A Checklist for WordPress Monthly Website Maintenance and Support
If you are a web developer or a designer, then you would, of course, prefer to work on new websites or redesign some existing ones. But finding new projects and clients can be a challenging task and this can lead to a reduced cycle of income. Offering WordPress support and maintenance services to your clients can help you generate revenues and create a base of reliable and consistent income.
Since with WordPress maintenance services, the clients are billed on a monthly basis or quarterly for the ongoing work, you can easily add a recurring revenue model to your business and generate some predictable income.
To begin your task, use the following list of WordPress monthly maintenance tasks in order to determine the ones that you need to apply to the site.
The core foundation of WordPress support and maintenance always includes the three basic components. WordPress backups, updates, and security. Based on these three components, you will have to build your support strategy and the longevity and health of your WP website.
WordPress Updates:
It is very important for clients to understand that simply owning a website is not enough. It is important to keep all the themes and plugins that are installed on the site to keep updated. Updates should never be overlooked or put off and so someone has to be in charge of updating to new versions as soon as they are released.
An outdated WordPress site also makes it very vulnerable to various security issues. The latest version releases often come with security patches. Your WordPress support services should include the latest updates to new versions.
WordPress Backups:
Always remember to keep a solid WordPress backup solution. Since WordPress doesn’t have a built-in backup solution, you should be aware that ongoing backups at regular intervals are essential for protecting the website from any disaster.
Active websites like e-commerce sites or sites that frequently add content, should have backups on scheduled intervals so that it has the ability to restore the site from the backup in case of any mishappenings.
WordPress Security:
Hackers and bots especially target WordPress websites, so it is important to implement the best WordPress security practices so that your clients may enjoy the extra peace of mind. You can provide a monthly report of the security measures, any malware scans, banned IPs, blocked brute force logins and etc.
The report will also help demonstrate the varied attacks that any WordPress website might encounter over a period of a month and also mention the ways to protect the site.
Also Read: What’s All Are Included in Website Support & Maintenance? Find Here
Performance Audit and Optimization:
Speed is a great factor that contributes to the user experience. If your site takes a longer time to load, visitors will most likely switch to other competitor sites.
So, it is better to run a speed and general performance audit on the site every month. This will help to make it easier to identify the changes that should be made in the themes, database, images or files that cause the slowdowns.
Website Cleanup:
WordPress websites often deal with lots of content and this can weigh down the site easily, especially when marketers and publishers are more focused on creating content and don’t take care of cleaning up the site on a regular basis.
WordPress support and maintenance services should always include a regular cleanup process so that the site is fully optimized and it offers the best performance.
Also Read: Important Things to Consider Whilst Choosing a Website Maintenance Company