Once your WordPress website is live, regular maintenance is essential to ensure security, performance, and reliability. Just like a car, your site needs ongoing care to keep it running smoothly and protected from threats. As a leading Nottingham website design agency, Studio Seventeen specialises in creating dynamic and secure WordPress websites. In this guide, we’ll explain why WordPress website maintenance is crucial and offer practical tips on how to keep your site running at its best.
How to Maintain Your WordPress Website
- Keep WordPress Core, Plugins, and Themes Updated: Regularly updating your WordPress core, plugins, and themes helps improve security, fix bugs, and enhance functionality. Outdated software can cause compatibility issues and expose your site to security risks.
- Regularly Backup Your Website: Automated backups are crucial in case of data loss or hacking. A solid backup plan ensures that you can restore your website quickly without losing any important content.
- Monitor and Improve Security: Install security plugins, enable two-factor authentication, and use SSL certificates to safeguard your website against cyber threats. Regular security checks can help prevent data breaches and malware attacks.
- Optimise Website Speed: Compress images, manage caching, and clean up your database regularly to improve website speed. Faster websites offer a better user experience and improve your SEO rankings, making them more likely to attract and retain visitors.
- Keep Content Updated: Refreshing your blog posts, service pages, and company information not only keeps your audience engaged but also improves SEO. Google rewards fresh, relevant content with higher rankings, so keeping your content up-to-date is a critical part of maintaining your website.
What are Your WordPress Maintenance Options?
1. Do Nothing
Neglecting your website’s maintenance increases its vulnerability to security threats and hacking attempts. Outdated plugins, themes, and WordPress core files can significantly reduce performance, stability, and SEO. While doing nothing may seem like a short-term solution, it can lead to costly issues down the road.
- Cost: HIGH – Fixing a problem after it arises is always more expensive than maintaining your website.
- Risk: HIGH – Without proper maintenance, your website will be vulnerable to hackers, get outdated, and experience performance issues.
- Time Commitment: NONE – No maintenance means no immediate time commitment, but in the long term, you’ll face time-consuming issues that will require costly fixes.
2. Do It Yourself
If you have the technical expertise, you may attempt to maintain your WordPress site yourself. However, this requires an in-depth understanding of WordPress and the technical side of website management. Learning HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL can take a significant amount of time. On average, you’ll need about 100 hours to become proficient in maintaining a WordPress website.
- Cost: LOW – While the upfront cost may seem low, remember that fixing a problem is often more expensive than ongoing maintenance.
- Risk: HIGH – Unless you’re highly skilled, trying to maintain your site can lead to security vulnerabilities, errors, and downtime.
- Time Commitment: LOTS – Expect to spend 5+ hours a month on regular updates, plus additional time learning the technical aspects of website maintenance.
3. Let Us Do the Work
As a trusted Nottingham WordPress website agency, Studio Seventeen offers flexible maintenance plans to ensure that your site is always secure, up-to-date, and optimised for the best user experience. We will manage your website’s backups, security updates, SEO monitoring, and more, so you can focus on growing your business.
- Cost: Flexible Maintenance Plans – We offer tailored quotes to suit all types of websites and businesses.
- Risk: LOW – Our expert team uses the latest tools and best practices to keep your website safe, secure, and up-to-date. We handle any issues quickly, minimising downtime and risk.
- Time Commitment: LOW – We take care of everything, so you only need to contact us when you need us.
Why WordPress Website Maintenance is Essential
- Security: WordPress websites are common targets for hackers, so regular updates and security checks are essential. Keeping plugins, themes, and the WordPress core up-to-date is one of the best ways to prevent security vulnerabilities that could leave your website open to attacks.
- Performance: A well-maintained website is a faster website. Regular maintenance ensures that your site continues to load quickly, which improves the user experience and boosts SEO. Slow websites can frustrate users and cause them to leave, which can negatively impact your site’s rankings.
- SEO Ranking: Google rewards websites that are updated regularly and run smoothly. By prioritising maintenance, your WordPress website is more likely to rank higher in search results, attracting more visitors and ultimately more business.
- Functionality: Keeping plugins, themes, and core files updated ensures that your website continues to function as intended. Without regular maintenance, you risk broken features, errors, or compatibility issues, which can leave your website inoperable or damaged.
