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The role of the website is similar to that of a brick and mortar store/office in the physical world. After the inauguration, a shop or office requires regular maintenance, like repairs, and renovations over the years, to keep it functional and aesthetically pleasing. Why would it be any different for a website? Your online presence needs tweaking and fine-tuning at regular intervals (weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly updates) as part of website maintenance to prevent technical errors, performance glitches, poor presentation, and low ranking.

Each update has a different timeline depending on the contributing factors, technical enhancements, and upgrade in SEO rules. Hence, the checklist keeps evolving each year, with new adjustments and requisites. Here are the essential tips on website maintenance for 2021, covering PHP, WordPress maintenance and Shopify maintenance.

WordPress Maintenance

WordPress maintenance is all about continuance and demands weekly, monthly, and yearly tuning depending on the requirement. Regular maintenance helps you to foster a functional website with zero to minimal downtime.  

• Keep a weekly check on the front-end. It helps one detect critical issues with the site. Besides that, it should be routine to visit all the important pages to see if they are functioning well.
• A weekly backup is critical to ensure the security of the site data.
• If people are posting comments on your website, you need to approve the real ones and flag the spam, preferably using a plugin.
• Some WordPress sites have key processes like checkout, which needs weekly checking for any error.
• Do not forget to keep tabs on the Google Search console. If the search engine encounters any problems with your website’s optimization, you get an alert on the search console.
• The loading time of the page directly impacts the performance and website traffic. So, it should be tested every month to detect if anything or any error is slowing down the process. If you add a new feature to your website, make sure that it does not disrupt the site’s performance.
• Please keep track of the website traffic to fix any issues whenever it arises by running analytics.
• WordPress sites often become the target of malicious intent, to prevent which monthly security scans are a must. You can get security plugins for that.
• The database of the site is a goldmine of data with all essential information about the website settings. If not optimized, it can create clutter.

While these were more like the regular WordPress website maintenance tasks, there are long-term upkeep essentials as well, such as:

• Check whether you need new web hosting in case you outgrow your existing hosting plan.
• Audit and alter your website content from time to time to enhance the site’s SEO.
• Prevent any malicious intent by changing the WordPress password at least once a year.

Any diligent professional for WordPress and PHP maintenance would keep tabs on all of the above to ensure that your website keeps running without any security hindrance or performance glitch.

Shopify Maintenance

Shopify framework, as the name highlights, are for ecommerce websites. Considering that over the COVID-19 period, many businesses have switched from physical to online stores in Singapore, many business owners will benefit from these 2021 Shopify maintenance checklist. Even if you have a hired professional for website maintenance, knowing the basics helps you keep tabs on the web platform.

• Ecommerce sites have a lot more content than a conventional website, such as product information, prices, FAQ pages, etc., all of which can change from time to time. So, you need to keep tabs on them and update them when needed.
• Keep refreshing the look and feel of the ecommerce site from time to time to break the monotony of the shoppers.
• Ecommerce sites come with payment processing platforms and hence can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Regular security checks and updates can help prevent them.
• If your CMS is unable to handle a certain feature upgrade to the site, you can upgrade the feature by using a plugin to enhance the functionality.

Other than these, the website SEO demands to be refreshed from time to time to augment the performance of the shopping site.

Like any other system, a website requires regular care and maintenance, just like you would pay attention to a storefront or the office inventory. Ignoring website maintenance can not only diminish its quality but adversely affect your business as well.