How to Keep Your WordPress Website Running Smoothly
WordPress websites need to be maintained regularly in order for you to enjoy the best site performance. Regular maintenance will see to it that hackers never cripple your website and that your website is always up-to-date among other things. But what exactly do you need to do when it comes to regular maintenance? This post strives to answer this question.
Change all the passwords
Your first defense against hackers is your passwords. To fend off hackers, you ought to use stronger and unique passwords for all your accounts. This includes your FTP accounts, WordPress website and database. Even when you are strong passwords, security experts recommend that you change them from time to time. Your passwords need to be alphanumeric and made of random characters.
Backup your website
Another thing that needs to be done in website maintenance is to create a complete backup of your WordPress website. The best thing about having a backup of your website is that you will be able to recover it in case something terrible happens. A backup makes it easy to restore your website. There are so many tools you can use to create backups. Even so, from time to time, you need to run the backup plugin manually. Always verify that the backup files are stored properly and in remote locations such as Google Drive and Dropbox.
Updates all elements
WordPress is targeted by many hackers. This is because it is one of the most widely used CMS on the Internet. With that being said, you have to make sure that you close all the loops that can be used to exploit your website. Keep the CMS, plugins and themes up-to-date is one of the most important things you can do to increase the security of your website. An update helps fix known bugs and loopholes that can be exploited by hackers.
Optimize the database
Your website data is in the WordPress database. With time, the database may become slow because of too much data. Most of the data may be unnecessary. The unnecessary data will affect downloading, uploading and the speed of restoring your backups. You can optimize the database by removing the clutter and defragmenting tables.
Plan for performance tests
Performance tests should be run regularly. You want to make sure that your website scores high. A slow website will not only have high bounce rates but will also have a poor performance on search engines. You want to make sure that your website is running fast and smoothly. If the speed is slow, find the problems and fix them.
Review your link profile
The links on your website play a very important role in simplifying navigation and boosting your ranking. You need to regularly find and fix the broken links. You also need to perform an SEO and content audit.
Regular maintenance will ensure that your website runs smoothly. You should always make sure that you inspect every aspect of your website and fix all the problems in good time. The above points will help you get started on the right foot.