WP maintenance tasks- what to do and how often

January 24. 2021

In order to make sure your WordPress website is up and running flawlessly, it is important you do some WP maintenance tasks on a daily basis. So, we will discuss WP maintenance tasks – what to do and how often so that you can gauge and plan your WP upkeep.

Although decisions such as choosing your website’s theme are important, there is more to maintaining your website than this. Also, depending on your WordPress site, some of the maintenance tasks will be more suited to your needs than others. Also, the same goes for the frequency with which you will need to do them. Some will have to be done daily, whereas other tasks do not have to be done as frequently. But, without further ado, we will explain the most essential WP maintenance tasks for your convenience.

Daily WP maintenance tasks

This first group consists of WP maintenance tasks that should be done on a daily basis. Although doing something every single day may seem like a drag, there is no need to worry. These maintenance tasks are not time-consuming, with most of them taking up only a few minutes each day. Taking the time to do them conscientiously will be more than worth it. Namely, your website should work immaculately as a result.

Be sure to keep track of key analytics

Daily checks of your analytics should give you a clear picture of how your website is faring. So, you should get into the habit of checking out your key analytics to see if there is anything out of the ordinary going on. As an example, if you notice that the website traffic has been reduced by half, you are then able to look for the cause of the issue in order to fix it as soon as possible. Then, a warning might pop up in the Google Search Console. Same as with the previous problem, this is a clear indicator of a larger issue.

All in all, start your day by checking out your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other important analytics. Of course, there is no need to go overboard – just a quick glance at these stats every day is enough. To save time, you can even create custom dashboards that display all analytics that interest you in a single screen.

Moderate the comments in the comment section

Unless your settings allow all new comments to show up immediately, you should check out the comments every day in order to see if they need to be removed or marked as spam. Comments make your posts more interactive and approachable and give you a glimpse into your blog’s user behavior.

Consequently, it is important you do not neglect this aspect of your blog. That is why we suggest you do not postpone the process of approving your comments because they can easily stack up and create a bigger chore than this has to be. We suggest you enable new comment notifications in WP if you tend to neglect comment moderating.

Back up your site

As obvious as this piece of advice may sound, backing up is crucial and unfortunately frequently overlooked. Of course, you do not have to back up your site every day if you do not post content or make changes every day.

So, if it happens that you post new content 5 times a week, then you might want to consider making daily backups. However, if you post only once or twice a week, and your posts do not get commented on that much, then backing up once a week will do. Some editors choose to backup the blog’s database on a daily basis, but backup other files on the website only once a week.

Weekly WP Maintenance Tasks

Let’s take a look at what you do not have to do more than once a week.

Check for Plugin Updates

Updates are really important for keeping your WordPress website running smoothly, securely, and efficiently. Furthermore, it is incredibly important that you apply new updates as soon as they show up. Apart from adding new features, this is especially true when it comes to security fixes.

But, you do not want to just blindly apply updates as they come your way. Be sure to check the compatibility of the new update with your website – you do not want to inadvertently cause some issues or lose data. Use a WP staging site to apply updates, test them immediately, and then assess if they are safe to be applied on your live site.

Run Performance tests

Back when you set up your WordPress website, you must have ran a few performance tests to see if everything is running smoothly. However, it is best if you run performance tests once every week or two. If your website loaded without any issues when you set it up, that does not mean this will remain unchanged for good. So, a new plugin or a script could be slowing down your website without you being aware of it. For this reason, be sure to check out your WP site’s performance on a weekly basis.

Monthly WP Maintenance Tasks

Check out Theme Updates

So, plugin and core updates should be checked out on a weekly basis. When it comes to theme updates, applying them is not as urgent – you can do that every once in a while. Be sure to first apply theme updates on the staging site before you apply it on your live site.

t updating your theme will overwrite any changes that you’ve made if you didn’t use a child theme. So if you made changes without using a child theme, you’ll want to move those into a child theme before updating the parent theme.

Checking 404 Errors and Broken Links

This should also be done once a month because these errors can negatively impact the SEO and user experience. There is really no reason to waste potential visitor clicks or Google’s crawl equity. Use Google Analytics to locate 404 errors for fixing broken links.

All in all, we hope this short guide to WP maintenance tasks- what to do and how often has helped you establish a maintenance routine that works for you.