WordPress Blog Housekeeping
My server has been pretty well behaved of late, so my blog had been getting a bit shabby around the edges.
Server problems last week, prompted me to do some long overdue housekeeping. I’d recommend blog housekeeping at least once a month to keep your blog running nice and smoothly. I thought I’d share some of the WordPress Blog Housekeeping tasks things I’ve done to give my blog a ( very late) spring clean.
Upgrade Blog
I have to confess that I ignored the last couple of WordPress updates, because they didn’t include any new features and because I was frustrated with the number of upgrades that had to be done. However, they did include some vital security updates and I really should have done the updates immediately.
Upgraded Plugins
Many bloggers do stay up to date with their blog version, but don’t seem to pay as much attention to updating their plugins. This can be just as vital, as plugins can leave your blog vulnerable to attack and just upgrading your blog software isn’t enough to fully protect your site. Upgrading plugins can also add handy new functionality, performance improvements and bug fixes.
If you haven’t checked your plugins for a while then you really should do so now. If you want to try a quick route, then check out the WordPress Automatic Plugin Upgrade plugin.
Removed Luxury Plugins
Another way to improve your blog is to remove all those plugins you installed because you wanted to see how they worked, or because they seemed a good idea at the time. Be very critical - if they don’t really add anything for your readers then you should really remove them, as they are probably taking up valuable resources.
Tidied Up Categories & Tags
Before you know it, over time you can end up with a lot of blog categories and tags. Taking the time to tidy up categories these up can provide dividends, as it will make navigating your site much easier for readers.
Updated Popular Posts
Updating your best posts can help maintain Google positions, and will ensure that readers discovering posts that you wrote months ago are still getting the latest information.
Going back and re-reading old posts that may have been written at 11pm when you are tired (I’m often guilty of this) will allow you to spot typos and badly worded sentences that need updating.
Made Minor Tweaks To My Theme
I’m in the process of creating a new theme and I’ve been getting some good feedback from the rest of the team, so I didn’t make too many changes. Constantly updating your theme probably isn’t a good idea, but every couple of months you should try and look at it with fresh eyes and decide whether it is well laid out and easy for users to use, and whether deleting, moving or editing sections could add more traffic or create new revenue opportunities.
Update Database
There are various plugins that allow you to keep your WordPress databases up to date, butI prefer to do it manually using PHPmyadmin, as I think adding a plugin to do this is a unnecessary luxury. In my view you should optimise your WordPress databases once a month, to keep your site running smoothly.
What other housekeeping tasks do you perform on your WordPress blog?
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Comment by Mathew on 8 September 2007:
Being judicious about which plugins you use is an important one - I used a bunch on one of my sites - including WPcache - then one day the site gets dugg. And guess what? the plethora of plugins i was using were conflicting with each other, WPcache wasn’t working and my server dies within 3 minutes of being frontpaged. Given my profession, this was rather embarrassing.
Comment by Michael Samuel on 8 September 2007:
I advise you not to use a lot of plugins at the same time because they may conflict with each other and cause undesired errors or behaviors! This happened to me personally but if you can take control over them then no problem.
Comment by joey on 10 September 2007:
There’s a commercial plugin that costs $97 and automatically tags your new posts at most blog engines. It was helpful at first- until I discovered it truncated every single post I made! Literally deleted the second half.
Be careful what you install. Even paid software.
Comment by 3gp on 10 September 2007:
nice post that help optimized the wordpress plugin
Comment by Mike on 10 September 2007:
A timely reminder that I need to do some housekeeping on my blogs. I looked at the plugins installed on one of them the other day and wondered WTF half of them did. Seems I’d installed them on a bit of a whim and never got round to removing them…
Comment by Zath on 24 September 2007:
Some good advice here, it’s all a bit like back things up - I know I should really do it more often, but I never seem to get round to it - *note to self* “make more time for these things!”