Nearly every organization and business relies on its website and specifically WordPress security. It’s mission critical in today’s business world for brands to interact with their audience and keep them updated on events and special announcements. But not everyone understands the work that goes into WordPress security, regular maintenance and optimization to ensure speedy delivery of your products and offerings.
Whether you maintain a website for your business or organization, here are some things you should be doing to maintain its performance and wordpress security.
Use a Secure Web Host
There are many web hosting companies to choose from, so it’s important to find a secure web host that understands WordPress security. Not only will a secure web host improve your overall security, but they will also provide priority technical support, compatibility with all kinds of different software, and various enhanced hosting features. In other words, they give you everything you need to create the best and most secure site possible.
If you’re looking for a good secure web host, we would like to recommend SiteGround. SiteGround provides secure web hosting services specifically designed for WordPress. This is the service we use, and we have secured special pricing and a free SSL certificate for our referrals and clients.
WordPress Core Updates
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS), powering over 25% of the websites on the internet and it is constantly being updated. If you make use of this CMS, you should install updates as they come out to keep it secure. Failure to do so could make your site unstable and less secure over time.
Theme Updates
Just as you should keep your WordPress installation updated, you should also periodically check with the author of your theme for updates. Your website’s theme is the framework and underlying code that powers your website. In the same way an app on your phone releases minor enhancements a theme author publishes updates. Updating it doesn’t mean changing the look, but it ensures you have the most recent version. This will allow you to utilize the latest enhancements made to your theme, increase forward compatibility and improve your site’s stability.
Plugin Updates
Plugins are tools that you can add to your website to improve its functionality. They are created by different authors and updated regularly. This will involve periodically checking to see if the authors of your plugins have made any recent updates and changes. Of course, you will also need to make sure that your plugins and updates are all coming from reliable sources.
Regular Off-Site Backups
If your site should ever go down, you could miss a lot of revenue and traffic. This can happen even to the most secure sites on the Web, so it pays to have regular off-site backups stored in a safe place. As long as you regularly perform backups, you will be able to restore your website quickly and avoid loosing a revenue.
Security Monitoring and Protection
Website security monitoring is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of running a website. Hackers and writers of malware are always looking for exploits and holes in website security. For your protection, you will need to constantly monitor your site for potential vulnerabilities. Since WordPress is so popular it is often targeted by hackers even if they are not specifically interested in hacking your website. If your website gets infected with malware, Google will blacklist all sites that are infected, so be extra diligent in keeping your site free from potential threats.
Checking and Improving Website Performance
You should be running regular performance tests to see how your site is performing. If this is all new to you and you don’t know where to begin, take a look at how quickly your site loads. You can use a tool like Pingdom’s Website Speed Test to check the speed of your website and get recommendations for improving it.
Broken Link Inspection and Repair
Broken links on your site send the wrong messages to clients. It could lead them to think that your business or your affiliates are not legitimate, or that your site is no longer relevant. Both ideas will hurt your business, so regularly check all of your links and make sure they’re still working. If they don’t work, either fix them or remove them from your site.
Constantly Improve Your Website
Great websites are constantly evolving and utilizing the latest technology to optimize their user experience and increase sales. With that being said, you should always be on the lookout for things that will make for a better experience for your visitors.
Keeping a website running while constantly improving it takes a lot of time and attention. It is difficult to do this well by yourself, but that’s where we can help you. Our expertise in web design, development and SEO services enable us to provide the right digital strategy. We are a trusted and reliable creative agency that partners with our clients to help them grow their online audience and get amazing results. Learn more about our website care plans.