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The Non Techie Guide to Maintaining a WordPress Website

So… you’ve been running your WordPress site for a little and you want to make sure that you are doing a good job of keeping it up.  I’ve got to be honest, maintaining a WordPress website can be a bit time consuming at first.

Want to know how to….? Then keep reading

Unlike platforms like Squarespace and Weebly, WordPress sites require ongoing maintenance to keep things running smoothly. 

Fortunately… if you are not tech savvy, there are a ton of tools out there that make WordPress maintenance super duper easy.

In this post, I am going to introduce you to 5 of them, explain what they do and how they will make things easier on the technical front.

Yall ready for this?  — Kewl…

Let’s get into the post…

 

Why Do WordPress Website’s Require Maintenance?

Reason #1:  WordPress (the core platform) is constantly changing and getting new updates.  These updates are rolled out every 2 months and include new features that make your WordPress website run better.

Plus… updates to the platform fix security issues that may have cropped up in previous releases of the software. Security updates are very important since WordPress sites are susceptible to getting hacked.

Reason #2:  WordPress themes and plugins have to get updated regularly.  WordPress themes are basically templates that make your site look good.  

To make sure that WordPress themes are up to snuff with the latest and greatest security updates and changes to them…the companies that create them roll out updates for them.  In addition to themes, WordPress plugins also need to stay updated.  Guys, this is a BIGGIE in the world of WordPress and here’s why:

• Out of date WordPress plugins increase the risk of your website getting hacked
• This is one the MAIN things that hackers look for when they are on the hunt for sites to hack.

Reason #3: To prevent security breaches to your website. One of the MAIN reasons that it is imperative to keep your WordPress installation, themes and plugins updated is to prevent hackers from breaking into your site.  

For some reason or another, hackers loveeee to target WordPress websites.  I ran across a Website Hacked trend report from the folks over at Sucuri (the peeps that do WordPress security).  

Here’s what surprised me:

The article stated that out of the 11,000 sites that were hacked in 2016, 50% of those websites were out of date.  So yea…this is why you have to make updating your site top priority.

Oh and here’s something you need to know:

Your web hosting company is not responsible for securing your site.  I found this out the hard way when my WordPress website was hacked.  

5 Non Techie Tools for Maintaining a WordPress Website

Not a techie person? No problemo…

Here is a list of plugins and tools that you can add to your WordPress website that make maintaining your website easy peasy and prevent you from having to manually do stuff.

Now..since the majority of these tools are WordPress plugins folks, you will need to make sure that you keep them updated.  

Now onto the list….

 

#1: Keep Your Plugins Updated (Automatically) with Easy Updates Manager

The Easy Updates manager plugin is a tool that helps you manage and update all of your WordPress updates from one place.

 

Why is this a great tool?  

Instead of manually updating WordPress, the themes you use on your site and the plugins running on your site one by one, with this tool you can click to “Enable Automatic Updates” for everything!

This includes automatic updates for:

• Your WordPress installation
• The themes installed on your site
• Your plugins (and some more stuff)

I would recommend checking out this video to see what the plugin has to offer.  It is super dope though so I am sure you will benefit from using it to automate your updates. #WoooHooooo

 

#2:  Backup your Site Regularly with Updraft Plus

You never know when disaster will strike.  

When and if it does, you need to be ready.  If you are not backing up your WordPress website to your web hosting company, then the Updraft Plus plugin is one that I would highly recommend that you use to save backed up copies of your site.

Why is this a great tool?

With this plugin you can set automatic backups of your site on a daily, monthly and weekly basis plus… save your plugins and WordPress themes too!

A lottt of people (myself included) use this plugin to backup their sites and its because of this main reason:

You can backup your site off site to a cloud storage service like Amazon S3, Dropbox and even Google Drive.  

Cloud storage tools are amazing for saving data in my opinion because your data is getting saved to a place (away from your local computer). This just means that you can access your files from any kind of device as long as it has an internet connection.

 
Plus:

I love the fact that if you ever have to restore your site all you have to do is install a fresh copy of WordPress back onto your domain, then do a one-click restore to restore your website back to its former glory.

So yea… yall this a must have tool if you want to backup your site with ease.

 

#3:  Secure your site with the All-In-One Security & Firewall or Sucuri (Premium Option)

I’ve already mentioned that because WordPress is such a popular platform, there are a lotttt of folks out there trolling trying to hack sites.

 

Now:

I consider myself to be a technical person…but there are some things that are far beyond the scope of what I can do.  

To take my website’s security to the next level, I started searching online for tools that could help me add extra layers of security to my site.

That’s when I ran across the All in One Security Firewall plugin.

Why is this a great tool?

It helps me sleep a little easier knowing that I have additional security plus a firewall running on my site too.

The All in One Security and Firewall is jam packed with all kinds of features to amp up your site’s security.

For instance:

After you install WordPress onto your domain, there is a default “admin” username that gets added.  Hackers know this and will try their BEST to hack your site using this username.

Well…

What I love about the All in One Security plugin is that it has a feature that “removes” this username from your site.  This is a much needed security practice that every WordPress website should follow.

This just scratches the surface of what you can do with this plugin yall…which is why I love and use it to secure my site.

And I don’t stop there…

If you don’t want to worry about monitoring your site and taking care of the security stuff at all, then there’s Sucuri the folks that take care of all of your website’s security monitoring needs for a low monthly price.

Their lowest plan starts at around $17 a month and runs upwards to $50 a month.  I’ve heard nothing but great things about these guys and in my humble opinion, you can’t put a price on peace of mind yall.
 

#4:  Remove Broken Links with Broken Link Checker

Tons of broken links on your site can cause a lot of issues and make your visitors browsing experience a little “sucky”.

Why is this a great tool?

The Broken Link Checker tool scans your website to find broken links and sends you alerts with a list of them.

 

This is a very useful tool guys as again..it is helpful to remove broken links on your site periodically to keep your site updated.

Plus, the search engines do not like broken links… sooo this will surely help ya keep things on the up and up.
 

#5: Remove Those Pesky Spam Comments with Anti-Spam Bee

Have you ever seen comments like:

“This is amazing” – Therelic.com
“Zljlkljlkjlajlejfldjfldfad”

And crap left on your comments section that you can’t understand?

These my friend are spammy comments.  I remember a while back one of my good friends was having a lot of issues with spammers hitting his site.  

It was getting to the point where he would go in and remove them, then the next time he logged back into his site they were back.

Talk about annoying!

Well friends, if you are having issues with spammers attacking your site, then I would like to introduce you to my favorite anti-spam tool:  AntiSpam Bee.

 
Here’s the thing:

Before I installed the Anti-spam Bee plugin, I tried using Askimet for WordPress.  Ummm … me no likey yall.

Askimet didn’t do jack as far as blocking spammers from hitting my site.  So I did a little research and found the Anti-spam Bee plugin.

After I installed it, I noticed a huge difference in the amount of spam that peeps were leaving.  What I love about this tool is that it basically captures the spam right away and moves it to a “special folder” where it’s deleted from my blog automatically.

Boy is this super duper helpful…

 

Wrapping Up and a Resource to Help You Master WordPress

There you have it guys! A list of my favorite tools for maintaining your WordPress websites that don’t require a lot of tech knowledge.

If you are frustrated with WordPress and want to learn how to use it run and manage your WordPress website or blog like a CHAMP, WordPress Wiz is a short training series inside of the Blazing Branding Academy that will help.  You can learn more about it here.
 

What are Your Biggest Frustrations with Maintaining Your WordPress Website?

I would love to know what your biggest frustrations are with maintaining your WordPress website and what tools make it easier for you.

Oh and I almost forgot, here’s a pinnable image that you can share with your peeps on Pinterest. Thanks a milli!

Please leave your comments below. Thanks a milli yall!