WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems for business websites. But it is vital that you maintain it regularly. Make these 8 tasks part of your new year resolutions!
In the same way a physical shop needs dusting, cleaning, and an attractive window display creating regularly, so an online website needs updating and maintaining in order to attract potential clients.
A layperson may imagine that setting up a website involves a one-off expense and then it can be left drawing in new customers for ever. Not only will taking this attitude result in your business eventually looking out of date and unattractive, but if you do not maintain the software that runs the site, then you will leave it open to internet threats from hackers.
8 Essential Tasks for WordPress Website Owners
1. Update WordPress and any Plugins
WordPress has a great feature which indicates when updates are required for the core application, theme and any plug-ins underlying your website.
All you need to do is log in regularly and you will see which updates are required in the control panel.
2. Install a firewall
Having a firewall to protect your site from malicious attacks is vital for any website with a CMS admin login. A good firewall, such as the marvellous Wordfence, will not only protect your site, but it will send you an email to remind you that the core software or any of the plugins need updating. This means you don’t need to keep logging in to check, you can wait for the reminder safe in the knowledge that your software is up to date.
3. Backup Your Website after Every Update
Taking regular backups of you site files and database makes absolute sense. Even when you keep your software up to date at all times, it is possible that something might go wrong or your site could be compromised. Having a RECENT back means you can simply restore the site to perfect working order.
There are plugins which will take a backup of your site from within the WordPress admin panel and save them either to your hosting package or to a cloud storage area such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or One Drive. This is the better option since it is possible for your web hosting server to fail or be compromised.
4 Ensure Your Login Credentials are Secure
The login page is the primary access point of your WordPress website. Setting up strong passwords is vital to safeguard the site. Set a strong password that includes alphabetical, numeric, and special characters. Keep it memorable so that you don’t have to write it down or, better still, use a password locker so you can never forget the password.
For maximum security, you should change the password regularly.
The other part of login security is your username. NEVER use “admin” as the username as that is the standard username. It means any hacker immediately has half your login details. Choose a username that is not easily guessable – not your standard email address, not your company name and nothing closely related to the website url.
5. Check your Contact Form
Getting spam messages through a contact us form is a common issue. Make sure you add a captcha to each form to stop spam bots using your form. If you dislike the look of a captcha, you can install a “honeypot” plugin which protects the form without requesting a user to enter information.
There is no mechanism within WordPress to warn you that a form is not functioning correctly, so it is wise to test it manually from time to time.
6. Review Comments and Block Spammers
If you permit comments on your site, it is important to review these regularly. It is best to set the rules so you have to review comments from any new visitor before the comment posts. This is because spambots may be visiting your site and leaving spam remarks in the comment sections.
This is off-putting for your genuine visitors and it may also harm the search engine rankings of your website.
WordPress installs the plugin Akismet by default. You can use this remove the spam automatically.
7. Check your website for broken links
If a user tries visiting a page that does not exist on your website, they will get an error 404 “Page Not Found” message.
This can result in frustration for visitors and a lost sale for you!
Minimise the annoyance to visitors by creating a personalised message and a search option or a redirect to the home page.
Ideally, once you are aware of a broken link, you should create a redirect to an alternative page so that visitors never get the error 404 message.
8. Regularly Add High-Quality Content to your website
Search engines love new content on a website. The more regularly that you add content, the more often the search engines will return to your site and index the content. That helps to keep you in the best position in the search results. You should also ensure that the new content you have added works well both for the real visitors and for the search engines. Optimising the wording for search terms might be time-consuming but it is certainly worth it.
