Monthly Maintenance Tasks for WordPress

Even if your site is running perfectly fine maintenance is something you need to do on a regular basis, there are a lot of things that require your attention on regular basis.

A routine maintenance task sure takes some time but they also ensure that your site is secure, safe, and always ready for getting viral.

This article will tell you about the most important regular maintenance tasks, why you should do them, and how they can be done.

Why Monthly Maintenance Tasks?

WordPress website is a very powerful system made with several different things. WordPress website runs with hosting, WordPress software itself, themes, and plugins.

All of these components are made and maintained by a third party and since the web itself is very complex. There are tons of ways your site can break and not perform in the way you want and that’s why regular maintenance is essential to ensure that your site is running smoothly.

Update Your WordPress Plugins

The first thing to do on your website is to update the plugins. WordPress plugins receive updates very frequently and most of the time these updates are regular security patches and that’s why they are very important to be kept up-to-date.

When you visit your WordPress dashboard, on the plugins tab you will see a red circular highlight with a number that indicates how many plugins have an update available.

To update your plugins go to the plugins section, you will see an alert below every plugin that has an update available, click on “update” and your plugin will update.

Theme Update

Another very important thing is to update your website theme. Themes receive updates regularly and they include the latest security patches, bug fixes, and possibly shiny new features.

To update the theme navigate to Appearance > Themes from your dashboard.

You will see the update alert above your theme just click on the Update now and the theme will update to the latest available version.

Update WordPress

Not just themes and plugins, WordPress core software also receives regular updates. Although not as frequently as plugins and themes, but you should check regularly for updates. Sometimes, WordPress updates automatically based on your hosting configuration but you should still look for updates regularly.

To update or check the update go to Dashboard > Updates if any update is available you will see the update button click on update and your WordPress will get updated.

WordPress also gives you a notification on the admin side for when a new update is available.

Note: Before doing any or all of the above updates for maintenance tasks on your WordPress website, please make sure that you have taken a backup.

Test all the Forms

You should also fill all your forms and check if it responds correctly for you as admin and for visitors too. If you find any issue with the forms, solve it ASAP.

Update Promos and Offers

Updating your promo codes and offers is also very crucial even if you don’t change them but at least take a look at them. The main reason to check them is to prevent abuse of promos and releasing new promos and offers regularly can make your visitor buy more stuff.

Check Malware

Most of the hosting providers offer malware scans for your website. You should regularly check logs and perform a manual scan. Perform a complete analysis and based on analysis results take actions if required.

Take a Backup

Regular backups are crucial for any website, there are tons of reasons why you should backup your site such as malware, hacking attack, server crash, and so on. A lot of hostings do provide regular backups but it’s always a good idea to take monthly backups at another location too.

Test Links

After some time there are high chances of broken links, missing images, wrong redirects, and so on and these can lead to a bad user experience that’s why regular checks for these are also important. Manually doing all checks takes a lot of time. For doing it quickly and easily you can use plugins such as Broken Link Checker.

Performance Test

You should also regularly test your site in performance testing tools such as PageSpeed Insight, Gtmetrix. Updating plugins and themes can bring some performance drawbacks so it is always good to check them after updating the website.

Spam Comments Check

Getting a spam comment is very common for any website owner, sometimes spams are not very harmless but sometimes it can be dangerous and even gets you in legal trouble so it is always good to check and remove these comments.

Conclusion

Regular maintenance is something all sites in the world need to sustain longer and make visitors happy. Now you should be able to do these performance tests by yourself and keep your site up to date.
But if you don’t have time to do these or you want your site to be the safest, consider hiring an expert. Having an expert for maintenance gives you a lot of benefits including saving time, testing every fine detail which you may have overlooked, and more.