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As a web design and copywriting duo working with fellow big-hearted small business owners, we love the customisation and scalability of WordPress. However, figuring out how to maintain WordPress websites can feel like hard work.
Unlike platforms like Squarespace and Wix, which take care of security issues and technical maintenance for you, updating your WordPress website is your responsibility.
Seeing those red numbers and plugin updates on the dashboard can be daunting, especially if you’ve ever tried to update your site and been confronted by the dreaded white screen of death. However, you don’t have to be a trained website developer to run basic updates and keep your site in good working order. It just takes a little bit of know-how.
Keep reading for a stress-free guide on how to maintain WordPress websites, and keep your site in top working order…
If any of the terminology we’ve used in this guide is unfamiliar, you’ll hopefully find an explanation in our web design glossary.
How To Maintain WordPress Websites: Running Backups
Taking a complete backup of your site on a regular basis is important, just in case anything goes wrong.
As well as being the website equivalent of being able to ctrl + z any website changes that you don’t like (you can just restore your backup of a previous version), regular backups can protect your site from unnecessary downtime, as we’ll discuss below.
Automatic Backups From Your Hosting Company
Your first port-of-call for backing up your WordPress website should be your website hosting company. Many good-quality hosts will offer automatic backups (you ideally want them to run daily). You can use these to go back to a previous version of the site if you need to undo a technical issue or a design change.
If your host does offer regular backups, you’ll probably find these in the ‘Site Tools’ control panel or similar.
We currently use Siteground for our hosting, which offers free daily backups. They’ve also got reasonably good eco-credentials – you can find out more about why that’s important in our blog about website sustainability.
Manual Backups Using a Plugin
If your host doesn’t offer frequent backups, backup plugins are a good alternative. UpDraftPlus is a great free plugin for doing manual backups.
Here’s how to create a backup using UpDraftPlus (you only need to follow these instructions if you don’t get backups through your hosting):
- Install and activate UpDraftPlus
- Access its control panel by going to Settings > UpDraftPlus Backups
- Within UpDraftPlus’ settings, set up where you would like it to store external backups (Google Drive/Dropbox/ZIP file sent to email, etc.)
- Run your backup via the ‘Backup/Restore’ tab
You can also schedule regular automatic backups via the UpDraftPlus Settings section (monthly is good if you’re not making lots of changes to the site). We’d also recommend taking a backup before doing any big design changes on your site or running lots of updates (see below).
What Type of Backup Is Best for Maintaining Your WordPress Website?
Where possible, we’d recommend picking a hosting company that provides automatic daily backups as part of your hosting fee. It’s very convenient, as they’ll run the backups in the background for you, so you don’t have to worry about them (unless you need to restore a backup – which is usually straightforward).
Furthermore, depending on the size of your site, backup files can be pretty large, so having your backups stored and managed for you by your hosting is generally the preferable option. Otherwise, you might end up having to pay for extra storage for your Dropbox or Google Drive.
If you’re looking at changing hosts, consider whether they offer regular backups as part of your decision-making process. And in the meantime, UpDraftPlus is a simple solution to fill in the gaps.
How To Maintain WordPress Websites: Running Updates
Now that we’ve done the groundwork of finding the right backup solution for your website, it’s time to dive into that updates screen and get to grips with how to maintain WordPress websites.
Why Are Updates Important?
It’s important to update your WordPress website regularly for security fixes and functionality purposes. Outdated versions of plugins and themes can be a security risk, and newer versions may improve user experiences by reducing page load times or increasing site stability.
Turn Off Automatic Updates
Before we do anything else, we’d also recommend going to your admin dashboard and bulk-updating your plugins to turn off automatic updates.
Normally we love a helpful automated task, but there are potential compatibility issues when you let updates for plugins run automatically.
Some WordPress plugins don’t always play nicely together, and compatibility issues can crop up when plugins update. Having automatic updates turned on means these compatibility issues could happen without you knowing (and if you don’t check your site all the time, it could be ages before you even find out a plugin conflict has happened).
Manual updates give you much more control over the update process, and as you’ll see below, doing them gradually makes it easier to tell which cheeky plugin has caused an issue.
How Often Should I Update My WordPress Website
Running updates every 1-2 months is a good starting point, especially for a smaller site with low traffic. If you left it longer than this, your website would almost certainly still keep functioning (we’ve worked on rebuilding websites where the plugins haven’t been updated in literal YEARS). However, it’s good to keep up-to-date, especially for bug fixes or security upgrades. Set a recurring reminder in your calendar, especially if it’s something you’re likely to avoid doing.
A Safer Way To Run Updates
WordPress can be a little temperamental when you run major updates, updates for plugins, or theme updates. But, if you take it one step at a time and put a few small precautions in place, you’ll find it much easier.
If you’re only doing minor updates, you could get away with doing these directly on your live site, but still take a backup first (as described above), and avoid doing them at a busy time for your site.
How To Update Your WordPress Website: Step-by-Step
Seeing an update message in your admin panel doesn’t need to fill you with fear. Here’s how to update your site and avoid causing a critical error or white screen.
⚠️ Don’t start updating your WordPress website right before you expect to have many visitors.
🛑 Before you begin, take a fresh backup of the site (see above for instructions).
How to Maintain WordPress Websites With a Staging Site
A staging site (or staging environment) is a copy of your website where you can make changes without affecting your live site – like a sandbox where you can test things, worry-free. Using a staging environment first is the safest way to update your site.
As with backups, your site hosting might provide a staging site. If not, a good free plugin for creating a temporary staging site is WPStaging.
- Using the WP Staging plugin, create a temporary staging copy of the site. Depending on the size of your website, this can take a few minutes.
- Login to the staging site using your normal WordPress website login details (the top bar will be orange). You might see some error messages about SEO and themes when you log in — this is normal.
- In the sidebar of the staging site, navigate to Dashboard > Updates.
- At the same time, use the home button in the staging site top bar to open the front-end view of the site in a new tab (the main view of your website, which a visitor would see and interact with).
- One at a time, go through all the updates in this order:
- Plugin updates – it can be tempting to bulk update all of your outdated plugins, but update them one by one. Updating too many plugins at once can overload your server temporarily – not a disaster, but definitely annoying. If you have a page builder like Elementor, do the plugin updates for that last of all
- Theme file updates
- WordPress core update (if your website isn’t running the current version)
- After each update, refresh the back-end of the site (admin dashboard) and the front-end tab to make sure that everything looks correct and that the site hasn’t broken.
- If something does make the site break – don’t panic! This is why we tested in the staging site. Make a note of what it was, then go back to your main WordPress dashboard and reset the staging site. Start the process at step five again, but skip whichever thing broke.
- If everything updates smoothly and nothing breaks – you can leave the staging site, return to your main site, and do the updates there. Still update them one at a time, as doing loads at once can overload the site and force it into maintenance mode.
- If any plugins or theme updates caused an issue, don’t update them on the main site and try again next time. It’s likely just a temporary glitch or some pesky compatibility issues, which the plugin developer will probably have ironed out by your next update day.
- Once you’ve finished this process, you can delete the staging site from WP Staging.
And voila, the update process is complete ✨ Congratulations on updating your WordPress website! Taking these steps should help you update without issues.
Now that you’ve successfully run your manual updates, keep up that momentum, and don’t be a stranger to your admin panel. Frequent updates are best for keeping your site in tip-top shape, so pop that update reminder in your calendar.
The Update Alerts Haven’t Gone Away
If maintaining your site has fallen off your to-do list for longer than you’d care to admit, it might be that some of the update processes are a little more complex than we can outline here. The unique combination of plugins, themes, and code that each WordPress website is built with means that we can’t always give a one-size-fits-all solution, especially without seeing your site.
Hiring a professional web developer to support you may be your next best step.
I’m Still Stressed About Updates
We feel you, friend. Even though our website is built on WordPress and we’ve built many WordPress websites for clients, running updates can still get our hearts racing a little bit. Managing your own updates and security can be a stress you absolutely don’t need when you’re running a small business.
That’s why we decided to start offering WordPress *and* Squarespace website services at Good Egg, as we didn’t want to force clients into using something that would significantly add to their mental load.
There’s also no shame in realising a platform isn’t right for you, and it’s possible to recreate many WordPress websites in Squarespace. They might not be carbon copies, but if your website maintenance is giving you anxiety, it could be worth considering. Get in touch if that’s something you’re thinking about.
Get Help Maintaining Your WordPress Website
Our friendly, jargon-free website services are always available if you’re in a bit of a tangle with maintaining your WordPress website.
Ways Good Egg Can Help
- Request one of our Free Sample calls to get a little bit of support (for free!) and figure out the next steps
- Book a Power Hour call and we can work through your issues together *
- Or opt for our Buy My Day service to get a whole day of our web lead Holly’s time to sort out your site *
Not sure which service will be most helpful, or need something more bespoke? Get in touch to chat about your options.
* These services are almost ready to launch, but we’re too excited to keep them a secret. The links will take you to the waiting list, so you’ll get an email notifying you as soon as they’re live (along with a juicy discount for being an early adopter).
