What maintenance does your WordPress website need?

Every website will have the standard WordPress core. As well as that, you'll have to update plugins (extra small programs that plug in to give you extra functionality), and themes (which control the look and feel of your website).

Sometimes PHP (the program behind WordPress) also needs to be updated. If you are going into the back end of your website regularly then you'll see a warning message informing you when a PHP update is needed. Some hosting companies allow you to do this yourself as part of the hosting package. With other hosting companies it's better to consult professionals like us.

When to update your WordPress website?

The WordPress core, plugins and themes can all release updates at different times. The WordPress team post a roadmap (https://wordpress.org/about/roadmap/) where you can access a tentative release calendar.

For plugins and themes, updates can be available at any time. You want your website performing at peak efficiency. It's got to be fast and effective. These updates need to be done to keep it running at its peak performance.

When clients sign up for a website maintenance plan (also known as a webcare plan) we update their websites every week. Emails from their websites come to us so that we know if we need to do a special update due to security issues.

Who updates your WordPress website?

A big question can be who does it? It can be you, somebody in your team, or you outsource to us at KISSWP Websites. Whoever you decide, it does need to be done. People often come to me to perform updates for their website after NOT updating it, sometimes for up to three years. It's harder to update a website after that period of time. It's more likely something will go wrong because the plugins may not be in step with the WordPress core, or some plugins or themes may have been abandoned. In December 2018, there was a major rewrite of the WordPress core which meant plugins and themes also had to be updated by their developers. Some were updated and others were not.

Regular maintenance is key here. Leaving it for too long could cost you a lot of money and it may be cheaper to rebuild the website from scratch simply because of the time factor to try to fix everything. If you're adding content to your website regularly (weekly is always a good goal), then you can check for updates at the same time.

Where do you update your WordPress website?

This "W" doesn't quite work for maintenance because the "where" can be from the comfort of your own home if you're doing it yourself. Your team can be based anywhere in the world, and if want us to do it for you then it will be done from South Australia.

How do you maintain a WordPress website?

The simple ways are by checking the dashboard for messages, checking if updates are required, and checking the site health. Add a task to your calendar (or to your team's calendar) as a reminder to maintain your website weekly.

Either yourself or your team member can log in to the back end of your website (if you don't know how to do that. send an email to ). Once you are logged in to your website, you read the messages on your dashboard, check for updates and check the site health. Make sure that your website backups are running so that if you do have to do any updates, you either have, or you know how to do a backup manually, or you know that one has been done recently. A backup is there just in case. 99% of the time when you do the website updates nothing will go wrong. But, if something horrible does go wrong, you know how to recover. When you have a backup it can be restored quickly to get your website up and running again, quickly. When people come to me and they say I'm getting this error message or it's all gone horribly wrong or I've done something and I've lost everything.

My first question is always, do you have a backup if you have a backup, we can restore really, really quickly so that we can get you up and running really, really quickly.

If you don't have a backup, then we need to try and work out what you've done to undo it.

There are lots of free backup plugins as well as premium (paid for) plugins. Updraftplus is very popular and doesn't take a lot to set up. It has a big blue button so that you can run backups manually. The schedule will be set from the first time you run a backup, so either run it the first time at a quiet time of day or pay to have a small plugin added to updraftplus so that can schedule when it runs.

I should mention that a lot of hosting companies may be automatic backups. If they do make sure it's switched on and check with them how you get access to the backup to perform a restore. I've come across hosting companies that say they do backups and don't do them. I've come across hosting companies that charge you for restoring a backup. I've also known hosting companies that you can't contact when you need them. This is why I don't rely on hosting companies for a backup of your website. I'd rather have too many backups with one that can be restored quickly rather than none.

If you have the plugin Wordfence installed it can be set up to tell you what needs to be updated as well as any security issues.

Knowing when to get in a professional is important. If the update seems to be something you can't, or don't want to handle then contact us.

When you do log in to the back end of your website, please read the messages shown there. Until you read them you won't know which ones are important and which ones are informational. Ignoring any important messages does not make them go away.

If you decide that you want to learn how to do basic maintenance on your website, we have our Basic WordPress Website Maintenance Course that can help you.

I've been running WordPress website training for clients for years, either one to one or in a workshop format for teams. I assumed that clients were being trained by their website designers because it was part of the package when I was doing web design. However, I was wrong. There are too many small business owners that don't know how to maintain their website. I also know what it's like to watch videos to try to work it out, only to find out the video wasn't quite what you wanted.

In this course, you have access to me in a private group as well as live sessions (which are recorded).

This course is going to be basic, so I don't start by making any assumptions. No one will get left behind. At the end of this course, you will have a simple, effective checklist for finding out what's going on with your website and doing regular maintenance.

You'll have clarity, knowing when you can handle something or when you need to call in a professional. It takes away the confusion around the tech side of your website.

For information and registration details, click on the Basic WordPress Website Maintenance course link. If you have any other questions about the course, please send an email to .