20+ Important WordPress Maintenance Tips

By Sumeet Shroff
Last Updated On : July 13, 2021
20+ Important WordPress Maintenance Tips

You must take a proactive approach to manage your WordPress-based company website and other online domains. A WordPress maintenance checklist is a necessity if you want your website to function properly. If your website is your livelihood, you are bound to lose a lot of money if you don't keep things in order. There are easy-to-use plugins like InfiniteWp and ManageWp to help you maintain your website, but it comes at a cost. A simple checklist will help you to

What is WordPress Maintenance?

When running a WordPress website, you don't just set it and forget about it. When things go wrong at the worst possible time, it's your job to fix them. If you do not perform these things, your website will not function properly, you will not receive new customers, and your business will suffer. It is at this point that a WordPress maintenance checklist is useful. No one wants their site hacked or their business lost because of a frightened customer base caused by an unprofessional website.
We provide a wide selection of Wordpress Maintenance Services; please have a look.

WordPress Maintenance Checklist

We have made it this far; congratulations. We'll look at a few essential elements for your following WordPress maintenance checklist. In this blog, Prateeksha Web Design provides WordPress maintenance advice, support, and service

1. **Updates to Core Wordpress, Third-Party Plugins, and Themes

If you're a WordPress user, you already know essential plugins and themes. When you have the ideal combination of plugins and themes, it can have a major impact on how well your website performs overall. Keeping your plugins up-to-date helps ensure that your site is 100% compatible with future WordPress updates. Theme and plugin developers always guarantee that their product is consistent with the latest version of WordPress. There are numerous reasons why WordPress plugins need to be updated, including the inclusion of new functionality by the creators, new features, security patches, enhancing the workflow and user interface, or enhancing the plugin's overall user experience. WordPress plugin developers might, however, be updating their plugins primarily to address security problems. Your website's safety and security should be your number one priority, and a WordPress site's plugins are one of its most significant problems. Plugins can conflict with your themes. Therefore, developers continuously fix bugs and release new versions to keep your site safe. To keep your plugins and themes up to date, you can utilise a plugin to automate the process.. Easy Updates Manager Remove all unused Wordpress Plugins and Themes, but leave a few that are really necessary.

    - Image - TinyPNG - Security - Wordfence and Sucuri - Backup - UpdraftPlus - Malware Scanning - Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall - Optimization - WP_Optimize and WP_Rocket - Form Plugin - Gravity Form - Page Builder - Elementor or Divi - Disable Functions - Disable author, Disable comments
### 2. Website loading time or Google Core Web Vitals When we talk about the speed at which a website's web pages may be loaded in a browser, we're referring to the site's overall performance. It is known that websites that take a long time to load in a browser may lose their audience due to poor performance. Websites that load more quickly, on the other hand, tend to attract more visitors and generate more revenue for their owners. Many people close their browsers or click away from the page if it takes more than a few seconds for the page to load. When it comes to search engine results, Google prioritises providing users with relevant information first. Effectiveness on mobile devices is crucial for SEO. Use GTMetrix, Tools Pingdom, and Google Page Speed to check your website's performance. You may also check how long it takes for your website to load by utilising built-in browser tools such as Lighthouse, The Chrome User Experience Report, and Chrome DevTools, which will provide you with a thorough report on the speed of your website. In order to verify that your website is functioning properly, you should regularly check its speed. Some plugins tend to lag in terms of speed, and plugin upgrades have disrupted the optimization settings of the site. Speed testing is critical for ensuring a website's appropriate performance. ### 3. CDN settings By distributing traffic across a large number of servers, content delivery networks (CDNs) improve the user experience and help keep sites up and running during traffic spikes by spreading out the load. Cloudflare, MaxCDN, and Akamai are the most popular CDN providers. Using a CDN would help speed up your users' browsing experience, and we all know how crucial that is. A worldwide CDN would allow users in Europe to access static content from a source closer to home. Instead of flying across the Atlantic to get the same information, they can connect to a server in London, UK. As a result, your page will load more quickly and experience less latency. If your CDN settings aren't working properly, you should double-check them. CDN servers occasionally alter their settings and offer new services that you can use. ### 4. SSL and Safety SSL protects your personal information while it is being transmitted over the Internet. Our secure Internet is built on the SSL protocol, which secures your personal information as it travels over worldwide computer networks to its intended destination. It serves as the network's backbone, which helps to keep our Internet safe. Even if your website does not collect sensitive information such as credit card numbers, an SSL certificate is still required for security. It protects both your websites and the personal information of your customers, ensuring privacy, security, and data integrity. You'll need the "Simple SSL" WordPress plugin, which also has a Premium edition. SSL certificates expire and, at times, stop working. ### 5. Spam Comments to be deleted. A common tactic used by spammers is to include a link to their website in their comments. In some cases, a link to a page that has nothing to do with the original content can be found. As with readers, search engines don't have a lot of faith in spam. If you have a lot of spam links on your site, you may see a drop in your search engine rankings. To add insult to injury, a lot of unnecessary comments might slow down your site's loading time by clogging up your database. You may slow down your site by accepting every "Wow, that's a terrific post!" Slow sites lose visitors. Use this plugin to turn off comments. ### 6. Admin Url should be changed. This makes it easy for your customers to remember how to get to your website administrator backend. Anyone with even the slightest familiarity with WordPress may quickly identify your login page, and hackers can get to work right away if they find it. Instead of making it easier for hackers to find your login page, you may make it more difficult for them by changing the URL to something more obscure. Changing the URL of your login page is a simple, yet effective security step that can deter hackers from accessing your account. It's more challenging to find a one-of-a-kind, hard-to-guess URL. This implies that users are less likely to reach your website unless you activate it.
This page's URL format is the same across all WordPress sites. It's possible to log in at www.mysite.com/wp-admin, for example, or at www.mysite.com. ### 7. Expired Links or Broken Links Linking to a non-existent website is referred to as having broken links. Both inbound and outbound links refer to data being sent in both directions. In some cases, these links will transport you to pages within or outside your website, depending on what you select. When a user clicks on a faulty link, a "404 error" message pops up. After clicking on a link, the user is annoyed if it does not direct them to their desired destination. It's a sign that you don't regularly clean your house. Your authority's credibility may be jeopardized as a result. Having a sales page on your website could impact your website's conversion rate, and it has the power to devastate your website's search engine optimization and page ranking. We must identify and repair or eliminate any faulty connections. To check your website, utilize tools like Broken Link Checker https://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/. ### 8. 404 Files not found. Missing files The 404 File Error signifies that the material sought by the users could not be found. If you get a "404" page, it doesn't mean you can't access the information you're looking for. Visitors are often swiftly sent to the page they were looking for after a problem with the original page is detected and fixed. These errors must be corrected to provide the customer with a great experience and the information they want. The user is redirected to an attractive 404 page with straightforward navigation. ### 9. Favicon You'll need a Site Icon or Favicon if you have a website. A " favicon " picture appears next to a website's address in web browsers to identify the site. When someone bookmarks the webpage, the data is also saved. These icons are often utilized as a part of a company's identity. It's a tiny logo, yet it can be seen just as clearly as any other form of advertising. You may be surprised by how often these tiny graphics affect visitor acquisition and retention, even if they may not be as crucial as other design ideas that may make or break a site. It is crucial for the success of a company's logo regarding brand awareness, and Favicons serve a similar purpose in the digital realm. These little pictures are as well-known as a company billboard to individuals who spend a lot of time at their computers. ### 10. Javascript Errors JavaScript failures or conflicts may be to blame if you're having problems with interactive functionality. Flyout menus, meta boxes, and add media buttons are examples of things that might go wrong. It is helpful for the developers to know the JavaScript fault to assist you. Enable SCRIPT_DEBUG. It would help if you turned on script debugging. Add the following code to the wp-config.php file of your WordPress installation. define('SCRIPT_DEBUG', true); JavaScript failures or conflicts may be to blame if you're having problems with interactive functionality. Flyout menus, meta boxes, and add media buttons are examples of things that might go wrong. Try opening your site in a different browser to see whether this is a JavaScript problem and not a browser fault. Identify the Error with Chrome's DevTools. Open the error console. Try reloading the page if there are no errors. When the page loads, an error may occur. If an error occurs, the console will tell you what kind of error it is, where it happened, and what line number it occurs on. Scripts and tracking scripts must be free of mistakes at all times. Google Adwords, Facebook, Google Analytics, etc. ### 11. Check Social Media links. To keep in touch with these customers and to increase your audience, it's a good idea to include social networking buttons on your website. Suppose your site visitors follow you on social media because of your posted quality content. In that case, you'll have an opportunity to build a relationship with them. Top-of-mind awareness is the objective, with the ultimate goal of converting them down the line. Verify that all of your social media links are active at all times. It's been proven that including social network links on your website helps it rank higher in search engine rankings. Google has previously recommended that companies connect to their social media pages on their website since it helps Google gauge your site's relevance to a user query on Google Search. ### 12. Check Social Media Feeds Using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, small and large businesses can connect with their customers more personally and directly. Not all of your clients may know that you're active on social media. To utilize social media, you don't have to pay a fee. This means that you don't have to pay any one-time or monthly costs to put the social media feed on your site. You need to verify your embedded social media feeds to determine if the most recent posts are being displayed or if the feeds have stopped or are no longer working. ### 13. Check for errors Check the error log for PHP issues regularly. A phpinfo() command will tell you where the error log file is located on the server if you don't know where it is. As a final step, activate Wordpress's debug mode as well. // Enable WP_DEBUG mode define( 'WP_DEBUG', true ); // Enable debug logging to the /wp-content/debug.log file in the wp-content directory. define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true ); // Turn off the display of faults and warnings. define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false ); @ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 ); All PHP errors, notifications, and warnings will be displayed if WP DEBUG is enabled. In PHP, fatal errors and a white screen of death are displayed only when errors are reached by default. A common side effect of displaying all PHP alerts and errors is the appearance of error messages even though the code itself appears to be working well. To fix these warnings, all that is required is to locate the related code. Then, the resulting code is more bug-resistant and easier to maintain. In addition, debugging, when enabled, can significantly impact the site's performance and cause instability. Put another way: The debugger will be working behind the scenes to find and save any inconsistencies that may arise, even though the goal is to avoid such occurrences. Afterward, you can re-enable it if you find any mistakes. The smooth operation of a website is dependent on an error-free Wordpress site. Error files can grow to up to 1GB and slow down the site significantly if they are not deleted. In addition to internal debugging, there are several useful plugins available like free WP Debugging plugin from Andy Fragen, Debug, Debug Bar and Query Monitor Plugin Wordpress includes an in-built capability for health checking that you can use to look for the error that Wordpress has found. Your server software, such as Apache/Nginx/Mysql PHP/Mysql and MariaDB, should all be updated to the most recent version possible. Check Slow Log Queries for mysql errors. ### 14. Backups It's impossible to overstate the necessity of creating regular backups. Preventative security and restoration are the primary reasons for backing up frequently. When a hacker infects the site with malware, or someone mistakenly deletes the data from the server, you could lose the entire site. All of your website files and database records should be backed up by any backup method you employ. If your website ever goes down and you need to restore it, you'll have everything you need in your backups. Restoring backups to WordPress sites should be as simple and reliable as possible with backup plugins. Having backups that can't be fixed promptly wholly undermines the point of having backups. Scheduled backups are performed automatically, without the involvement of a human. For example, you can schedule it to run daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on your website's requirements. In addition, backup plugins should perform on-demand backups at any moment. Regular backups are essential to the security of your WordPress site. It is equally critical that your organization select the correct backup plugin to satisfy all of your backup-related requirements. ### 15. Disable Comments Turning off comments on your WordPress site is usually done for many reasons like moderation of comments takes a significant amount of time, many are spammy and uninformative. The time it takes to respond to every comment can quickly add up, and if you don't, it could damage your reputation. There is no guarantee that comments will improve the content or visitor experience, and the comments section can become a place for trolls or people to get free advice. A lack of responses could send the wrong signal. The quality of your material isn't determined by the number of comments you receive. You won't be able to discover a conclusive answer to the question of blog comments online if you search for it. Depending on who you ask, comments can either help or harm a website's search engine optimization. One SEO expert may say they are essential, while another claims they aren't. Your blog is used for educational and marketing purposes to make sales, get new clients, build an email list, and generate leads. To achieve your goals, comments aren't necessary. ### 16. Disable default author pages In some WordPress versions, the author page may display the usernames of the authors, which might lead to the creation of redundant content. There are instances when the author page should be disabled to protect the site against vulnerabilities in older WordPress versions. Attackers' lives are made easier if they can guess the admin username by simply typing in a URL such as the following: https://www.mysite.com/?author=1, Assuming that the author ID is accurate, it will send you to the author page URL, which will provide the administrator login username! Please consider creating a child theme first. Simply add the following code to your functions.php file to prevent access to the author page: // disable access to author pages function pixelvars_disable_author_page() { global $wp_query; if ( is_author() &amp;&amp; !is_admin() ) { /* You have the option of redirecting users to the home page or not. show a 404 page. */ // show a 404 page $wp_query-&gt;set_404(); status_header(404); // Redirect to homepage // wp_redirect( home_url(), 301 ); // exit; } } add_action( 'template_redirect', 'pixelvars_disable_author_page' ); Also, you should prevent access to the author REST API, and the same behavior occurs again: https://www.mysite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/1 will show you the admin username detail. /* * Disable rest endpoints for author */ function pixelvars_disable_rest_endpoints( $endpoints ) { if ( isset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users'] ) ) { unset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users'] ); } if ( isset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users/(?P<id>[\d]+)'] ) ) { unset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users/(?P<id>[\d]+)'] ); } return $endpoints; } add_filter( 'rest_endpoints', 'pixelvars_disable_rest_endpoints'); Always change the user nickname from username to something else, but never the username ### 17. Disable Trackbacks and Pingbacks 99% of all trackbacks and pingbacks are spam, according to our experience. Spammers use this method as the most convenient one to gain a backlink from your site. Pingbacks from content scrapers (also known as content thieves) who replicate our articles word for word, complete with all of the hyperlinks, are common in our experience. Their blogging platform automatically sends pingbacks to our content due to such links. We discovered more than 99.999% of all trackback/pingbacks are spam. Because of this, we have entirely disabled them, and moderation of a large volume of spam is not worth the effort. ### 18. Google Analytics Code should be working For some reason, the Google Analytics code that is supposed to be on every page of the website suddenly vanishes. The code has been removed due to a change in theme settings or a theme update. Check to see if the code exists and if WordPress is connected to Google Analytics in these situations. You may accomplish this by checking real-time users in the Google Analytics Dashboard. Several WordPress plugins are available for incorporating Google Analytics into your website. ### 19. SEO Errors and Performance With constant upgrades to WordPress, plugins, and themes, the SEO settings fluctuate and fail to function consistently. It is critical to ensure that the SEO optimization is done effectively and restore the settings. First, check the search engine visibility settings and ensure it is disabled. Set the desired domain and permalinks to the "post name" option, the most SEO-friendly. Check to see if your theme is SEO-friendly. You've got an excellent SEO plugin set up. RankMath is a great SEO plugin that may help you improve the SEO of your website. Please use the SEO plugin to produce a sitemap, upload it to Google Search Console and reject low-value material from indexing. Please double-check your Meta Title and Description to ensure they are not outdated. Run a Site Audit in SemRush to review all of the problems, warnings, and notices you receive and correct them gradually but steadily. ### 20. Security and Malware Scan As long as you don't monitor your website regularly, viruses and malicious code can slip through the cracks. It is possible to keep yourself and your website safe by often running a scan on it. Keep your computer safe from viruses and spyware by running frequent scans. It is critical to ensure that your site has not been hacked and that malicious destructive code is not inserted. Malware has a devastating effect on your websites and can cause serious damage to your online presence. Check your current status on the Safe Browsing Site Status webpage. To identify harmful payloads and malware, you can utilize technologies that remotely scan your site. You can discover a free Sucuri WordPress plugin in the official WordPress repository. Other plugins, such as WordFence, Anti-Malware Security, and Brute-Force Firewall, also scan and clean your website well. When a website has been hacked, even the most experienced WordPress users will find the cleanup process difficult. Knowing that your website is being cleansed by competent security specialists can create a fantastic sense of security for small business owners. ## Make use Premium WordPress Hosting with Managed Services Managed WordPress hosting is an excellent option because of the superb customer service. It's common for managed WordPress hosting companies to focus solely on WordPress. Even if they weren't before, support teams that specialize in a single area are more likely to become specialists in that area. Managed WordPress hosting providers often have environments that are optimized for WordPress. To get the same speeds as with a managed WordPress host, you'll have to spend a lot of time installing software and optimizing your site if you choose a shared server or do it yourself. If you're using a shared host, you may not have much control over how fast your site loads.
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