Having a WordPress site is one thing (there are 1.88 billion websites in the world), and churning business from it is another. Sadly, hardly 18% of total websites are active and supporting business growth.
To ensure a website functions effectively and delivers optimal results, extensive site maintenance is crucial. Over time, a WordPress site becomes vulnerable to threats, security risks, and compatibility issues with plugins and themes. Regular WordPress maintenance helps prevent these issues from affecting your site’s performance in search engines. After all, losing visibility means losing revenue, especially for e-commerce sites.
If you’re not taking WordPress maintenance seriously, now is the time to start. This exhausting WordPress site maintenance guide will help you grasp the nitty-gritty of this crucial task.
Table of Contents
An Intro WordPress Site Maintenance
WordPress maintenance, or WordPress site maintenance, is a systematic and iterative process encompassing the regular updating and optimization of various software and structural components to maintain optimal site functionality, security, and performance.
This process involves a tiered schedule of tasks, executed daily, weekly, monthly, and annually, based on the criticality and impact of each task on the overall site stability and security posture.
Why Is WordPress Website Maintenance Important?
WordPress is one of the most preferred CMS in the world. 43.1% of the total websites are built on it. A fully functional and well-maintained WordPress website holds the power to strengthen a business’s presence by all means possible.
Even though WordPress website maintenance is tedious and taxing, industry experts suggest going ahead because it’s important as:
- Better Security: With periodic WordPress website maintenance, website owners can prepare the concerned website to deal with new threats, launch security patches, replace outdated certificates, and update the plugin.
- Optimized Speed: As you maintain the WordPress website, you eliminate unnecessary elements, update outdated plugins, and clean the junk data. When all these things are eradicated, the website will have a blazing speed.
- Improved Server Uptime: As you maintain the WordPress website, you update the accessories and support tools. This way, your website’s server becomes more responsive and performs better.
- Prevents Unforeseen Breakdown: Maintaining WordPress regularly recent small issues from turning into massive chaos, ensuring uninterrupted website functionality.
- Enhanced User Experience: As you maintain a WP site, you fix bugs, improve its speed, and boost the broken UX elements, resulting in a seamless user experience with the site.
- Higher SEO Ranking: Regular maintenance keeps SEO factors like broken links, site speed, and mobile-friendliness in check, improving site rankings.
- Reduced Maintenance Costs: Identifying and fixing issues early helps avoid costly repairs and overhauls in the future.
- Compliance with Industry Standards: Staying up-to-date with privacy policies, security protocols, and accessibility standards ensures the website remains compliant.
How to Maintain a WordPress Website?
Maintaining a WordPress site isn’t just about fixing things when they break — it’s about keeping everything running smoothly, securely, and at its best!
Here’s a sneak peek into what goes into keeping your WordPress site in top shape.
| Frequency | Tasks |
| Daily | Site back-up, running vulnerability scans, review load time & performance, uptime monitoring, offsite backup, clear cache, check broken links |
| Weekly | Update plugins & themes, test site functionality, optimize the database, and conduct an SEO audit |
| Monthly | Full site audit, analyze website traffic, cross-browser testing, review site speed & caching, remove unused plugins/themes |
| Yearly | Review site UX, analyze hosting provider performance, review third-party integrations, revalidate licenses & subscriptions, perform deep database cleanup, check custom code for deprecated functions |
Seems too much to handle, right? Well, don’t sweat. While a lot goes into maintaining the WordPress website effectively, you can pull it off like a professional. Many of these WordPress maintenance tasks require a basic understanding of the WordPress ecosystem and the best site maintenance tool that can automate the majority of tasks and streamline everything that falls under the WordPress maintenance umbrella.
We’re also going to tell you how to perform some of the most crucial WordPress maintenance tasks.
Daily WordPress Maintenance Tasks
Let’s talk about some of the most crucial daily WordPress site care tasks and how to perform them.
#1 – Backing Up WordPress Websites
It’s important to take regular WordPress website backups to avoid losing something important and maintain WordPress effectively if an attack occurs.
The easiest way to perform this site care tasks is to install a site maintenance and backup plugin. Just install the plugin and leave the rest.
If you’re using a WordPress development platform like InstaWP, you can create a clone of your WP site directly from the dashboard.
Agencies maintaining multiple sites can select the WP sites and use WP-CLI commands to take backup of multiple sites simultaneously, saving thousands of work hours.
#2 – Vulnerability Scans
You must scan the WP site daily to spot any vulnerabilities before they become a headache or a serious security threat. You’ve ample WordPress security plugins around you. Just pick the one that aligns most with your goals and install it on the site.
Alternatively, use InstaWP Dashboard to gain an eagle’s eye view of your WP site’s security. The dashboard can install security plugins on multiple sites in one go and also provide detailed vulnerability reports on individual sites. You can view past scan reports and conduct a new scan.
#3- Check Uptime
The next task in the WordPress maintenance checklist is reviewing the site’s uptime. You should do it daily to ensure the site is accessible to the target audience and fix slow WordPress issues before they hamper the SEO ranking.
Installing uptime monitoring plugins on individual sites can be a viable solution. However, for agencies managing multiple sites, it’s more efficient to use a robust site management tool with built-in uptime monitoring capabilities.
This approach not only saves time and effort but also ensures that every aspect of WordPress site maintenance is streamlined and optimized.
Must Read: How to Monitor Uptime and Performance for Your Connected Sites
#4- Review Load Time & Performance
Sites that take more than 1 second to load experience a 35% increase in the bounce rate. Yes, slow WordPress sites kill traffic, user engagement, SEO ranking, and ultimately revenue, especially for lead generation or e-commerce sites.
So, don’t forget to check your site’s speed daily using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. This is a crucial WordPress maintenance task to perform every day if you wish to have
#5- Clear Cache
While caching in WordPress is crucial to improving a site’s speed, it can become a headache if it’s. Hence, clearing the cache daily is a non-negotiable WordPress maintenance task. For automated WordPress maintenance, use the best caching plugin and schedule the intervals.
#6- Check Broken Links
If you wish to improve your site’s user experience, get rid of broken links as they bloat a site and can negatively affect SEO. Search engines like Google penalize websites with too many broken links, as they suggest poor site maintenance.
This is an easy WordPress maintenance job to handle as you can use plugins such as Broken Link Checker or Ahrefs, regularly run the checker, review the results, and update or remove any broken links.
Weekly WordPress Maintenance Tasks
As discussed above, there are a couple of weekly WordPress maintenance tasks that agencies and developers should perform to ensure smooth site performance. These include:
#7- Updating Plugins & Themes
Depending upon the nature of a site, it can have over 10 plugins working simultaneously. And, if installed themes and plugins are not updated regularly, a WordPress site might have notorious bugs and vulnerabilities.
So, make sure you’ve enabled auto WordPress theme or plugin updates for regular WordPress maintenance.
#8- Test Site Functionality
Testing site functionality comes next in the WordPress site care priority list as this ensures that all elements of your site are working as expected. This includes checking forms, buttons, payment systems, navigation, and other interactive features.
Manually testing a site’s functionality can be daunting as you’ve to scan the site’s crucial pages and check the contact forms, login forms, shopping carts, and buttons. The easiest way is to use a site management tool providing a centralized dashboard to give you an overview of the site’s functionality.
#9- Optimize the Database
Over time, your WordPress database can accumulate unnecessary data (like post revisions, trashed items, and spam comments), slowing down your site. Optimizing the WordPress database weekly is crucial for the support and maintenance of the WordPress site as it improves performance by removing this clutter and ensuring the database operates efficiently.
Install a WordPress database optimization plugin or use phpMyAdmin to automatically and manually optimize the WordPress database.
But, the smartest move is to use a WordPress development environment with an in-build DB editor. This way, agencies can clean the databases, run optimization queries on database tables, manage the database indexes, and do a lot more from a centralized dashboard without investing much effort.
#10- Conduct an SEO Audit
The next weekly WordPress maintenance task is to conduct an SEO audit as it helps in ensuring that the site remains optimized for search engines. You have SEO tools such as Yoast SEO or Ahref to automate the SEO audits and get detailed insights on issues such as missing title tags, meta descriptions, or wrong heading structure.
#11- Check for Updates
Check out which tools and software updates are available. As you must be using various 3rd party themes and plugins for your website, you may be unable to track the version updates. Even though few service providers inform users about upcoming updates, it’s not true for every tool.
Hence, you need to check for available updates every week. Launch the update as soon as it’s available. There shouldn’t be any delay-dally in this regard as outdated resources only weaken a website’s security and performance profile.
#12- Log out all Users
Prolonged inactive user logging is a threat to your website and its security. It’s observed that many malware insertion incidences happen because of the ill-usage of unmonitored authorized access. Hence, you must ensure that all of your users are logged out if a session remains inactive for a long time.
#13- Remove Unused Pages, Posts, and Products
Every once a year, you need to conduct an audit of your webpage, posted content, and other media. The focus of the audit should remain on finding which of these resources are no longer relevant. Spot those content pieces and update/modify/delete them to ensure your website has only the updated content.
Monthly WordPress Maintenance Tasks
Monthly WordPress maintenance tasks are often time-consuming but are advisable if you wish to maintain the pink health of your site. Here is what falls under monthly WP maintenance.
#11- Full Site Audit
A full site audit during WP site maintenance is performed to check for security, performance, SEO, and user experience issues. Performing this audit monthly helps agencies and developers spot the hidden issues and fix them before they become a reason for a site’s poor performance.
This WP site maintenance task involves using tools such as SEMRush to check for broken links, the site’s accessibility, UX, content relevancy, malware, and so on.
#12-Analyze Website Traffic
It’s crucial to monitor the site’s traffic trends to understand how visitors are interacting with it. Analyzing traffic monthly allows you to identify which pages are performing well and which need improvement, enabling better-targeted marketing strategies.
You can use tools like Google Analytics to track and identify traffic patterns, sources, and behavior.
#13-Cross-Browser Testing
Cross-browser testing during WordPress maintenance ensures that your WordPress site functions consistently across all major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.). We recommend using tools such as BrowserStack to test the site on different browsers and resolve the compatibility issues, if any.
#14-Remove Unused Plugins/Themes
Unused or unwanted WordPress plugins and themes will surely bog down a site, resulting in serious conflicts or security vulnerabilities. Hence, try to remove them while maintaining a WP site. Use the WP-CLI commands to remove a specific plugin/theme on multiple sites.
#15- Work on Comment Moderation
Once a month, work on unmoderated WordPress comments as they can spam WordPress and harm SEO ranking. For this monthly WordPress maintenance task, either use a spam detection plugin or manually delete spam comments on WordPress through the dashboard.
#16- Work on Image Optimization
For a media-heavy WordPress site, it’s crucial to optimize the image the right way as the unoptimized images can negatively impact the page load time, user experience, and Core Web Vitals.
Use image optimization tools for bulk image compression, convert existing images to modern formats such as WebP, and rune queries wp_postmeta to identify oversized images and replace them with optimized versions via the Media Library.
#17- Fix PHP Errors
Sites having continuous PHP errors are harmful to the site’s functionality, resulting in downtime and exposure to security risks. Hence, fix the PHP errors monthly for effective WordPress site maintenance.
Just simply enable the debug mode by setting define('WP_DEBUG', true); in the wp-config.php file.
#18- Sort the Media Library
An unsorted library increases admin inefficiency and consumes unnecessary disk space. So, take the media library sorting as monthly WordPress maintenance tasks using the SQL queries or media library organizer plugin.
Yearly WordPress Maintenance Tasks
Some WordPress website maintenance tasks have to be performed only once a year. Mainly, these tasks are related to WordPress hosting & maintenance related to user experience. Here is a list of such WP maintenance tasks.
#15- Remove Unused Pages, Posts, and Products
Every once a year, you need to conduct an audit of your webpage, posted content, and other media. The focus of the audit should remain on finding which of these resources are no longer relevant. Spot those content pieces and update/modify/delete them to ensure your website has only the updated content.
#16-Review Site UX
Reviewing your site’s user experience (UX) yearly helps ensure your site is easy to navigate, visually appealing, and provides a seamless experience to users. A good UX can lead to higher engagement, conversions, and customer retention.
Once a year you should conduct usability tests with tools such as Hotjar to analyze the user behaviour.
#17-Analyze Hosting Provider Performance
How good a site is at the user-front depends majorly on the type of hosting functioning backstage. Hence, you must review your hosting provider’s performance annually as a WP site maintenance task to ensure you’re getting the best possible service for your needs.
If the site experiences slow loading time or frequent downtime during monthly WordPress maintenance reports, switch to managed WordPress hosting immediately.
#18- Review Third-Party Integrations
Third-party integrations, such as payment gateways, social media plugins, or CRM systems, need to be checked for compatibility and performance. Outdated or incompatible integrations can break your site or cause security vulnerabilities. So, check the third-party integrations used on the site yearly and update any outdated integration.
#19- Revalidate Licenses & Subscriptions
If the site uses any licenses or subscription-based tools/plugins/themes, revalidate them yearly to maintain the WP site. Check the expiry date of the subscription, renew or update licenses as needed, and ensure that no unsupported versions of critical plugins/themes are in place.
#20-Perform Deep Database Cleanup
A yearly deep database cleanup ensures your database remains optimized and free of clutter, improving site performance.
#21- Check Custom Code for Deprecated Functions
If there are any custom themes or plugins installed on the WP site, it’s crucial to check the custom codes for deprecated functions yearly for smooth WP maintenance. Custom codes can break or become incompatible with newer versions of WordPress.
So, refer to the WordPress developer handbook for updated functions and best practices.
Try WordPress Website Maintenance as a Service
As the WordPress maintenance checklist explained, maintaining the website is daunting and effort-consuming and can’t be accomplished manually. For effective outcomes, combining human efforts with automation is important.
This is why website owners should look for someone trusted to offer WordPress Website Maintenance as a Service. With such service providers, website owners can have reliable and automated website maintenance with the least possible effort. You can try InstaWP. It’s a privacy-compliant tool offering a money-back guarantee, a free trial, and many advanced features you can’t ignore.
Conclusion
You can’t avoid the maintenance aspect of a website as the ill-maintained website will lack connection, user-friendliness, security, and market presence, as it won’t perform at par. This crisp WordPress website maintenance guide has explained everything crucial. Go ahead and take the help of a reliable WordPress Website Maintenance as Service provider so that your website is winning hearts, not the security alerts or poor performance ultimatums.
FAQs (WordPress Website Maintenance)
1. What is WordPress website maintenance?
WordPress website maintenance involves regular tasks to ensure a website’s performance, security, and functionality. This includes backing up data, updating themes and plugins, optimizing performance, and conducting security checks. Regular maintenance helps prevent issues, improves user experience, and ensures that the site runs smoothly over time.
2. How often should I back up my WordPress site?
It’s recommended to back up your WordPress site at least once a week, though daily backups are ideal, especially if your site is frequently updated. Regular backups ensure that you can quickly restore your website in case of data loss, hacking, or other unforeseen issues.
3. What are the signs my WordPress site needs maintenance?
Signs that your WordPress site needs maintenance include slow loading times, frequent errors, outdated plugins or themes, security warnings, and broken links. Additionally, if users report issues accessing your site, it’s crucial to investigate and perform necessary maintenance to enhance performance and security.
4. Can I perform WordPress maintenance myself?
Yes, you can perform WordPress maintenance yourself if you have basic technical skills. However, it can be time-consuming and complex. Many businesses opt for professional maintenance services to ensure thoroughness and to save time, allowing them to focus on other important aspects of their operations.
5. What are the best security plugins for WordPress?
Some of the best security plugins for WordPress include Wordfence, Sucuri, JetPack, and Patchstack. These plugins offer features like malware scanning, firewall protection, spam prevention, and vulnerability monitoring, helping to secure your website against various threats and ensuring ongoing protection for your data.
