How to perform the maintenance of my WordPress website
At SatelliteWP, we believe that the maintenance of your website should be entrusted to WordPress experts since website maintenance is technical and can quickly become complex.
It’s not uncommon for (potential) customers to ask: Do I need a WordPress maintenance plan? The question is legitimate and we have devoted an entire article to it!
Beyond the fact that we offer the service and that it is our livelihood, it is important to remember our mission:
Your website is a target…
We’re all in hackers’ crosshairs. Get your free analysis of your current situation in less than 5 minutes.
The main raison for our company’s existence is to eliminate risk. This allows you to achieve your business goals and hopefully even exceed them.
This article might seem counterintuitive, but we will provide details on what you need to do if you’d like to perform your maintenance yourself.
Yes!
We may lose a potential customer… but we will achieve our mission in helping you reduce your risk. We are aware that eliminating risk is impossible, but we are working to get closer to it!
Without further ado, here’s what needs to be done… (at the very least!)
Backups
A backup of your website should be done at least every day. This WordPress backup must at least contain all the files of the website and its database.
To be effective, your backups must:
- Be carried out at least every day
- Be executed automatically without human intervention
- Be stored on a server that does not belong to your current host
- Be tested from time to time to ensure they are functional.
Updates
On a daily basis, updates are made available to your website. They should not be applied blindly.
To be effective with your updates, you must:
- Read each changelog before updating
- Prioritize updates
- Schedule updates according to their priority and level of importance
- Make a backup before applying any update
- Apply plugin updates (unless otherwise noted)
- Apply theme updates (unless otherwise noted)
- Apply WordPress updates
- Apply translation updates
- Verify that the updates just done did not trigger subsequent updates
- Repeat the steps if validation triggered further updates
The WPScan newsletter can inform you of all vulnerabilities as soon as they are discovered! Note: Any update deemed risky should first be tested on a copy of your site in a development environment.
Availability
Availability (monitoring) ensures that your website remains available.
There are several such services:
It is important to choose a frequency that suits your situation.
Be careful if:
- you use a caching extension (e.g. WP Rocket)
- your host integrates caching
- you use a DNS solution that offers caching (e.g. Cloudflare)
If this is the case, your monitoring should contain parameters disabling caching so as not to be under the impression that the site is functional when it may not be in reality.
Security
It is strongly recommended that you properly install and configure a security plugin. There are many solutions to achieve this. Here are some of them:
There are several others, but the previous ones are the leaders in the industry.
Be sure to configure them to:
- Scan your configuration periodically
- Scan your installation for compromised files
- Block external attacks
- Notify you by email if there is a problem
- Check the strength of your users’ passwords
Domain name
Your domain name is very important to your business. Neglecting to renew it could have a major impact.
It is therefore necessary to:
- Make sure the credit card on the account is valid
- Set up automatic renewal (if possible)
- Perform renewal scans to avoid the worst
SSL Certificate
In recent years, all websites (or almost!) use an SSL certificate allowing the use of HTTPS to exchange information in a secure way.
It is therefore necessary to:
- Validate the renewal date of the SSL certificate
- Do the necessary steps before the SSL certificate expires (if it does not renew automatically).
WordPress Expert
Have a WordPress expert on hand, in case something goes wrong. Unfortunately, we will not be able to be that expert if you do not have a maintenance plan with SatelliteWP.
We work exclusively on sites with a WordPress maintenance plan.
It can be risky to operate your site without having a trusted person who can intervene in the event of a technical problem.
Conclusion
The tasks of performing maintenance of a website are numerous and time-consuming. When everything is going well, it can be 2 to 4 hours a month (or more).
When it gets complicated as a result of a breakdown or a configuration problem, the time required to solve the situation can climb quickly… not to mention the fact that the problem could affect your visitors and online sales!
In the end, this non-exhaustive list of maintenance work is intended as a basis to help you minimize the risk and allow you to sleep better. When in doubt, entrust the task to professionals!
Good luck!
