioning and smooth-running website.

Areas to Improve and Service

1. Latest Version of WordPress

The first and foremost process to ensure a smooth functioning website is to make sure WordPress is upgraded to the latest version. New versions often come with new features and security updates so don’t miss out on them.

2. Conduct Speed Inspections

Speed of the website plays a pivotal role in boosting the website’s SEO rank. Make sure that the content on the site are loaded quickly or else bounce rate would rise resulting in low traffic to your site because users require a fast and smooth working site.

3. Check for Broken URLs

Broken URLs are a bad publicity for your website which adversely affects your site’s usability and SEO. In order to be sure daily check for bad URLs through different tools like W3C Link Checker, Link Checker etc.

301 redirect works as a way to redirect users to other similar pages when they land on a 404 error page.

4. Keep Sidebars Up-to-Date

Frequently check for your sidebars and the blogrolls to minimize the risk of having broken links and irrelevant content and make sure the links include all the required information.

5. Regular Security Check

To make your website malicious attack proof, it is highly recommended to update your site’s security and keep an eye on it which will also ensure that all the content is safe and free from hitches.

6. Inspect Website Responsiveness for Different Devices

If you have a website that is browsed through different devices, then make sure it maintains its responsiveness and compatibility. Although in this new era of emerging technology, mobile responsive websites along with desktop responsive ones are a must and improves search engine indexing.

7. Image Compression and Optimization

Website speed is also improved if images are properly compressed, processed and optimized. This process includes the entire visual contents, such as header, banner and site images. These are among the important parts for your site traffic as images catch interest of users and increase the user experience.

8. Optimize Site’s Navigation Bar

User’s need a site which provides them with the best experience and is easily accessible hence make sure navigation bar is well in place and all pages are in order. This will minimize user frustration and maximize usability and traffic.

Do make sure that navigation bar includes sections such as About Us, Contact Us etc.

9. Review About Us and Contact Us Page

“About Us” section contains information about your business; your client portfolio etc, and it is viewed the most hence keep this section of the website updated.

“Contact Us” section is an important source that may generate any potential lead if optimized properly therefore do include opt-in emails and contact forms that are well functioning.

10. Update Your Content

If your site includes blog section then make sure all the content written is regularly checked and refreshed to keep it new, which improves your site’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERP).

11. Review Social Media Links

Make sure all the social media links are available on your site and are properly functioning which will allow more traffic to your site and enable users to share your content. Furthermore, social links will sway your site’s ranking on search engines.

12. Inspect Your Download Links

Any file available on your website to download should be well functioning and free from further redirections therefore, keep daily check so that download links are not broken or doesn’t lead to any popups or redirections which will impact the site’s usability and frustrate users.

13. Conducting Meta Data Checkups

Meta titles, tags and description are imperative part of your SEO optimization therefore to improve your website rank keep time to time check on them.

14. Trackbacks and Pinbacks Should be Disabled

Most of the webmasters see trackbacks and pinbacks as a spam as it enables spammers to create a backlink from your site. As these spams are disease for your websites it should be disabled.

15. Remove Administrators That are Inactive

To ensure that your website maintains its security level, do make sure you are checking and removing any inactive website administrator.

16. Do a Malware Scanning

Daily or weekly malware scanning is important for your website’s security as you will learn about any threats your site hold so that you deal with it before it is too late.

17. Debug Mode Should be Disabled

Disabling debug mode will ensure that no error or warning messages of any kind are published on your site while it is live.

18. Do Proper Website Checkups and Renewals

This part includes a proper back end check up of your website so that detailed analysis of the site is done making sure your website doesn’t lack any functionality, usability and accessibility.

Do the following:

• Have a WP Checkup to scan your site’s security and performance and learn about any problems that your site may contain all that in a flash.
• Have your Hosting and Domain renewed which helps the website to avoid time-out problem.

Regular Updates

19. Plugins

WordPress becomes subject to hacks due to webmasters not updating their plug-ins therefore it is recommended to keep it to the latest version.

Moreover, plugins adds to the functionality and speed of the website as they check for resources used.

20. Themes

Again, updating themes will add to your site’s security, improve the usability and provide new improved features that enhances the look of the website.

21. Widgets

Just like themes and plugins, widgets are another feature of WordPress, is also required to be updated regularly just for the same reason as both the previous ones.

Get Rid of Unwanted Content

22. Removing Database Trash

To maintain the functionality and smooth-running of the website regularly clear trash from the database.

23. Cleaning Media Files

Oftentimes beginners find storage issues which are usually caused by unnecessary files accumulated in the media library therefore, keep a daily check to get rid of these junk files.

24. Irrelevant Comments

Daily check for any comments that may seem like a spam and delete them to keep your website clean and tidy.

25. Themes and Plugins That Are Unwanted

Removing themes and plugins that are no longer needed ensures the speed of your site and releases your website from any possible security threats.