Your website is more than just an online asset, it’s a vital part of your business’s success. To ensure it continues to serve your objectives effectively, regular maintenance is essential. By proactively managing these 6 key aspects of your WordPress site, you can enhance performance, security, and user experience, keeping your business one step ahead of your competition.

So let’s get started.

1. Backups

Every website owner should know the importance of keeping their site safe and secure. One of the most critical aspects of this is maintaining regular backups. It’s not just about having a copy of your site; it’s about having a lifeline when things go wrong.

Daily database backups are a key part of website management. They capture the always-changing content of your site, ensuring that no matter what happens, you’re never more than 24 hours away from a recent version of your data. For example, a customer of ours, a bustling e-commerce site, once faced a database corruption issue. Thanks to our daily backup system, we restored their site within hours, preventing significant revenue loss.

Weekly full-site backups complement this approach by safeguarding not just your database, but your entire website structure, including themes, plugins, and media files. This comprehensive approach saved another customer when their site fell victim to a malicious attack. We rolled back to the previous week’s backup which was not infected, and they were back in business with minimal disruption.

On-server and off-server storage solutions provide an extra layer of protection. By keeping backups in multiple locations, we ensure that even if one storage system fails, there’s always another copy available. This redundancy was missing for some customers who came to us after they experienced hosting provider problems.

Automated backup processes are the help by removing the human element from routine backups.  Our automated systems run like clockwork, ensuring that backups happen regardless of holidays, weekends, or busy periods.

2. Updates and maintenance

Keeping a website up-to-date is akin to maintaining a car. Regular check-ups and timely repairs prevent bigger problems down the road. This is where professional website management truly shines.

WordPress core updates are crucial for maintaining the security and functionality of your site. Our team stays on top of these updates, implementing them promptly to protect against newly discovered vulnerabilities. We recently had a customer come to us whose site was seriously behind on updates.  Things were so outdated their hosting provider had scheduled the site to be shutdown as it was running on an insecure and unsupported PHP version.  After bringing everything current, their site could continue to serve the business until planned. replacement 

Theme and plugin updates are equally important. These components often interact with your core WordPress installation, and keeping them updated ensures compatibility and security. We’ve seen cases where outdated plugins have caused sites to break or become vulnerable to attacks. Our regular update schedule prevents these issues from occurring.

A staging environment for testing is an important part of website management. It allows us to test updates in a safe, replica environment before applying them to the live site. This approach saved one of our customer from a major headache when a plugin update conflicted with their custom theme. We caught the issue in staging and resolved it before it could affect their live site.

Scheduled update routines ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. By setting regular times for updates and maintenance, we create a predictable schedule that minimises disruption to your business operations. This systematic approach has helped our customers maintain smooth-running websites with minimal downtime.

3. Security monitoring

Website security is paramount. It’s not enough to set up defences and hope for the best; constant vigilance is required.

Regular vulnerability scans are a cornerstone of our security strategy. These scans help identify potential weak points before they can be exploited. For instance, we uncovered a recently published vulnerability in a customers e-commerce platform during a routine scan, allowing us to patch it before any breach could occur.

Malware detection and removal is another critical aspect of website security. Our advanced tools continuously monitor for signs of malicious code. In one case, we detected and removed a silent crypto-mining script from a customer’s site before it could drain resources.

User access management is often overlooked but incredibly important. By regularly reviewing and updating user permissions, we ensure that only authorised individuals have access to sensitive areas of your site. This practice helped one of our customers identify and remove a former employee’s account that still had admin access months after she had left the company.

Firewall implementation and monitoring act as the first line of defence against malicious traffic. Our managed firewalls have successfully repelled numerous DDoS attacks, keeping our customer’ sites online and accessible even under heavy assault.

4. Performance optimisation

A fast-loading website is crucial for user experience and search engine rankings. Our performance optimisation techniques have helped countless customers improve their site speed and, consequently, their business outcomes.

Image compression techniques can significantly reduce page load times. We employ advanced algorithms to compress images without noticeable quality loss. This approach helped a travel agent site reduce their page load times by 40%, leading to increased visitor engagement and improved search rankings.

Caching solutions for faster loading are another powerful tool in our arsenal. By implementing server-side and browser caching, we can dramatically reduce load times for returning visitors. One e-commerce customer saw their conversion rates increase by 15% after we implemented a comprehensive caching strategy.

Speed testing and bottleneck identification allow us to pinpoint exactly what’s slowing a site down. Using this data, we can make targeted improvements for maximum impact. We helped a news site identify and resolve a database query issue that was causing slow load times during peak traffic hours.

Mobile and desktop responsiveness checks ensure that your site performs well across all devices. With mobile traffic continually increasing, this is more important than ever. Our responsive design optimisations helped a local business improve their mobile conversion rates by 25% by making the site much easier to use on mobile.

5. Availability: Uptime and functionality monitoring

A website is only valuable if it’s accessible. Our uptime and functionality monitoring services ensure that your site is always available and working as intended.

Real-time uptime tracking tools allow us to respond quickly to any outages. We once detected a server issue for a customer within minutes of it occurring, allowing us to fix an issue and minimise downtime.

Response time monitoring helps us identify performance issues before they become noticeable to users. 

Broken link checks are essential for maintaining a professional image and good user experience. Our automated tools regularly scan for and report broken links, allowing us to fix them promptly. This service helped a large informational site identify and correct over 100 broken links they were unaware of, improving their SEO and user satisfaction.

Email and contact form functionality tests ensure that you never miss an important message. We regularly test these functions to ensure they’re working correctly. This practice once helped a customer discover that their contact form submissions weren’t being delivered due to an email forwarding issue within their organisation, saving them from losing valuable leads.

Beyond the basics: other management tasks

While the core aspects of website management are crucial, there are many additional tasks that can make a significant difference to your site’s performance and effectiveness.

Spam management is often overlooked but can have a big impact on your site’s appearance and performance. Our automated systems filter out spam comments and form submissions, keeping your site clean and professional.

Database optimisation techniques can significantly improve your site’s performance. Regular database clean-ups and optimisations have helped many of our clients reduce their page load times and improve overall site responsiveness.

Content audits for relevance and engagement help ensure that your site remains valuable to your visitors. We helped an educational site identify and update outdated content, leading to increased user engagement and improved search rankings.

Wrapping up

Professional website management and support encompass a wide range of essential tasks that keep your site secure, fast, and effective.

By outsourcing these tasks to experts, you can focus on your core business while ensuring that your business website always working hard for you.

Our Care Plans start at just £1 a day – a small price to pay for peace of mind