WordPress Maintenance Tips You Should Not Ignore - Updated 2023

Our WordPress maintenance tips will give you an invaluable glimpse into the intricacies of website management!

If you run a website, you know how important it is to keep your website up-to-date. WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) out there, and it makes updating and maintaining your website a breeze. With its user-friendly interface and easy-to-use features, WordPress has made managing websites accessible for everyone.

Are you tired of worrying about your WordPress site's backups, speed, security, and important updates? Well, worry no more! We’ve worked tirelessly to provide you with a comprehensive guide on updating and maintaining your WordPress site.

What we will be reviewing is the following:

1. Our Recommended WordPress Plugins

2. WordPress Backup Process

3. WordPress Speed and Caching Recommendations

4. WordPress Security Audits and Monitoring

5. WordPress Maintenance Checklist

Why is WordPress Maintenance so Important?

WordPress has revolutionized the world of website creation, making it easier for anyone to design and publish a website. However, despite its user-friendly interface and convenience, WordPress is not immune to issues that can compromise its functionality. This is where WordPress maintenance comes in.

WordPress maintenance is essential because it ensures your website remains up-to-date with the latest features and security upgrades. Regular updates help keep your site secure from threats like hackers or malware attacks. Regular maintenance also helps optimize your site's performance by removing any unnecessary plugins or files that may be slowing down your website's speed.

By performing regular checks on your WordPress site, you enhance its performance and ensure that customers have a seamless experience when interacting with your brand online.

Our Recommended WordPress Plugins

Are you struggling to determine which WordPress plugins to use for your website? You're not alone! With over 50,000 plugins available, choosing the right ones can be overwhelming and downright impossible. But don't worry. There are some steps you can take to make the process easier.

Before diving into our recommendations, here are some rules you should follow when finding your plugins. As we mentioned, there are thousands of plugins, so vetting out ones that work well is essential.

Plugin Recommendation #1 - Backup and Staging Plugin

One of the most missed and critical items is backing up the site and doing updates in a staging environment. Most greenhorns will see updates and spray and pray. Nine of ten times, there are no issues with updating a WordPress website. However, it just takes that time to get to bring down the site, and if you do not know how to debug, access web files, or have no coding legs to stand on, then you will have more significant problems with a down site. So we recommend using a tool that will allow you to back up the website and provide a staging area to test these types of tasks.

WPTimeCapsule

What is great about this tool is that it allows you to have a back system independently from your current host and add a deployable staging area. We love it because we can back our clients up directly to a Google Drive folder which clients have access to, and it is an Offsite backup, meaning if the host has a catastrophic event and your files are lost, they're still safe on another offsite location. Also, the staging area is a one-click install on the WordPress backend. You can quickly deploy live to staging or the reverse staging to live any time you choose.

Plugin Recommendation #2 - WordPress Security Plugins

A website that is not secure is an excellent deterrent to customers. Search engines like Google also can penalize sites that have been hacked completely, removing them from search. Adding an SSL does not adequately secure your website. Unfortunately, there is no full-proof way to catch a vulnerability before a hacker can exploit it. The only way you can combat hackers is by building enough walls that will not make you easy prey and then maintaining those walls every month.

The best way to prevent this is through security plugins. We recommend two reasonably priced plugins to help secure your site from attacks. WebARX and MalCare?will automatically scan your website for any suspicious activity. They even offer one-click solutions to fixing malware problems.

WordPress Security Plugin #1 - WebARX

We started using this tool around two years ago because it removed the need for multiple plugins, which we have been exceptionally pleased with. WebARX helps websites combat spambots and malicious software and prevents malware from gaining access and infecting the website.

It is known to be one of the most advanced security plugins for PHP applications and consistently communicated patches that are firewall rules that protect the website from vulnerabilities.

On sites that we found have been compromised and need an extra layer, which primarily deals with scanning and removing vulnerabilities, we use MalCare. This tool works like antivirus software and does deep scanning of every file to find infections that run in the background and does a great job not overloading the server.

What is the difference between Malcare.com and WebARX?

WebARX is a preventative tool where you're blocking malicious attempts to raise havoc on your site. MalCare is a tool used for removing the efforts which have succeeded in compromising your website. Having both is that much better.

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