Maintenance plans are essential to the security and performance of any WordPress site. Depending on how your site is built, there will be several components involved. WordPress, one of the world’s most prolific CMS (Content Management Systems), uses plugins and several other tools to display and manage website content. These plugins and tools all need to keep pace with the fast-moving and changing world of technology.
If left unmaintained, they will become outdated and make websites vulnerable to unscrupulous hackers. This would not only leave the site’s content vulnerable but expose any sensitive information in the database open to theft. The other side of the coin is the continued growth of the site’s content. Any site worth its salt will constantly have new and updated content added: blog posts, images, products or updated company information. This causes the site’s database to grow and, in turn, slow the site speed. This content needs to be optimised for the site to run smoothly and at speed.
The following 3 areas are crucial to any basic maintenance plan!
Maintenance Plans – Should Include
1. Updates and Optimisation
All plugins and tools should be updated monthly. This will keep everything up to date and close any back doors to the site. I can not stress this enough; out of date plugins will cause untold issues.
All content should be optimised: images, text, videos, links – all need to be kept intact, in the correct place and unbroken—nothing worse than visiting a site with broken links and images missing.
2. Monitoring and Protection
The site should be monitored daily, not only making sure it is up and running (uptime for any site is critical). Still, it should also be monitored for any suspicious activity or traffic.
Site data must be protected; this is the content and the customer data stored. If a site has a simple contact form on it, contact and personal data are stored in the database. We should all be aware of data protection; this is a critical aspect of site protection.
3. Backups and Restore Points
We all know how important backups are; if you don’t have a backup and something goes wrong, you will lose everything on your site. I think we have all been there at some point in our technologically-advanced lives. A website is no different; it may actually be more important due to its ‘exposed’ nature. Backups should be stored in numerous places, both on-site and off-site, on a physical hard drive and in the cloud.
Along with these backups, restore points should be available daily. A restore point is a snapshot of your site at a certain point in time. If something goes wrong while working on the site, you can revert to the previous restore point.
The above are crucial to any basic Website Maintenance Plan!
Conclusion
Websites should be viewed as an investment and, as such, looked after as an asset. Anyone who has invested in property knows all too well that maintenance is vital to their investment’s continued growth. There is so much that goes into creating a living, functional website, which makes it a substantial asset to any company, blogger, or online shop. Why wouldn’t you want to maintain and protect this asset? If you are making this investment, why wouldn’t you look for the best maintenance plan to look after things for you?
Take a look at our plan – Maintenance Plan.
