Yearly Website Maintenance

With the start of the new year, it is time to so some yearly website maintenance on your site. And, before I forget, Happy New Year!

New Year’s Day is typically the day that people use to start things over and start fresh. It is time to break old habits and start new ones (start good habits, that is!) This is the day when we throw out the old and begin newly.

When times are rough, we say that this is going to be the best year yet! Or, wait til next year… Well, next year is here, so let’s make the most of it!

Seeing that we are at a new year (and new month or a new quarter) is also a good time to make some updates to your website. This is the time to do this at least ONCE this year (or better yet) take the time to schedule these tasks so you can get in a good practice throughout the year! With that said, over the next week or so, you can do some yearly website maintenance. Make some time to handle the following:

1. Make sure your copyright date is 2016!

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 Nothing says ‘Neglected site’ more than an out of date copyright statement! How tech savy are you? You might want to automate this task so you do not have to do it next year  check out what UpdateYourFooter.com has!

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. Clear Out Unnecessary Archives

If you have been taking backups, start to clear out unnecessary archives. 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 are just parked and not doing anything. Most of them are live and have content. use this month to evaluate if you should hold onto the unused domains. If not, let them expire. If you are a bit more ambitious, you can try to sell the domain (known as flipping).

5. Review the users that are registered on your site.

You can log into your website becuase you are an authorized user on your site – this should make sense. In the past year, you may have provided access to your website to a vendor, a Virtual Assistant, or someone else. Do they still have access? Do they need to still have it? As you are performing your yearly website maintenance, evaluate if all the users are necessary. If not, delete them! This will make your website a bit more secure!

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.

7. Do a Plugin Audit.

Plugins provide additional functionality to your website. As these plugins evolve, new functionality gets added to them. You may actually be running plugins that now do the same thing. If so, pick the better plugin, and deactivate and then delete the unneeded plugin.

8. Check for Broken Links

Speaking of Audits, if you haven’t done this in a while, this is a great time to check for broken links on your site! Having a link on your site that does not go anywhere becuase the site it was pointing to is now defunct or the site removed an article is actually a demerit against you in the eyes of the search engines!

Yearly Website Maintenance

These eight simple tasks should be considered at the start of the year. Some can take just a minute while others may take longer. Having regularly schedule yearly website maintenance will ensure that your site is running smoothly.

What sort of tasks do you perform at the beginning of the year? Are there things that you do on your site at the start of the new year? Share them below by leaving a comment below!