Tag Archive for: wordpress

Crucial WordPress maintenance tasks to keep your site running smoothly

Are you unsure about the performance of your WordPress site? With just a few routine maintenance checks, you can ensure the security, safety, and optimal performance of your site. In this article, we’ll go over the top WordPress maintenance tasks that you should perform regularly.

Update your WordPress passwords regularly

Having unique and complex passwords is crucial to prevent unauthorized access to your WordPress website. However, it’s possible for even strong passwords to be compromised without your knowledge. This is why WordPress security experts suggest changing your passwords periodically, including passwords for your WordPress admin area, FTP or SSH accounts, and WordPress database.

The challenge with strong passwords is that they can be difficult to recall, which is why using password manager apps such as Dashlane is advisable. These apps allow you to securely store and autofill your passwords.

Backup your website regularly

Having regular backups of your WordPress website is crucial for enhancing its security. By creating backups regularly, you can be prepared for worst-case scenarios, such as a site breach or unintentional lockout. Backups can prove to be a lifesaver in such catastrophic situations.

WordPress offers several excellent backup plugins such as BackupBuddy that can facilitate automating the backup process.

Optimize your website images

Images take longer to load than text, causing a decrease in your page’s loading speed. During your website’s performance analysis, you may come across excessively large images. However, such images can go unnoticed in less popular pages. For instance, in a multi-author WordPress site, some of your authors may not pay as much attention to the size of their images as you do. Conducting a review of your media library can help you identify images that are too large and allow you to optimize them for better site performance.

Check if your site is indexed

To ensure users can easily find your website, it is important to have it indexed or listed in popular search engines like Google. One simple way to check whether your content has been indexed and is searchable is by entering “site:yoursite.com” in the search field on Google.

For a more comprehensive analysis of your website’s search engine optimization, you can use web crawling tools to identify issues such as broken links and duplicate content that could negatively affect your website’s user experience and search engine rankings.

Additionally, periodically searching for keywords related to your content on Google can help you assess your website’s visibility in search results.

Conduct security checks regularly

Scanning your WordPress site for malware is an important measure to avoid a security breach. Hackers can steal sensitive information from compromised websites and use them for malicious purposes, such as identity theft, extortion, and fraud.

Fortunately, the free Sucuri WordPress plugin can assist you in performing critical security tasks such as, security activity auditing, blacklist monitoring, post-hack security actions, file integrity checks, and more.

Fix broken links

Broken links can negatively impact user experience and your website’s SEO ranking.There are various reasons why broken links happen, but the most common cause is when a page is deleted or relocated, resulting in a 404 not found error being displayed by the server. To address a broken link, the most effective solution is to redirect it to an alternative page. For instance, if the content of an article has been relocated to a new location, a redirect to the updated article will be necessary.

We hope this article has provided you with valuable insights on essential WordPress maintenance tasks that you should conduct regularly to keep your website running smoothly. If you want to learn more about WordPress maintenance, call our experts today.

Ask yourself what your website is doing for you and whether it’s aligned with your business needs and objectives. The GCInfotech professional web design team is here to help.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. SOURCE

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Speed up your WordPress site by following these tips

Ten years ago, waiting five seconds for a website to load was perfectly acceptable. But today, people just don’t have the patience for pages that load for more than three seconds. Anything slower than that and they’ll click away, which then increases your bounce rate. If you want to speed up your WordPress site and reduce bounce rate, try the following tips.

Keep WordPress and plugins up to date

Updating your WordPress version and plugins will not only keep your website secure but also speed it up. Therefore, you should install those updates as soon as they become available.

You can set WordPress to update automatically, or you can install updates manually. If you want to manage the updates yourself, install the Easy Updates Manager plugin to help you stay on top of all updates.

Choose a website host wisely

Your website’s host can make or break your website. So before you select one, carefully compare the details of their service plans — especially the website speed and uptime — against those of other vendors.

While it may be tempting to opt for shared hosting because of its low cost, this setup offers the slowest speeds because websites are simultaneously relying on the same server for bandwidth. In contrast, having a dedicated server will provide the best speed, but it may be too costly for many small- and medium-sized businesses.

A great mid-performance, mid-price alternative is a virtual private server (VPS). A VPS acts like a dedicated server in terms of functionality but still technically uses a shared server. It will speed up your site better than typical shared hosting without breaking the bank.

Keep your site lean

The leaner your site, the faster it will load. To create a lean site, be mindful of these four things:

  1. Theme – Having a theme with tons of features can set you back in terms of speed. This is because the huge amount of code that powers those features can bog down your site. Avoid this by testing different themes to see how long they take to load. If the loading time is more than three seconds, look for another theme that loads faster.
  2. Design – Some design elements can dramatically slow down your site. Simple sites load faster, so carefully consider the ads, images, and extra assets that you add to your website to avoid slow page loads.
  3. Plugins – Think twice before going overboard with plugins, as having fewer plugins translates to a faster site load time. Also, keep in mind that not all plugins are created equal; some run faster than others. To tell one from the other, use applets that show the impact a plugin has on your site’s load time.
  4. Images – While many raw images are around 3,000 to 4,000 pixels wide, most web pages resize them without compression to 600 to 800 pixels wide so they can fit on the screen. If you want faster web page load speeds, resize your site’s images to the exact size they’ll appear on the screen. This shaves some bytes off the image file size, so the images load more quickly.

Leverage speed-boosting plugins

Use plugins that speed up your site. Cache plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache can provide more speed by caching your site on user browsers, thereby reducing download times.

Another helpful plugin is Lazy Load. It boosts your site’s speed by loading the elements at the top of the website first, then loading subsequent elements as a visitor scrolls down the page. Most themes already include the Lazy Load plugin, so check your Theme Options to see if it’s already part of your code pack.

Use redirects sparingly

Web pages that point to other URLs can slow down your site, so make sure to avoid or limit redirections. To check for redirects that your website doesn’t need, you can use the Redirect mapper tool or similar alternatives.

Implementing some or all of the tips above will surely improve your WordPress site’s speed. If you need more help in optimizing your website, or if you have other IT concerns, just give us a call.

Ask yourself what your website is doing for you and whether it’s aligned with your business needs and objectives. The GCInfotech professional web design team is here to help.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. SOURCE

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