I want to wish you all a very Happy New Year!
New Year’s Day can be a time when people feel fresh and renewed. It is a time when you can start over. A time to begin anew!
The New Year (and new month or quarter) is also a good time to make some updates to your website. Take a few moments over the next week and handle some of the following:
1. Make sure your copyright date is 2014! This is probably something that gets over looked too frequently. Generally speaking at the bottom of your page you have a copyright date. If it is NOT automatically updated (some WordPress themes do not), you will have to go in manually and change this. Nothing says ‘Neglected site’ more than an out of date copyright statement!
2. Start taking backups (or continue taking them) on a regular basis! I use WPTwin as a total backup solution. There are others out there – find which one you like and use it!
3. If you have been taking backups, start to clear out unnecessary archives. Not only should you check your servers, but also look on your own computer. I have gigs and gigs of disk space used by from backups. I do not need to have backups from last March! Time to delete them. As a general rule, I am very comfortable holding onto 3 months back of backups.
4. Start to think about domain names you might have that should be let go. I have many, many, many domains. Some I am holding onto, and many are live. Think about which sites are ready to be let go, or flipped.
5. Review the users that are registered on your site. Maybe you had a vendor do some debugging for you on your site. You may have added a new user for him/her to access your WordPress site. If they are not using it, delete that user!
6. Check the security on your site! If you have taken my WP Security Course, you know what needs to be done. If not, one of the biggest security measures would be to change the file and folder permissions (644 and 755 respectively) and change the database prefix.
Are there things that you do on your site at the start of the new year? If so, I would love to hear them! Leave a comment below!
Very helpful tips. In fact, I need to take care of the copyright date. Thanks for the reminder.
With the start of a new year, I like to make sure that all the links I’ve used still work.
I also consider if it’s time for a facelift to my site.
Cathy – check out the plugin, “Broken Links” – it will scan your site and let you know if you have any,um, broken links on your site!
Hi, Happy New Year to you.
I think the 6 points are so important. I can identify fully with #4 I am letting go about 15 sites this months. I think I have been overenthusiastic in past January and thought I would use them. Some of them I had registered in January 2010!
I couldn’t chose which is the most important as all your points are essential but if pushed I would say #2 as one hears so much about WP blogs being hacked.
Letting go can be a good feeling, Liliana! Rather than just not renewing them, have you considered flipping the domain name and selling it to someone else? Just a new thought for a new year!
Good information. My sites were hacked over the holiday break so I now have learned some basic things you need to do keep you site safe.
Sorry to hear that, Heather! Getting hacked, is not a good thing! If you need any assistance, set up a time to call and chat – https://digitalmaestro.com/webaudit – perhaps I can give you a couple tips!