Do you maintain your website like your car?

Website maintenance is as critical as car maintenance – Most of us have more confidence in a car when we know it’s regularly maintained as it provides peace of mind that it’s less likely to break down and we feel safer. Simple regular tasks such as replacing tyres, oil, spark plugs, brake pads and coolant can prevent potentially much larger disasters.

We all agree with the phrase ‘prevention is better than cure’ as it’s usually more cost effective and less painful, so why do so many businesses not adopt the same approach with their website and simply trust to luck it will never go wrong? Aside from your people and products, your website is probably your next most important asset, yet it’s often left untouched for months or even years, and just like a car, things wear out or fail over time – the disruption could be so costly while it’s out of action, or worse, written off!

WordPress is the most popular website-building platform, powering almost half of all websites, and one of its key attractions is the wealth of free add-ons it offers in the form of plugins to enable almost any functionality.

However, despite being one of the safest content management systems (CMS) it is estimated to be hacked every 22 minutes via plugins, passwords and theme files which can be vulnerable to cyber attacks and security risks. According to WP Scan, around 92% of hacks come from plugins.

Developers of the most popular plugins frequently update them with improved features and patches for bugs or security fixes, so that they remain stable and compatible with the WordPress core files, web browsers and other plugins. But the worst ones are often poor quality and never updated and can sit inside your website just waiting for unscrupulous hackers to find and exploit, leading to a much bigger disaster than you could ever imagine. The more plugins your site uses, the more likely it will run into issues.

If you have admin access you may be tempted to simply update the plugins yourself, but this frequently leads to more problems such as errors or crashes without expert knowledge and a more systematic approach. Additionally, there are the theme files and core WordPress files to keep updated, file permissions to be fixed, cache to be cleared, and more. All this helps to improve the speed, user experience, functionality and search engine ranking for your website.

We always recommend doing a full site backup first and then performing the updates carefully, one by one, on a staging site rather than the live site to avoid any downtime.

Whilst no website will ever be 100% secure, for the sake of an hour or two per month engaging an expert to perform these tasks, you can rest assured that you’ve done all you can to keep it in tip-top condition for the many miles ahead.
Brandspace are all about taking care of your brand and its assets – Email paul@brandspacemedia.co.uk or call 01227 478605.