Tips to keep your WordPress Website in great shape
July 11th, 2014
When you are powering 1 out of every 5 websites in the world, there is no doubt that you are pretty awesome. We are referring to the most popular Content Management System – WordPress. Ease of use, thousands of available plugins & themes and abundance of online support has contributed to its thumping success. There is no doubt that you can setup your WordPress site in minutes, but maintaining it is a different ball game all together. In this post, we are going to share some ways to ensure that your WordPress site is running in top shape and at all times.
1] Never miss any updates: WordPress is an open source platform hence bugs and security flaws will always be at its tail. Occasional as they may be, updates available for WordPress are a great way to counter any issue and at times to improve the overall experience of using your website dashboard. Avoiding these updates will only leave you exposed to security threats and put all of your hard work at risk of being lost. Similarly, plugins and themes need to be updated to the latest version to avoid creating a gateway for security threats and also to ensure compatibility with the latest WordPress build.
[Note: If your website is on the latest version like 3.9, then your website will automatically update for all minor and maintenance releases.]
2] Delete unwanted Themes: There are a lot of themes out there but eventually you are going to just use one for your website. Though the rest are deactivated, they can still pose a security threat if they are not updated. Also we noticed a strange lag while browsing through all saved themes, which somehow miraculously changed when we got rid of all the unwanted themes on a demo site 😉 . All themes that are not in use must go except for one default theme for backup. You can always reinstall themes whenever you need them so deleting them won’t really pinch. Also look out for themes that are light weight and don’t put stress on your resources.
3] Delete unwanted plugins: Plugins definitely add functionality to your website but at the same time it utilizes resources allotted to your website. In such a situation, you will need to ask yourself a question, can you live without this plugin? If the answer is a yes, throw that plugin out. Also get rid of any deactivated plugins on your website, since if you don’t update them, then you are creating loopholes for any kind of security threat. Don’t fall for the all in one type of plugins where you get loads of functionality. If you are only going to use one or two functions out of the ten, then the rest is of the code is simply waste of resources. You might as well look for plugins that focus on the functions that you are actually going to use.
4] Take backups: There are times while making a few changes or trying to add new features we might end up messing our WordPress website. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to undo these mistakes and that’s when we need to take help of our trusty old backups. They also come in handy when your website has been a victim to a security threat. We recommend regular backups and you can try BackUpWordPress plugin to do that for you. Trust us when we say that this is one thing you just can’t ignore.
5] Enable Caching: Whenever you load a website, there are files that are saved in the Cache which is in your computer’s hard drive. So whenever you revisit the same website again, the browser uses the files in the cache rather than the server to display the page. This process is called caching and ensures that less system resources are utilized and pages load quicker for all your visitors. You can use WP Fastest Cache WordPress plugin to configure caching for your website with just a few clicks.
Try all of the above recommendations and you will definitely keep your WordPress website in great shape. You will need to keep maintaining your website as much as you can. Even if you have a single page website, login to your dashboard and ensure that every element is updated to the latest version. Remember to treat your website like a baby that continuously needs love and care.
