It’s understandable if basic website maintenance isn’t exactly at the top of your mind. As someone who runs their own legal practice, you’ve got plenty of other tasks on your plate at any given time.

However, for WordPress-based websites, there are some key maintenance tasks that must be taken care of for your firm’s website to stay healthy. Attorneys who only handle website maintenance when something goes wrong are much more likely to have ongoing issues than those who take a proactive approach to website maintenance.

Here are six examples of WordPress maintenance tasks you should perform proactively.

  • WordPress updates: Every so often WordPress will make some updates to its core files, which might include security fixes or new functionality. There will also be updates for plugins or themes that must be made if you are to ensure they operate as they should and that they have strong security measures in place. As soon as you’re alerted to the availability of an update, you should make a backup and then run the update process.
  • Backups: Speaking of backups, backing up your website on a regular basis is an important aspect of website maintenance. Have an external backup process in place as well as one within your website hosting company. There are a variety of programs available that automatically backup your site. Once a month or so you should test restoring a backup to make sure the process is working as it should.
  • Uptime: Regularly track your uptime and see what sort of outage frequency you have. The more frequent your outages, the more unreliable your web host is. If you’re seeing a lot of downtime on your site, you should look into changing your hosting service.
  • Functionality: Every so often you should go through your website and check the functionality of links, forms and other features. There are few things more frustrating to would-be clients than website features that simply do not work, so making it a point to test the functionality regularly can help you keep visitors on your site and turn them into clients.
  • Speed tests: If you frequently update or add content to your website, it’s very important that you perform regular speed tests. Depending on the results of these tests, you should also optimize the site to make sure everything loads as fast as possible.
  • Security scans: Regular scans of your website will help you pinpoint vulnerabilities to address and will help you prevent other possible issues. While you’ll never be able to prevent 100 percent of attacks, performing regular security scans will at least help you maximize your protection.

To learn more about the importance of WordPress security and the steps we take to protect your website, contact us at Conroy Creative Counsel.