4 Reasons You Need a WordPress Maintenance Plan
A WordPress maintenance plan is vital to the health of any WordPress website. Many businesses think of their websites as afterthoughts, or one-and-done projects. Your team pulls valuable resources to create great messaging. Then the site becomes outdated and vulnerable to hackers because no one is thinking about updates.
Why You Need a WordPress Maintenance Plan?
First, you need to know a little bit about WordPress to understand why WordPress sites need a maintenance plan. WordPress is a CMS (content management system) for websites. A CMS provides an organizational structure for the website programmer’s code and makes it easier to update and manage a website. If you didn’t have a content management system, then even minor text updates would require a programmer. WordPress is open source, which means that it is free to use and easy to adapt to specific needs.
There are four main reasons you want to set up a WordPress maintenance plan for your site: security, site performance, backups and peace of mind.
1. Security
Since WordPress is open-source, any programmer has access to use the code. Unfortunately, this means that hackers have access to WordPress as well. Don’t panic! WordPress is still an excellent choice for businesses. Provided that they set up a couple of basic tasks to maintain their site on a monthly or quarterly basis. WordPress sets up a defense against hackers by sending out updates. These updates include minor and sometimes major adjustments to the code. Updating WordPress is easy to do from the backend of your website. However, sometimes you need a programmer to make additional adjustments to make your site compatible with the new version of WordPress.
WordPress also has “plugins” which are mini-programs that you can add to your website to add important functions to your website. Plugins need updates from time to time. This keeps outdated code off of your website and increase security.
2. Site Performance
The rules and requirements for being found on the internet are constantly changing. A thousand details can affect your site and keep it from functioning as intended. If your company changes important contact information, or a plugin has a glitch, you may lose vital leads from your website. Overtime your competitor’s websites may improve and push you down in the rankings for Google. Technical details like your site’s speed and how long it’s been since your site content was updated also affect your Google rankings. A WordPress maintenance plan can help you avoid dips in site performance and leads.
3. Backups
One of the most important elements of website maintenance is ensuring that you have daily backups running for your website. Backups are vital and save an enormous amount of money if your site is hacked or if you make an update that accidentally “breaks” your website. If you update a plugin and your site stops working, you can simply re-load a backed-up version of your website from a previous day. Then consult a programmer to get the plugin updated properly so your site stays up to date.
If you have been hacked, you can save a lot of time and grief by pushing your website back to a date before you were hacked and then closing the gap that made you vulnerable to hacking. Hackers like to return and re-hit sites they have infected successfully, loading up your backups isn’t always enough to keep them at bay. However, backups are a great start for getting your site back up and running in a short period of time while you come up with a game plan to tighten site security.
4. Peace of Mind
Creating a maintenance plan for your WordPress site provides you with peace of mind. Planning ahead reduces the likelihood that you will be blindsided by the need for emergency assistance with a site that has gone down or been hacked. Above all, It helps you predict and potential costs associated with your site and keeps you from being left without a resource to go to if you need help.
What Should Be Included in a WordPress Maintenance Plan?
WordPress Maintenance plans come in many different packages. Below is a short list of some of the tasks we recommend performing regularly:
- Updating WordPress/website PHP coding
- Updating plugins
- Confirming website form functionality
- Confirming backups
- Conducting website functionality tests
Frozen Fire can help you set up a WordPress Maintenance plan customized to your needs. Give us a call at 214-745-3456 or connect with us online to speak with one of our experts.