No doubt, WordPess is one of the best platforms for building websites. It is easy to use and really flexible, which allows you to create any kind of a website – blog, business website, online store, or any other type of website related to any industry.However, maintaining a WordPress website can be a tedious job, especially if you are not sure what needs to be done in order to keep your WordPress website fast and secure.
In this article, we’ll show you a couple of tips, tricks and tools that will help you maintain your WordPress website, without any technical assistance.
The Site Health tool
The Site Health tool, is a feature that was added in the 5.2 release of WordPress. It shows critical information about your WordPress configuration and items that require your attention. You can find the tool under Tools -> Site Health.
In the Status section, Site health runs a series of tests for performance and security, which display if there is a need of improvements.
The Performance tests check for WordPress and PHP versions, SQL server, required modules, UTF8MB4, scheduled events, HTTP requests, REST API, loopback requests.
The Security tests check for active plugins and themes, HTTPs connection, background updates status, debug mode off, secure communication and if it can communicate with WordPress.org.
In the Info section, Site health displays every detail about the configuration of your WordPress website.
Overall the Site Health tool provides useful information that can help developers troubleshoot user issues. That is why we should start with a quick health check of our website.
It is important to create full website backups, before making any major changes.
Keep your website Up To Date
WordPress comes with a built-in update system which allows you to manage the WordPress core, plugins and themes. In order for your website to be performant and secured, it is very important to keep everything up to date.
Most of the updates contain security patches, so they can prevent malicious attacks. Not updating the WordPress core, themes and plugins leaves your website to a much greater security risk.
Delete Unused plugins/themes
We use the plugins to extend the functionality of our websites, but having a lot of them reflects on the performance of the site.
Too many plugins/themes can affect the site’s speed and they pose security threats. It is important to remove any unnecessary plugins and themes.
Optimize your database
The database is where all of your data is stored. Overtime the database can be cluttered with unnecessary data from previously used plugins, post revisions, comments. Optimizing your database will ensure that it will perform better.
Let’s have a look on how can we clean our database.
The WP-Optimize plugin
One of the most used database optimization plugins for WordPress is WP-Optimize. With variety of functionallities like database cleaning, image compression, site cache, it is a tool that has everything you need to keep your website fast and optimized!
Download WP Optimize
The WP-Sweep plugin
The Wp-Sweep plugin is one of these free plugins that simply gets the job done. It is focused purely on optimizing your database. This plugin uses proper WordPress delete functions as much as possible instead of running direct delete MySQL queries.
Download WP Sweep
Manage user accounts
One of the most important thing when it comes to security is the user accounts management. It is recommended to change passwords every month or two. Use password generators to create strong, unique passwords for all of your accounts. Remove old user accounts, they are a potential threat to your website. Do not share the account username or password. If you need a developer or content creator to access the site, create a separate accounts for them.
Use Caching
A Cache is a hardware or software component that stores data. It is used to faster serve the data that is used often, rather than re-fetching the original data. This process increases the performance of the website for the end user.
When you first visit a website the cache simply stores a static version of it. The next time you visit that site or a page, the browser uses that cache to load the stored content faster, which results with a faster loading website or webpage.
How do I use cache with WordPress?
In order to use cache with your WordPress website, you can use popular solutions like the W3 Total Cache, WP Rocket, WP Super Cache and others. Let’s have a brief look at them:
W3 Total Cache
One of the most popular cache plugin for WordPress, and recommended from WPX Hosting is the W3 Total Cache. It improves the user experience by increasing server performance and reducing load times. Highly customizable, free to download, the W3 Total Cache plugin is a good cache solution.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is one of the most popular premium cache plugins for WordPress. Easy to use configure and user friendly. Once activated it immediately launches page caching.
WP Super Cache
Another popular cacheing plugin is the WP Super Cache. It is run by Automattic, the same team behind WordPress.com. With over 2 million Active installs it is one of the most used cacheing solutions for WordPress.
Latest PHP
It is important to create full website backups, before making any major changes.
It is critical, that your WordPress website uses the latest version of PHP. Using an old PHP version makes your site insecure and much slower than it could be. Modern versions are much faster and they come with regular performance and security updates. Plugins and themes also require newer versions of PHP, updating them might break your site when using an old PHP version.
SSL
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a security protocol for establishing authenticated and encrypted connection between networked computers. It allows sensitive data to be send out securely. That is why having a SSL certificate installed for your website is a must.
Securing your website should be a top priority! If you don’t have a SSL installed, you can issue one from Let’s Encrypt, or check our article on “How To Install A Free SSL Certificate”.
Run Performance Tests
Running performance tests can give you a more detailed information on what needs improving on your website. Fortunately for us there are tools like Google Page Speed, Pingdom and Gtmetrix, which can aid us test our websites.
You might wonder, “Why are these tools showing me different results?”. That is because all of them have different set of recommendations. They are all based on the Google’s original open source PageSpeed library, and may have been customized and modified. Each one tests from different locations, which affects your performance results as well.
They are all great to use for website optimization. Use the one that you feel more comfortable with and follow the instructions provided. If you are not completely satisfied, you can always double-check with another website speed analysis tool.
Check for Broken Links
One of the most important tasks during the website maintenance is checking your website links. Broken links can create a bad user experience and negatively impact your SEO rankings, that is why it is critical to fix them immediately. Broken links typically occur when moving to a new domain or a host, deleting posts or pages, or even making a typo while editing.
How do I check if my website has broken links?
There are a lot of tools that can scan the website for dead links, one of the best are the Semrush Site Audit, Google Search Console, W3 Link Checker and of course the Broken Link Checker plugin.
Download Screenshots