Increase client relationships by offering WordPress maintenance plans as an additional digital service. Provide monthly reports of activity to demonstrate the value of your work and build client trust.
Updates are an integral component of running any WordPress website, including core, theme and plugin updates.
Caching clearing should be included as an ongoing task as part of your maintenance plans, to increase site speed and performance.
Updates
Updates are an integral component of regular WordPress maintenance plans. They’re released frequently to address security vulnerabilities, add new features and enhance performance – an ideal WordPress maintenance schedule should include checking for and applying these updates at least weekly.
Plugins frequently receive updates to fix bugs and address security risks, so it’s best to review and install updates at least once every month (although some developers prefer doing it more frequently). A tool like iThemes Sync makes managing this process simpler by enabling you to view available updates, test them on an earlier staging copy of your website before applying them on live site in one step.
Content updates are another integral component of WordPress maintenance plans, from updating old blog posts and removing outdated information to providing fresh material to improve search engine optimization efforts. Content updates also often involve creating or adding products to an ecommerce store as well as updating product descriptions and images.
Alongside regular updates, it’s also essential to maintain an organized user database. By regularly curating user accounts and removing inactive ones, as well as making sure only those authorized can access the back end of a website – this helps minimize risks from hackers taking over client sites and stealing personal information.
Backups
Just as your vehicle requires regular servicing to stay running smoothly, websites need regular preventative maintenance as well. Preventative measures range from security monitoring and performance analysis, backups and uptime monitoring all the way to hosting management depending on the size and scope of your clientele base.
Backups of your website are vitally important in case of an emergency, such as malware attacks or hardware failure. An ideal way to protect yourself in such a scenario would be using a plugin which automatically saves it into the cloud and restores all or some data without issue.
Backup your WordPress website regularly so you have a reliable copy in case anything goes wrong with updates or the new version, saving yourself both time and frustration in case your site crashes or fails. It could save both time and frustration in such circumstances!
iThemes Sync offers daily automated and manual backups of your websites that are automatically saved to a 3rd-party secured server, along with monitoring their uptime, sending monthly reports on performance status and sending reports back out. Offering this service can add significant value and justify ongoing website maintenance contracts for clients.
Security
WordPress developers must release regular software updates in order to stay ahead of hackers and other bad actors. As well as updating core WordPress software, plugin and theme developers also need to release updates for their products to ensure compatibility and bug fixes. Staying up-to-date can protect websites against security vulnerabilities and performance issues that could compromise them.
Before rolling out any updates to your live website, it’s a best practice to conduct thorough testing in a staging environment first. This helps mitigate risks associated with breaking your site while ensuring compatibility among all plugins and themes. A full site health check every month should help identify any potential issues, including nonworking forms, errors and performance metrics that need addressed.
Regular database cleanup should also be part of any website maintenance plan, including deleting spam comments, post versions and any data that bloats up a site and reduces performance. A number of plugins exist that can make this task quicker. In addition, regularly clearing cache is also essential in getting rid of unnecessary weighty information that slows your website down – this step must not be forgotten!
Performance
WordPress websites must operate smoothly to provide visitors with a pleasant user experience, otherwise visitors could become disillusioned and leave. Furthermore, poorly maintained sites are more prone to security vulnerabilities that hackers exploit – to protect yourself against these problems it is vital that regular maintenance takes place on an ongoing basis. To maintain optimal functionality it is also crucial that regular backups take place and to perform routine checks every few months on all systems connected with the site.
First and foremost in ensuring the success of a WordPress website is to protect it against security risks. To do this, restrict user privileges, monitor activity on the site, limit login attempts to protect against brute force attacks, and optimize server load and page speed by restricting privileges or monitoring activity on it.
Another effective strategy for increasing website performance is using plugins to reduce the amount of data uploaded to a server. You could, for instance, install W3 Total Cache’s cache plugin to reduce server load and improve page speed. Furthermore, adding a content delivery network (CDN) could speed up load times further.
Finally, ensure your WordPress website is optimized for search engines and mobile devices by optimizing title tags, meta tags, page content and page load speed. In addition to making sure it loads quickly without unnecessary code or unnecessary ads. Finally, periodically clean out media libraries in WordPress sites of old or obsolete files for better search engine rankings and better mobile experience.
