Time to tune up your website
WordPress.org Codex (the WordPress.org online manual) recommends regular site maintenance and has come up with a monthly schedule of tasks you should perform to keep your site running smoothly. They have created a monthly Site Maintenance Calendar to help you keep on track.
Here is my version of the calendar. It is basically the WordPress.org calendar with a few of my own tasks added that I have found to be important while maintaining and organizing my sites.
July is a busy month for maintenance, so roll up your sleeves and get under the hood!
July Website Maintenance
1.) Backup your site and database.
This should be done regularly. If you update your site daily, you should think about weekly database backups, and bi-weekly full site backups.
I use two backup plugins. One is BackWPUp. This is a free and very good plugin.
The other plugin I use is Backup Buddy, a premium (not free) plugin with great features and support.
2.) Update WordPress
New WordPress versions are coming out regularly and it is very important to update your version for security, bug fixes, and new features. Version 4.8 is the most current version as of today (7/10/17). IMPORTANT: be sure to back up your database before upgrading. Although I have never had a problem when updating WordPress, best practices call for backup of your database minimally.
If you are on a Managed WordPress plan with your host, they will automatically update WordPress for you.
3.) Add new content
Search engine love fresh, new, relevant content, and you will be rewarded with better rankings. What kind of content to add? Write about new products or services, create a blog and keep adding to it, add informative articles about your industry. Remember — write for your visitor/audience. NOT Google.
4.) Clean up your Database
Every time you make a revision to a page or post, that revision is saved in your database, along with trashed posts and spam. A plugin I use to clean up databases and save space on servers is Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions. In addition to deleting revisions, the plugin also deletes trashed posts and comments and spammed comments.
5.) Update your Plugins and Themes
The very best place to see how many updates your site needs is to hoover over the Dashboard link at the top of the left sidebar. A drop down menu will appear and if there are updates — plugins and/or themes — there will be a circle with a number in it. The number tells you how many updates you have to make.
6.) Clean up User Accounts
Go into your User page and adjust as needed. Remove users who no longer has access to the back end of the site, change Passwords to ensure that they are strong, add new Users.
7.) Check Social Network Links.
Go to your website and click on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Tweeter links/logos. Are you being brought to your social media page? If not, go back to the WordPress Dashboard and relink.
Now that you have completed the maintenance to your site and everything is up to date and secure and has new, fresh content, logout and go enjoy the day!
Press on!
