Do you have a WordPress website and looking for a developer to maintain it on a regular basis? If yes, this blog post may help you.
Here I have shared 6 instructions that you must give to your WordPress web developer in order to maintain your website effectively.
#1 Always work on test environment first
If you already have a running website, don’t let your developer work on it directly to make any kind of changes because it may affect the existing functionalities and can damage the user-experience.
Have your web developer work on the test environment first in order to check & ensure that the website is not disturbed in anyway.
If you don’t have a test server with you, you can ask your web developer to deploy the website onto their test server and make the required changes. Once all the changes are done and tested on their test server, you can then ask them to move the website to your live server.
On the test environment, your web developer can do several maintenance tasks like below:
- Updating themes & plugins
- Adding any new features
- Upgrading WordPress version & it’s database
- Redesigning your website
#2 Ensuring SSL for all the webpages
An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is an integral part of any website’s security. It’s no longer a luxury; it’s an out and out necessity nowadays.
Below are but 4 major reasons why you must ask your website developer to use SSL.
- SSL helps you to protect your website data
- Better search engine rankings
- SSL improves customer trust
- Helps you to comply with PCI/DSS requirements
#3 Taking care of responsive design
If your website is not responsive, it’s of no use. Therefore, you must request your website developer to take care of your website’s responsiveness.
Over the time, when your developer adds several new features or design elements on your WordPress website, it may lost its responsiveness. Therefore, as a part of website maintenance, your developer must always check & fix your website for its responsiveness.
Below are few benefits of having a responsive website:
- A responsive website helps you to secure higher search engine rankings.
- A responsive website ensures better user-experience.
- A responsive website ensures fast loading on mobile phones.
- A responsive website helps you to reach more audience as more than 50% of the internet users browse websites using their smart devices.
#4 Taking care of plugins & themes
Website development is not a one-time thing. You do need the assistance of your WordPress developer to maintain your website too.
So, if you engage a WordPress developer for your website maintenance, you must ask him to:
- Regularly update all the plugins of your website.
- Update the theme, when required.
- Take regular backups of your website.
- Install a patch in the plugin or theme, when required.
#5 Ensuring loading speed
With the overwhelming number of plugins, your WordPress website’s loading speed may get affected.
A slow loading website can have several disadvantages like:
- Loss of search engine rankings
- Bad user-experience
- High bounce rate
- Low sales & conversions
Therefore, testing your website for the loading speed and fixing it immediately should also be an integrate part of your website maintenance.
Here are few ways in which your WordPress developer can help you to fix the loading speed of your website:
- Deleting unused plugins.
- Optimizing images on your website.
- Enabling GZIP option.
- Caching & CDN
- Minifying CSS & JS
- Clearing trash
Recommended post: 7 Actions to improve the loading speed of your WordPress e-commerce website
#6 Ensuring website security
Similar to the loading speed & responsiveness, taking care of your website’s security is equally important.
A website must be secure enough to keeping the hackers & cyber-thieves from accessing the sensitive information. Especially, if you have an e-commerce website, you can’t afford to compromise with the security of your website.
Here are some of the ways in which you can ask your website developer to protect your WordPress website:
- Always update the WordPress version, plugins and themes to their latest versions
- Choose plugins & themes carefully
- Setup website lockdown
- Rename your login URL
- Protect WP-admin directory
- Taking care of file permissions
- Change admin username
- Change database prefix
- Disallow file editing directly from WordPress
Recommended post: 10 Ways to protect your WordPress website from hacking & malicious codes
