Have you ever thought about which important maintenance task you should perform regularly on your WordPress Site?
WordPress maintenance tasks on regular basis take very little time, but they make sure that your site is secure, safe and running at peak performance.
In this article, we will share the most essential WordPress maintenance tasks to perform frequently.
Test your WordPress forms
Being a WordPress Site Owner, you might have a contact page on your website. It is common practice for site owners to use third-party plugins to display forms. It is the most straightforward way to let visitors get in touch with you.
Sometimes, the forms you utilize on your website may stop working properly. One of the more common issues is users not being able to submit information via the form. It can be a problem if your online business depends upon consistent lead generation and customer interaction before actual conversions.
You should contact regular testing of all the forms on your website. It includes checking out different test cases, on both desktop and mobile to see if users are able to enter information and contact you seamlessly.
There are numerous contact form plugins in the WordPress marketplace. Contact form 7 is one of the most popular plugins with options to use form shortcodes, input multimedia in forms and more.
Update all your WordPress Core files, Plugins & themes
WordPress Comes with its own inbuilt system that manages updates for all of your files, plugins and themes. It is important to ensure that you are utilizing the latest version of WordPress so that your plugins and themes also stay updated all the time.
That said, however, your files might miss an update under certain circumstances, such as when the license of a premium theme or plugin expires. Your site’s functionality and even security can be hampered if certain elements stop checking for updates.
That’s why checking manually from time to time is a good idea. Check out the plugins and themes that you have installed and check whether they are running the latest version. If they are not, try to document why that has happened and then update it manually.
Run speed tests
If you keep adding new functionality to your website, running regular speed tests is important. The plugins you utilize to launch new features to your website often slow down your front end.
This loss in speed can slip under the radar without regular speed tests. Tools such as page speed insights and GT Metrix can assist you to see the specific page elements which cause your load time to slow down. By studying these elements, you can pinpoint which plugin is causing performance bottlenecks on your website.
For a website with no significant change in functionality, speed tests are not an immediate priority. Although, if you regularly post content rich with images and interactive elements or experiment with different plugins, speed tests are important.
There are various ways to enhance your website speed picking a reliable web hosting company partner is surely a great place, to begin with.
Fix 404 errors and broken links
The user will be shown a 404-error page when they request a page that doesn’t exist. It usually takes place when the user mistypes an address and therefore should not concern you. Although, it may also happen when one of your existing pages isn’t available any longer and it can lead to a very poor user experience. Ensure you are tracking 404 error pages and redirecting them to new pages. The 301 Redirects Plugin might be helpful for this.
Similarly, a number of external websites that you are linked to may not exist anymore, leading to broken links on your own site. Of course, this is not confined to external sites as you may also have accidentally misspelled your own links, added poorly formatted links, or added broken images.
It can be very annoying for users and negatively affect your site’s user experience. Hence, checking for broken links with the help of your Google Search Console, or with external tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Broken Link checker plugin must be part of your regular WordPress maintenance.
Optimize your database
Your database is where WordPress gathers most data such as users, settings, content and comments. It means that over time, a lot of unnecessary data may accumulate in your database, which will also increase your database size. It would affect the uploading and downloading of backups and make them a slow and messy affair.
The moment you optimize your WordPress database, you can get rid of useless clutter, defragment tables, and enhance overall database performance. Plugins like WP-optimize are very helpful for this. Ensure you keep a backup before you begin optimizing.
Conclusion
At first, glance maintaining WordPress Sites seems easy but with time as the website grows website, maintenance becomes more challenging as new factors come into play.
For example, keeping track of broken links in a 30-page website is easy. Although, broken page audits for 1000-page websites cannot be done automatically.
That’s why it is advised to take the aid of a WordPress Development company and if you are searching for one then your wait end here at Stellar Digital the best Web development company in Delhi NCR and Gurgaon providing impeccable WordPress development services. just simply reach us out at contact@stellardigital.in
