Here’s a sobering reality – As per a report by Sucuri, in 2022, 96.2% of all CMS infections target WordPress sites.
Don’t become another statistic – protect your business!
Let’s be honest – maintaining a WordPress website can feel like juggling while riding a unicycle. So, professional WordPress website care isn’t optional – it’s essential for survival & consistent growth.
Whether you’re running an online store, managing an e-learning platform, running a blog, or showcasing your business, one thing’s crystal clear: a neglected WordPress site is like a ticking time bomb.
But don’t worry! We’ve got your back with this comprehensive WordPress website maintenance checklist that’ll keep your site running smoother than a freshly waxed surfboard. 🏄♂️
The Problem: Why WordPress Website Maintenance Matters
Look, we get it. You’re busy running and growing your business. And website maintenance probably isn’t at the top of your to-do list.
But here’s the thing: that neglect can cost you big time.
We’ve seen it happen all the time – crashed sites during peak sales, lost customer data, hacked pages, and the dreaded “site unavailable” message that means losing customers to your competitors.
The 9-Point WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist
1. Regular Backup Protocol
Why it matters: Think of backups as your website’s insurance policy. When things go sideways (and they sometimes do).
Plugins or theme incompatibility when you update, memory issues, file transfer issues & problematic hosting servers can trigger a massive website breakdown.
By backing up your WordPress website, you can save the contents of your site and the software at another location. This data can help you restore your website in case of a crash or hack.
Action steps:
- Set up daily automated backups
- Store backups in multiple locations
- Test backup restoration monthly
- Keep at least 30 days of backup history
Recommended plugins: There are several free and paid WordPress backup plugins – such as UpdraftPlus, VaultPress, BackupBuddy, or BackWPup – that help you automate the backup process.
| Expert Advice: When you take a backup of all your content, you have the option to save it on the same server or on a remote server (such as your Drive or Dropbox). It’s always advisable to back up your site on remote servers, so in case something goes wrong on your server, your website can be rebuilt with ease. Although backup plugins work quite well, it’s always wise to keep checking your backups, once in a while. You could run a manual backup using the plugin in case of any irregularities. |
2. WordPress Security Checks and Updates
Why it matters: Hackers love outdated websites like bears love honey. Don’t be honey.
Being an open-source platform, WordPress provides website owners endless opportunities to add interesting functionalities through new plugins.
However, there is a constant threat of being attacked by hackers due to the low-quality code of some of these plugins.
Updates not only pack new features but also important security fixes too. Your WordPress website may be at risk if you’re using older versions of any products.
To manually check for updates go to your Updates page and do the needful.
Action steps:
- Update WordPress core
- Update themes and plugins
- Scan for malware
- Monitor security logs
- Change admin passwords quarterly
Recommended plugins: Wordfence Security for automated malware scans or Sucuri Security
Sucuri’s Sitecheck platform is a well-known free malware scanner that analyzes your website for known WordPress malware. It even evaluates the overall health of your WordPress site.
| Expert Advice: Although updates are harmless, there are times when they might mess up your WordPress installation. This could happen in case of major plugin updates. Make sure you test out newer versions on a staging website before making changes on your live site. In case you cannot test updates on a staging website, take a backup of your site and proceed with installing pending updates one by one. Test out your site to check for any discrepancies. The right way to update WordPress and its extensions is to update themes and plugins before updating the WordPress core. |
3. WordPress Performance Optimization
Why it matters: It’s tempting to keep adding new content, plugins, users, media, etc, for new features. This ends up eating up space and weighing down the website’s performance.
Slow sites kill sales and engagement. Period. Page speed also affects your website’s SEO ranking.
As per stats, the ideal page load time should be less than 3s. You can check your website’s performance using tools like GTmetrix, Pingdom, or Google Pagespeed Insights
Action steps:
- Optimize images
- Clear cache regularly
- Clean database
- Monitor site speed
- Remove unused plugins
Recommended plugins: WP Rocket or WP Optimize
| Expert Advice: Don’t forget to check all your forms on your website to make sure they’re working. You can easily create multiple forms that serve different purposes on your WordPress website. However, a misconfiguration on your WordPress hosting server can lead your forms to malfunction or simply disappear. A faulty form will mean that your users aren’t able to connect with you. So, make it a point to manually test everything from different devices & screen sizes. Another important advice is to not only check your website from the one browser that you’re used to, but also test it in other widely used browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, or Microsoft Edge. |
4. Site Content and Database Cleanup
Why it matters: A cluttered database is like a messy closet – it slows everything down on your WordPress website.
A database cleanup eliminates redundant data you never knew was hurting your site’s performance.
Also, inactive users (users who’ve registered but haven’t interacted with the website) pose a security threat. So, just delete their accounts after a set time period!
Delete your spam comments to free up space in your database and reply to relevant comments.
It’s a best practice to even remove all the unused images, plugins, themes, and other data from your server and their corresponding settings from the database.
Finally, remember to clean your WordPress cache after this, so that your website loads with the necessary information only.
Action steps:
- Delete spam comments
- Delete images, unused themes/plugins
- Clean up post revisions
- Optimize bloated database tables
- Remove unused media files
Recommended plugins: Optimize Database (free), WP-Sweep, WP-Optimize (free) or Advanced Database Cleaner
| Expert Advice: Database optimization is a must when it comes to improving website performance. You can use tools like Swift Performance Pro (Paid) or WP Sweep (Free) – to improve overall database performance. To optimize your mobile pages, you can use a plugin like AMP for WP. As your website grows, you’ll realize that some of the external websites you once linked to, don’t exist anymore. The reason could be that some websites may have moved to a new location, while others may have been shut down. It could also be that you may have accidentally added broken images, poorly formatted links, or misspelled your own links. Broken links make for a bad user experience and affect your site’s bounce rate and page views. Another scenario is when a user requests a page that doesn’t exist on your website; WordPress will show them a 404 error page. This is again bad user experience, so keep checking if the links are still valid. |
5. SEO Health Check
Why it matters: Better SEO = More Relevant Visitors = More Business
Speed, security, content, plugins – they all tell Google how seriously you take your business. So, remember to keep your site in top shape, from an SEO standpoint.
Fast loading times, optimized images, smoothly functioning plugins, better keyword targeting, and fresh content – They’re not just maintenance tasks!
They’re your secret weapons to achieving superior Google rankings and high SEO authority.
Action steps:
- Check for broken links
- Update XML sitemaps
- Monitor search rankings
- Optimize meta descriptions
- Check mobile responsiveness
Recommended plugins: Yoast SEO or Rank Math
| Expert Advice: For checking broken links you can install plugins like Broken Link Checker. The Velvet Blues plugin updates all URLs in your website by replacing old with new URLs. If you’re using the default 404 page that came with your WordPress theme, then a better solution would be to redirect the user to another page on your website like a sitemap page or any other informational page. |
6. Uptime & Downtime Monitoring
Why it matters: You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken. Downtime is when your website can’t be accessed or refuses to load. It can create a negative impression about your brand and turn potential customers away.
For you, your website is the primary portal to customers. And every second of downtime can cost you money. Not only do you lose out on business but you damage your brand’s reputation too.
Action steps:
- Set up uptime monitoring
- Configure downtime alerts
- Check server response times
- Monitor error logs
- Test site functionality
The good part is that there are a few services that can help you monitor your website downtime:
UptimeRobot is a free service that automatically tests your website every 5 minutes. If a test fails, you get a notification, so you can reach out to your hosting company or website team to fix the issue.
Pingdom is a paid service and offers a more complex but powerful website monitoring service.
Recommended plugins: MonsterInsights or WP Statistics
Note: Low-quality web hosts are often the biggest reason for site downtime. Consider switching to a reliable hosting service such as SiteGround, Liquid Web, or Cloudways.
| Expert Advice: Realistically speaking, the best of hosting providers can guarantee a 99.9% uptime at most. That means your website might be down for nearly 9 hours a year. Apart from this, maintenance activities could affect uptime too. So, make sure you run website maintenance tasks during off-hours to minimize the effects. |
7. SSL and Security Certificate Management
Why it matters: SSL encrypts sensitive data, secures customer info, and builds trust. It’s crucial for SEO, as Google favors secure sites, and for user confidence, as the padlock icon reassures visitors.
Tools like Let’s Encrypt offer free SSL, while services like Cloudflare and Sucuri provide added security layers to protect your site from threats.
For a WordPress-specific solution, Jetpack Security also combines SSL with malware scanning and backup options.
Action steps:
- Monitor SSL expiration
- Update security certificates
- Check HTTPS status
- Verify secure connections
- Test checkout processes
Recommended tools: Really Simple SSL, SSL Zen, WP Force SSL
Note: Your hosting provider also provides free SSL certificates. Check with them
8. WordPress User & Access Management
Why it matters: Too many cooks spoil the broth; too many admins compromise security.
The more admins you have, the harder it is to trace problems. Keep your team small, the admin access list super-tight and all your changes transparent.
What if your WordPress site breaks for some reason? When everyone’s an admin, nobody’s responsible. Because- “Who changed that on the website?”
You can never guess who it was and this could be your worst nightmare as a site/business owner!
Action steps:
- Audit user roles
- Remove inactive users
- Update user permissions
- Check login activity
- Implement two-factor authentication
Recommended plugins: User Role Editor
9. WordPress Analytics and Reporting
Why it matters: Data drives decisions. You must turn that crucial data into dollars. So, know your numbers at all times!
Your 5-second load time is probably costing you $2,000 daily in abandoned carts.
Analytics shows you why visitors love your pricing page but bounce from your checkout. Acting on it should be a critical part of your WordPress website maintenance plan.
However, you can get such deep insights into your business performance only if you have a holistic analytics & reporting system set up on your website.
Data doesn’t just tell stories – it reveals profit opportunities. So, I’d advise you to prioritize this!
Action steps:
- Monitor traffic patterns
- Track conversion rates
- Check core web vitals
- Analyze user behavior
- Generate performance reports
Recommended plugins: Site Kit by Google (free), Jetpack Stats, HubSpot Analytics, MonsterInsights, ExactMetrics for custom reports.
Benefits of Having A WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist
In this section, we will discuss the benefits of our checklist for different use cases in the WordPress ecosystem.
For E-commerce Store Owners
- Prevent cart abandonment due to slow loading times
- Ensure secure checkout processes
- Maintain PCI compliance
- Keep product pages loading fast
- Protect customer data
For E-learning Platforms
- Ensure smooth video playback
- Maintain student data security
- Keep course materials accessible
- Prevent system downtime during exams
- Protect intellectual property
For Business Websites
- Maintain brand reputation and a professional image
- Ensure contact forms work
- Keep leads flowing
- Protect business reputation
- Maintain competitive edge
The Cost of Neglecting WordPress Website Maintenance
Why DIY Might Not Be Enough?
Let’s get real for a moment. While this checklist gives you the what and how of WordPress website maintenance, implementing it consistently is another story.
Here’s what’s at stake, we’ll re-emphasize so it doesn’t slip your mind:
- Revenue loss from downtime
- Customer trust damage
- Security breaches
- Data loss
- SEO ranking drops
- Reduced conversion rates
- Increased bounce rates
The True Cost of DIY WordPress Website Maintenance in $$
Businesses trying to save money by skipping professional maintenance end up spending approximately $9,000 – $25,000+ annually on emergency fixes, downtime, and security issues.
Why risk your business? Professional maintenance costs a fraction of emergency repairs and keeps your store earning 24/7.
When businesses put WordPress website maintenance on the back burner, the average annual costs can be staggering:
- Emergency fixes: $1,500 – $3,000
- Lost sales from downtime: $2,000 – $5,000+
- Security breach recovery: $3,000 – $10,000
- Performance issues impact: $2,500 – $7,000
- Customer trust damage: Immeasurable
These ranges are based on common scenarios where:
- Emergency developer rates range $75-150/hour
- Average downtime incidents last 4-8 hours
- Security breaches require 20-40 hours to fully resolve
- Lost sales calculated for medium-sized stores
- Includes costs of plugin conflicts, hosting issues, and performance degradation
Keep Your Site Healthy & Profitable With These Custom WordPress Website Maintenance Checklists
Every WordPress site needs love, but different businesses have different needs.
Here’s a summarized version of your go-to WordPress website maintenance checklist based on your business type:
Quick WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist For WordPress Business Websites
🔹 Weekly Must-Dos:
- Backup your site (files & database)
- Update WordPress core, plugins & themes
- Security scan for malware
- Check site speed & uptime
🔹 Monthly Health Checks:
- Remove spam comments & old drafts
- Optimize images & database
- Test all contact forms
- Review analytics for issues
- Check mobile responsiveness
Quick WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist For WooCommerce Stores
Everything in the business checklist, plus:
- Test complete checkout process
- Verify payment gateway connections
- Check inventory sync
- Monitor order emails
- Test shipping calculations
- Verify product prices & discounts
- Review abandoned cart data
- Check payment gateway logs
Quick WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist For LearnDash Sites
Everything in the business checklist, plus:
- Test course access & progression
- Verify student enrollments
- Check quiz functionality
- Monitor video playback
- Test certificate generation
- Verify payment & subscription flows
- Check student reporting
- Test course completions
Conclusion: Your Peace of Mind WordPress Website Maintenance Solution
Look, we know you’ve got enough on your plate. While DIY site maintenance is possible, ask yourself:
- Do you have time to implement all these checks regularly?
- Can you afford to miss critical updates?
- What happens when something goes wrong at 2 AM?
That’s why we offer a 30-day free trial of our professional WordPress maintenance services: no strings attached, just pure peace of mind.
Choose your path:
- Not sure yet? Book a free consultation call. We’ll analyze your site and show you exactly what needs attention.
- Ready to roll? Start your 30-day free trial now. Experience worry-free WordPress website maintenance.
Take our Free Consultation Call+ Free Trial
Don’t let website maintenance be the ball and chain that holds your business back.
Also, do you want a long-term partner who never misses a maintenance check?
You can explore our WordPress website maintenance plans that start at less than the cost of one hour of emergency fixes.
Remember: Your website is often the first impression customers have of your business. Make it count!
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