People often ask Does WordPress need maintenance? This where I seriously thought what kind of question is that. Of course, WordPress needs to be maintained no matter how big or small your business or purpose of using WordPress is. Your website needs maintenance and you should do it no matter how small your budget is.
This brings us to the next question how you can maintain your WordPress Website if your budget is low? Well, if you have a low budget, I have some tips which will help you to keep your WordPress website optimized even in low budgets. Let’s go through these tips and tools,
Tips & Tools for Optimizing WordPress
Content Tools.
First things first, Website optimization does not mean that you’re making it better for the spider bot to crawl better. It is about your visitors, viewers or prospects. It is to improve the quality of content for your reader to increase user engagement. You can check your content for different parameters of quality through some of these apps:
AdverbLess: To improve your text through extirpate adverbs.
Hemingway: It enhances readability.
Grammarly: to analyze grammatical and punctuation errors.
Also, for more SEO enhanced content you can opt for Google Keyword Planner. This is one of the best tools to help you in your keyword research.
Always have a backup of your WordPress database and files.
Just think for a second, your blog’s most important file just got deleted when your website was at its peak performance. I don’t think you’re going to like it. So, Always backup your WordPress website including your posts, database, and comments. This is very convenient in those cases where you accidentally delete something and then this backup will come handy.
Now the main question is how? Well, the answer to this question is very simple and effective. You can use backup plugins like UpdraftPlus, BackWPUP etc. Or you can go with such hosting services which provide you an automatic backup of your entire website regularly. Well, the choice is yours, but always keep a backup.
Avoid Nulled or Free Premium Themes or Plugins.
Due to a tight budget, most of the time a Website owner opt for Nulled Premium Themes and Plugins. The problem with this practice is more grave than it looks. A developer who avail you such premium and attractive themes may encrypt a malicious code inside the theme or plugin which is very hard to detect.
When you install there “planted” theme and plugin, the malicious code that is encrypted play the part and starts transferring all the details about your WordPress website. Usually, such scripts target for all the security and admin credentials. I don’t think any of us would like to jeopardise such sensitive information about their WordPress website. So, the bottom line of this point is just “DO NOT EVEN GO FOR IT”. Don’t fall for such deception ever.
WordPress security is essential.
Many of the bloggers actually don’t give much priority to the security features of their websites. This gives invitations to hackers to hack the WordPress website in two most common ways,
- By sending “special HTTP requests” to your website.
- Using “Brute Force”.
To avoid these you can use many security plugins available in the market yet I opt for these two, as they’re free of cost.
- BulletProof Security Plugin.
- WP Limit Login Attempts Plugin.
WordPress Updates.
Keep your WordPress updated. You should always remain up to date with the WordPress core version. Should always keep your WordPress updated.
Update Plugins. It doesn’t matter how many plugins are you using. You should always check for their latest update and be updated.
Delete Inactive Plugins. It is as simple as this if you’re not using any plugin then why keep it to yourself as a souvenir. Delete it or else, any hacker may find access through that plugin.
Never Use those plugins which are not updated for over 2 years. It is a “Rule of Thumb”. Never use such plugins. If already using any, then delete it immediately.
The Main Question?
“What If a Website is not Maintained ?” Well, I don’t mean to scare you so, I am not scaring you because there is nothing to be scared. However, there are some open range problems that you might get affected.
- Hacking risk increase and loopholes in Security.
- Many problems in performance and speed of the website.
- You might find many broken links if you didn’t fix them.
Who should maintain your Website?
For this, I have two options to make sure that your website will not be neglected at all.
- Hire a professional WordPress development company to maintain your website from top to bottom.
- If you’re tight on budget and have preliminary knowledge of WordPress then, schedule a calendar and stick to it.
I would love to get to know How you maintain your website? If you want, do share it via comments. Also, if I miss something please let me know about that. Till then have a good one.
