WordPress Monthly Website Maintenance options – Why bother?
Regular WordPress Website maintenance means updating the WordPress website software and testing it, to ensure that your website is working properly
It is critical to ensure that your potential clients can make contact with you.
Without regular website maintenance options – what happens?
If your WordPress website is not updated regularly, the software will become buggy, much like a car needs that regular servicing and fuel to run well, the website needs scheduled tasks done. The website also has plugins for contact forms or blog or galleries or SEO or shop etc, they need to be kept up to date too. Your website hosting needs to be checked to see that there is no issue at
The same goes
If either one is not renewed the website will disappear and your rankings will be badly affected. That can cause considerable damege to your credibility with Google. If you do not renew the domain name, someone else can buy it.
Apart from the software updates, plus domain name and hosting renewal, there are 404’s or broken links, image issues and navigation errors.
Doing monthly or regular maintenance includes checking for such broken links and repairing them immediately, to avoid any drop in your Google rankings.
Backups – Website maintenance options
Before any maintenance is done it is critical to do a complete backup of the website.
This allows you apply any updates, but have the security of having a complete backup, if something goes wrong
You may have to restore the
Having a backup means you cannot the whole website.
What tasks are done in a typical website maintenance options plan?
Just like updating your iPhone or iPad, regular website updates serve a number of different functions as listed below:
Create a backup – to have a clean, working version of the website in case you need to revert to it.
Update platform versions for WordPress – because these are always being updated which affects website performance
Fix security holes and check for attempted hacking, plug any holes – because people will always be trying to hack your website
Optimize the utilization of resources on the operating system – to make your site performs well
Add newer and more secure features – to keep the site up to date
Remove old and unprotected features – to avoid clutter or conflict or slow speed load
Update drivers to increase software efficiency – as these drivers are updated
Update versions for components such as Yoast, Widgetkit, Zoo or YooThemes and make sure they work together – or they may conflict and affect the look or performance of the website
Ensure the uptime of your website – to ensure that people can find the site 24/7/365
Check
Check mobile or responsive view – to see that the website delivers on all mobile types
Keep a copy as a Backup in case the site goes down – so that you can put up a saved copy, if the site ever does get hacked
Submit updated Sitemaps to Google – to tell them about all your pages, so that they appear and get found
Check Calendar – to ensure that the date and time settings are correct
Train your in-house Marketer or Webmaster – to use
Run through an agreed Checklist – to see that all necessary tasks are done in a timely fashion
Create a Monthly Support Report – This is proof that the tasks have been done and gives great sense of security
Tip: Do little and do often – to avoid conflicts or large workloads. We recommend an hour or two monthly, you may need three if you find any issues at all.
Can you do these website maintenance options tasks yourself?
Yes and we provide
Other benefits of monthly or regular website maintenance options
When you engage a professional web developer for a small fee to do all these tasks, you get the added benefit of having someone who knows your website, inside and out. That allows these guys advise you on new innovation and technology.
They can give you guidance on best practice, on security, on how to lay out pages or add
You are getting the benefit of having a
Plus! These guys can help ensure that your website performs well, lasts a long time, but crucially that it reflects your business well on the web and delivers a great return on your investment.
And they will send you a full report each time to tell you what they did, highlight any issues that were found and add any useful recommendations for you.
Having a website without a Support Plan of some sort is gambling with your investment and your business. Do the tasks or hire someone competent to take on that responsibility.