Keeping your blog up to date is an easy job but you have to be consistent and it’s never a good idea to set and forget. It pays to have a maintenance schedule for your WordPress blog.
I have had the good fortune to work on many WordPress blogs over the years and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve logged into a blog that hasn’t been updated in months and sometimes more. For many this task can be a little overwhelming and when you login and see you have 17 updates it’s really nerve wrecking to click that update button. If you are like me, you’ll have a moment of asking yourself ‘what if I break something?’.
Install a good database plugin
There are many plugins out there that will take care of your database for you but my personal favourite is WP-DBManager. Once it’s installed I recommend you do the following
- Setup Automatic Scheduling. I usually have Automatic Backup scheduled for every week and I set Gzip to Yes. Gzip is just a compression/decompression method and this means that when it’s emailed to me, I get a slightly smaller file.
- Set Automatic Optimising to 1 month, which is the recommended.
- Make sure the Backup Email Options are filled in with your email address. This will then email you a backup after it is created. I like this because then I know that I have a copy on my hosting server and a copy in my inbox. When I receive the latest one I delete the previous one.
- Nominate how many previous backups to keep. I have this set to 5, which means it will only ever keep the last 5.
At any time you can login to your dashboard and email yourself the latest backup or you can manually create a new backup. I only do this if I’m working on a client site and updating something that makes me particularly nervous, like Woocommerce.
Important note: Some database plugins (WP-DB Manager included) only backup the database structure and tables. What this means is your backup does not usually contain a backup of your Posts and Pages. Check the plugin you are using to see what it is backing up for you. WordPress lets you backup your content through it’s export tool (Dashboard > Tools > Export).
Keep your plugins up to date
It’s really important to keep on top of plugin updates. I make sure I do this at least weekly but more often I update if I login and see there are new versions waiting. I even keep a spreadsheet to keep track of the plugins I use, the versions and the date they were last updated, this way I can keep an eye on those that haven’t been updated in a while. This may mean they are no longer being maintained and oftentimes a WordPress conflict is caused by an old plugin. If I notice one that isn’t getting any updates then I might go looking for one that serves a similar purpose.
I had a client who had signed up for a service that could send SMS from her blog. The company who created the service and the plugin went out of business and so the service was switched off. She still had the plugin installed and because the service was gone the plugin actually stopped her from being able to login to her WordPress dashboard. This meant having to go in via FTP to remove the plugin. I know this is an extreme example, but it does happen.
From time to time do a plugin inventory. Which ones are really doing a great job for you? Which ones have not been activated? Remove any that you simply don’t use.
Keep your WordPress core files up to date
Like your plugins, it’s so important that WordPress is current. New releases are not only for new features they are also for bug fixes. If vulnerabilities become know then hackers target systems with know vulnerabilities, so keep on top of it. Your WordPress setup can be configured to update automatically and I have and maintain systems that do both; manual and automatic. From my perspective it doesn’t seem to make a difference to me but there are many passionate people out there in WordPress land who think of automatic updates as bad juju, so I’ll leave that up to you.
Comments and spam
At least once a week I reply to comments, although I usually reply as soon as I receive them. Some people like comments but never reply to them, whereas I see comments as a dialogue so I will always reply. Again, I’ll leave that up to your personal preference.
Delete your spam at least weekly. Plugins like Akismet (totally worth the cost) do a great job of catching spam but there will still be a few that get through. So go into the Spam folder and delete any that Akismet has caught and look through your comments to mark any spam message as such and then delete them.
To conclude
I hope this will assist you with your own self-hosted blog. Ask me a question or leave me a comment if you want to know more. I have encountered and triumphed over many Wordpress issues (including having this blog hacked) so feel free to ask.
Image by Luis Llerana via StockSnap – free high resolution stock photos
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