Maintaining a website goes beyond its initial launch; it requires regular updates and checks to ensure it runs smoothly, remains secure, and provides an optimal user experience. For business owners, having a reliable website maintenance checklist is essential. Here, we present the best website maintenance checklist to keep your business website performing at its best.
Why is Website Maintenance Important?
Before diving into the checklist, it’s important to understand why website maintenance is important:
- Security: Regular updates and checks prevent vulnerabilities and protect against cyber-attacks.
- Performance: Keeping your website optimized ensures fast loading times and a seamless user experience.
- SEO: Regular maintenance helps improve and maintain your search engine rankings.
- User Experience: Ensuring all features work correctly keeps your visitors happy and engaged.
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The Ultimate Website Maintenance Checklist
1. Integrate Third-Party Scans into Your Website Maintenance Routine
Regularly scanning your website on third-party for malware and vulnerabilities is a critical component of maintaining a secure online presence. By conducting these scans, you can identify and address potential security threats before they cause significant damage.
Tools: Use security plugins like Sucuri Site Check, Google Transparency Report, Quterra and Virus Total.
Frequency: Weekly scans are advisable.
2. Checking Core, Theme, and Plugin Updates
Keeping your website’s core, theme, and plugins up-to-date is crucial for maintaining optimal performance and security. Regularly checking and updating these components ensures that your site runs smoothly, remains protected against vulnerabilities, and leverages the latest features and improvements.
3. Verify WordPress and PHP Versions for Optimal Site Performance
Regularly checking and updating the versions of WordPress and PHP ensures your site operates efficiently and securely. Keeping these core components up-to-date helps improve performance, compatibility with plugins and themes, and protection against vulnerabilities.
4. WP Toolkit Maintenance Checklist
The WP Toolkit is a powerful tool for managing WordPress installations on your hosting platform. Regularly using this checklist ensures that your site remains secure, updated, and optimized.
5. Maximizing Disk Space
Efficient disk space management is crucial for maintaining website performance and avoiding disruptions. This checklist provides essential steps for maximizing disk space, including clearing old backups, managing files, and optimizing storage. By following these guidelines, you can ensure your site runs smoothly and efficiently.
6. Disk Usage Check
Regularly checking your disk usage helps prevent performance issues and storage limitations. This maintenance checklist guides you through monitoring disk space, identifying large files or directories, and optimizing storage to ensure your website operates efficiently and avoids potential disruptions.
7. Google Transparency Report Status Check
Checking the Google Transparency Report status is crucial for ensuring your website’s security and trustworthiness. This maintenance checklist guides you through verifying your site’s safety status, identifying any security issues flagged by Google, and taking necessary actions to address potential risks.
8. Ensure WP Child Plugin Installation
Ensuring the WP Child plugin is installed is vital for effective WordPress site management. This checklist helps you verify the plugin’s installation, allowing for centralized management of site modifications and enhancing overall security and customization. Regular checks ensure that your site’s changes are properly managed and protected.
9. Verify Mobile ‘Tap to Call’ Feature on Home Page Header
Checking the ‘Tap to Call’ feature on your website’s mobile header ensures that users can easily contact you with a single tap. This checklist guides you through verifying the feature’s visibility, functionality, and accessibility on mobile devices, enhancing user engagement and improving customer communication.
10. Confirm Website Connection to Coding People
Verifying your website’s connection to Coding People ensures seamless management and support. This checklist guides you through confirming the integration, resolving connectivity issues, and ensuring that your site is properly linked to their platform for optimal performance and assistance.
11. Verify Contact Us Form Functionality
Regularly verifying your website’s ‘Contact Us’ form is essential for maintaining effective communication with your visitors. This checklist ensures the form functions correctly, fields are properly validated, and submissions are successfully received, helping you address inquiries promptly and efficiently. If you need assistance with any issues, please Contact us | Technowand
12. Verify SSL Installation
Regularly verifying your SSL installation is crucial for maintaining secure, encrypted connections on your website. This checklist guides you through checking SSL certificate status, identifying any issues, and ensuring that your site provides a safe browsing experience for your visitors. Link to test SSL installation: Why No Padlock?
13. Monitor Google Searches
Monitoring Google searches for your website helps ensure your search presence remains clean and free from spammy results. This checklist guides you through reviewing search results for any unauthorized or suspicious content, allowing you to address potential issues and maintain a positive online reputation.
Link to Google Analytics for tracking and analysis: Google Analytics
14. Customer Email Notification
Emailing customers is essential for maintaining clear communication and keeping them informed about website status or updates. This checklist ensures you effectively craft and send messages regarding maintenance outcomes, addressing any issues or confirming that the site is up-to-date, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and transparency.
Conclusion
Maintaining a website is a continuous process that extends well beyond its initial launch. A thorough and regularly updated maintenance checklist is essential for ensuring your business website remains secure, performs optimally, and delivers an excellent user experience. From conducting security scans to verifying core updates and managing disk space, each aspect of this checklist plays a crucial role in preserving the integrity and efficiency of your site.
By integrating these maintenance practices into your routine, you safeguard your website against potential threats, enhance its performance, and keep it aligned with the latest technological advancements. Whether it’s ensuring that your SSL certificate is properly installed or confirming the functionality of your contact forms, every task on this checklist is designed to support the smooth operation of your online presence.
If you need help implementing or managing any of these maintenance tasks, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our team is here to assist you in keeping your website in top shape, ensuring that you can focus on growing your business with peace of mind.
Does all of this seem like too much effort? Let us look after your website for you
Please Contact us | Technowand for any support or questions you may have.
