How do you look after a WordPress Website?

WordPress is the most popular website building software on the planet with over 40% of websites globally being built on WordPress. In fact a quick Google while I write this shows that WordPress powers 43.5% of websites, which is a whopping 478 million websites. Blimey!

I have been using WordPress since 2013 and build exclusively on WordPress.

One of what might be considered a con of WordPress is that the sites need regular updates and maintenance. Although this may seem a chore compared to other platforms, I choose to view it differently. WordPress is forever evolving. And in the same way that you wouldn’t use a version of Windows from 2001 because it gets better and better with each update, it’s the same with WordPress. All those things need maintaining and updating are things that improve WordPress. And it’s better to have small incremental updates than one large update that doesn’t have backward compatibility, which happened with another website building platform. In layman’s terms this means that if you wanted to use the new version of that website building software, then you had to completely rebuild your website because if you tried to use the new features on a website built before the bug update then your site would break. Yikes!! This would never happen in the WordPress world as all future updates are designed with backwards compatibility in mind.

WordPress Maintenance

Let’s have a look at what needs updating as part of the WordPress maintenance.

WordPress Core Updates

These are updates to wordpress.org itself. This is the code on which the whole platform is built. WordPress updates happen regularly and need to be done at least once a month. If I host the site for you, I carry out updates once a week. It’s a bit like when a Windows PC has an update, and you need to restart it. Except instead you just hit an update button.

It’s incredibly important to keep WordPress up to date. Not doing so can lead to security breaches and in the long term plugin and theme conflicts that can break your website.

WordPress Theme Updates

In order to build on WordPress you need to use what is called a theme. The theme is used to set elements such as the colours throughout the website, the fonts, the layout and other elements that affect every page of the website.

WordPress Plugin Updates

A plugin is something that adds extra functionality to a website. Plugins are amazing and the lifeblood of WordPress. There are over 50,000 free plugins on what is called the WordPress repository! Plus many more paid one’s.

At a basic level most WordPress sites will have a plugin for the page builder, a security plugin and a form plugin (if the builder doesn’t have one, or you want something more advanced), an SEO plugin, a plugin to ensure that emails are all delivered from your site and something called a caching plugin, which helps with website page.

Other plugins might be used for bookings, ecommerce, memberships, learning management system, search bars, filters, tables, social media and pretty much anything you can think of!

In the same way that WordPress itself and the theme need updating, so do plugins.

What happens when you update WordPress?

When you update a WordPress site it briefly enters what is called maintenance mode. The site isn’t visible and a notice appears briefly that says that the site is undergoing maintenance appears (usually for less than one minute). Once the update is finished the site automatically shows again.

How long does it take to update a WordPress website?

It depends on a number of factors including your hosting and the number of updates that are required. If you haven’t updated your site for some time and your hosting is slow, then it might take 10 minutes. When I update client sites, it usually takes less than a minute and on average around 20-30 seconds for everything to update. This is because the host I use is good and because I carry out regular updates. If you factor in the time it takes to log in and a check of the site once the update is finished, to make sure that everything is fine after the update then you should schedule around 15 minutes per update.

Can things go wrong when you update a WordPress website?

It’s rare, but yes, things can go wrong when updating WordPress. The most likely scenarios are below.

Plugin or theme conflict

There are thousands of WordPress themes and tens of thousands of WordPress plugins. In an ideal world they all work together in harmony. And the vast majority of the time they do. However it’s not possible to test every single theme with every single plugin. That can mean that when an update is done, a plugin might conflict with something in the theme or with another plugin.

I use a very stable and reputable stack for building my WordPress sites (the stack just means that theme, plus the plugins that are used). Because of that it means that conflicts are extraordinarily rare. In 16 years, and updating hundreds of websites a week, I can count on one hand the number of conflicts/problems updating that I’ve had in that time.

WordPress stuck in maintenance mode

Occasionally WordPress can get stuck in maintenance mode and the maintenance mode page stays in place even after the update has finished. As a designer and developer, I can fix this in a matter of minutes.

The update doesn’t happen

Occasionally an update doesn’t happen, even after hitting update. The most common reason for this is that it’s a pro version of a plugin being used and the pro license just needs adding in again.

Can I manage my own WordPress maintenance?

Yes you can. WordPress maintenance can be pricey so you can absolutely maintain your WordPress website yourself if you want. However, you need to bear in mind that if anything goes wrong, then you’ll need to pay your designer/developer their hourly rate to fix anything that is broken. And if they are working to a deadline and you need the work carried out urgently (your site might be offline or broken) then many designers charge a premium for urgent work. So sometimes managing your own site is a false economy. It really depends on how much your designer is charging for maintenance. I charge just £12 a month for WordPress hosting and maintenance for my own clients. I feel that it’s a fair price for the amount of work that I need to do to maintain my client’s sites and offers them peace of mind that is affordable. Many designers charge £60+ a month for WordPress maintenance. At this price point you may want to consider either maintaining the site yourself or outsourcing the maintenance to somebody else.