We provide exceptional Professional Website Management plans, but we understand that some individuals will want to manage things on their own. So let’s talk about DIY Website Maintenance. Here’s an outline of some things you can do to maintain your own website.
Basics
Go to your website
- Is it running
- Do your links work
- Did you get sent to buy Viagra? Meaning you’ve been PWND!
Update any information that’s changed
Backup your website
- Use an awesome host like Flywheel
- Vaultpress- Premium service direct from WordPress.com
- Backupbuddy- a Premium plugin that’s well worth the price.
- BackWPup- a Freemium alternative.
- Intermediate Tip- keep your backups off-site (meaning in more than one place).
Do your updates
- WordPress Core- 3 major updates a year plus periodic security patches.
- Plugins
- Themes
Mange your comments and spam
- Respond to the good comments
- Antispam Bee is a great plugin to manage the spam.
Look for Dead links
- dead link checker or broken link checker are both good plugins to consider
- Redirection is a plugin to send bad links to good places.
Check your security
- Start with a free scan at sucuri.net
- iThemes Security- The premium version is my security plugin of choice.
- Wordfence- another great plugin (but it may slow your site down a little).
Check your website speed
- tools.pingdom.com will speed test your site.
- google page speed another speed test.
- Install a caching plugin
- simple cache- a great newcomer in the caching space.
- W 3 Total Cache- The most complete caching plugin is also quite difficult to setup correctly but works amazingly.
- WP Rocket- a premium and awesome caching plugin. Best for ecommerce.
Advanced Website Management- Some technical ability is required.
Check your host for upgrades
- Free SSL- Secure website will have major priority in the future.
- HTTP2- If you do secure your website, you can sometimes upgrade to this amazingly fast protocol.
Optimize your database (this can break your website so be sure to have a backup)
- wp-optimize- a cleaner database means a faster website.
- wpdbspringclean- an old but still good plugin.
Optimize your images
- Optimus- a new premium plugin that can optimize all your images past and future.
- Manual optimization- A few programs that can optimize images (besides photoshop) are Image Optim and JPEGmini.
Check Google Search Console
- Link to your Gmail
- Add it to your site
- It will notify you or problems
Check your Analytics
- Link to your Gmail
- Add code to your site
- Create a weekly/monthly stat report
Overwhelmed and Want Help?
We provide exceptional Professional Website Management plans, so let us manage things for you.
