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My *SIMPLE* web maintenance routine: less than 30 mins/week (if no errors)

Last updated on July 16th, 2024 at 03:06 pm

My SIMPLE web maintenance routine less than 30 mins/week

Website maintenance is such a topic that makes you go ‘meh’. 

It’s a lot less popular compared to building a website or a landing page. But no matter how tedious it sounds, web maintenance is crucial for your website’s well-being and performance.

Here’s an overview of how I do web maintenance for my client’s websites:

[Get a full tool list I installed on my sites for this task on 13 WordPress maintenance & security plugins for a fast, secure, and sustainable website]

For a new client, I’ll ensure that their site is secure by going through the WordPress security checklist I made. This checklist helps verify the security layers your web host implements for you and guides you to add more layers to protect your site further. This is pretty much a one-time setup.

Once I apply the security layers to the site, then it gets included in my weekly web maintenance routine. Each week I’ll back up the client’s website, update tools, and optimize the sites. The whole process usually takes 30 minutes or less if no issues. 

This is my simple weekly 5-step web maintenance routine in detail:

#1: Back up the website

Backing up the website ensures that you have a backup file to restore if anything goes wrong while updating the web tools. 

Your web host typically backs up your site regularly and makes it easily restorable from the web host dashboard. Use that as your primary backup file. You don’t have to do anything about it because it’s automated; just know that it’s there when needed.

Despite the primary backup, I still recommend doing a weekly manual backup using a backup plugin on your WordPress dashboard. This will be your secondary backup copy; in case you can’t access your web host or your server crashes.

How to? 

  1. I use Updraft Plus to back up both site files and database (full backup), 
  2. download them to my local computer, and upload them to Google Drive. 

You can connect your backup plugin with your Cloud storage so it transfers the files to the storage directly without keeping them on your server. But I still use a free version of Updraft Plus, so it needs some maneuvering.  

My preferred backup plugin: UpdraftPlus

#2: Update the website tools

Whenever the plugins, themes, or WordPress version on your site need an update, you’ll see the red update notification bubbles on your dashboard. Updating site tools improves security, functions, and site performance.

How to? 

  1. Update one tool at a time.
  2. Clear the cache with your caching plugin.
  3. View the website to ensure nothing breaks. 
  4. Repeat until all tools are updated.

This might take some time depending on how many updates you have but I prefer it over taking time to troubleshoot the site if anything breaks. 

Since I manage multiple sites, I integrate them with WP Umbrella, a security plugin, where I can update all site tools in one place. It’s also my main site monitoring plugin that keeps track of every website’s health and performance.

My preferred bulk management plugin: WP Umbrella
My preferred caching plugin: Litespeed cache or W3 Total Cache

#3: Optimize your images

Images are one of the heaviest resources on a website. They use a lot of energy to run, take up space, and therefore could slow down your site.

Since visual components on a website are crucial for retention and conversion, the best practice is to keep them optimized. This is especially important if you publish content with images regularly.

If you can’t make time to optimize your images when publishing content or someone else publishes content for you, take this time to do it in bulk. 

How to?

  1. Use Smush or Litespeed Cache to convert your images from a heavier file format (e.g. PNG) to a lighter format (e.g. JPG or WEBP). 
  2. Resize, compress, and lazy-load them. 
  3. Include alternative text (alt text) to your images to increase accessibility for your users. You can do this in your WordPress media library.

My preferred image-optimizing plugin: Litespeed Cache or Smush

Notes: 

  • If you use Smush, it can compress the images in bulk and has a toggle setting for lazy-load. But you may need to upgrade it to use the WEBP file conversion.
  • If you use Litespeed Cache for caching, it can convert your images to the WEBP format up to a certain amount for free. 
  • Choose either Litespeed or Smush; not both. If you have more than one plugin doing a similar thing, they could cause conflicts.

#4: Check for broken links

Whether internal or external links are used in your content, ensure that they work correctly. It’s more common than you think that the destination you link to is changed, expired, or no longer exists. 

How to?

  1. Edit or remove the broken links from posts/pages
  2. Use Broken Link Checker to check the links in bulk (free for up to 200 links/month).

My preferred plugin: Broken Link Checker

#5: Small cleanups

Use this time to do a small site cleanup. Remove unused plugins/themes, old posts/pages, demo content you no longer need, old backup files in your database, manage or trash spam comments, etc.

If you use a spam-blocking plugin such as Akismet, there’s a chance that it may mistakenly flag legitimate comments/form entries as spam. If that happens, restore them from the trash or spam folder to ensure you don’t miss any genuine messages from your users.

That’s it!

I set the time for up to one hour per website per week to do the maintenance tasks and other small edits requested by the clients or troubleshoot issues if anything goes wrong. If there’s any troubleshooting that needs more time and is urgent, then my hourly rate applies.

Summary:

Website maintenance is a necessary ongoing practice for self-hosted WordPress websites. It helps improve the website’s security, accessibility, and performance. Website maintenance routine can vary depending on your site’s complexity. 

My web maintenance routine takes up to one hour a week. It includes backing up the website, updating web tools, image optimizations, checking for broken links, and managing spam comments. In general, the processes take less than 30 minutes. After the routine maintenance, I do small edits if requested or troubleshooting if needed. 

If you feel overwhelmed by your web maintenance and need reliable support, contact me. You can view the service details on my service page

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